Does work experience help?

[aynana]

Hi everyone!

Does having work experience in a CS-related job become a plus point for admissions? I have an option of applying now or working for a year or two and then applying later. Since I am interested in a mix of Finance + ML does such an experience on my resume look good for future applications or not?
Any thoughts?

 

[Paul Lopez]

Definitely! Depends on the job though.

 

[aynana]

Yeah true.
So it's a role in a product-based company. It's not related to Quant or even remotely related to finance as such.
I did an ML-based internship over the summer and I was offered a job. Idk the exact role details but it'll be dev-based and so on, just to give you a basic idea.

That's partly why I am confused. Would such an experience help? I mean it does vouch for my CS skills. What do you recommend?

 

[Paul Lopez]

Depends on your educational background too I'd say. Never hurts to do a job if one of the pillars of quant are being worked on. CS/computing is certainly one of those pillars!

 

[aynana]

Okay, that's good to hear!
I have an undergrad in Mathematics and Computing so it's basically a mix of computer science and mathematics with a greater proportion of maths. So the undergrad seems to be aligned with the pre-requisites of an MFE.
And from your answer, I'm guessing even the job does? in case I go for it?