Global Derivatives Website

[pauljack]

I've been at the global Derivatives Website to get some information.
Maybe I'm Naive, but I didn't realize how Snobbish the financial industry can be.
They seem to be fixated on all the Ivy league schools, and say any other programs besides
NYU, Columbia, etc. aren't that good.
Many of the so-called tier 2 schools have good programs with excellent placement rates. Again, maybe I'm naive, but I didn't realize that Baruch was considered a tier 2 school. Your program looks excellent, placement seems great, and this website seems to be the most comprehensive place to get information about financial engineering.
Are these people assuming everyone is planning on working at DE Shaw and Goldman Sachs at $500,000 per year salaries.
It seems to me there is a lot of opportunity for Financial engineers/Quant Risk managers in other financial firms worldwide.

Does stochastic calculus take on some different meaning if taught at NYU?

PaulJack

 

[pauljack]

I meant to say $500,000 per year "right out of school".
The sky is the limit as far as income for smart ambitious people.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

I've been at the global Derivatives Website to get some information.
Your program looks excellent, placement seems great, and this website seems to be the most comprehensive place to get information about financial engineering.

Our Quantnet Resources is an attempt to give prospective students an one-stop info source about everything quantitative finance related.

Does stochastic calculus take on some different meaning if taught at NYU?

If you pay 90K at school A, would you expect to learn 2+2 = 4 and you get 2+2=3.99 at some other programs?

 

[joe_bradley]

Hi,

I saw the same sort of stuff in the engineering field, and it usually worked like this:

If someone says: "If you can't go to a big-name Ivy League school, might as well not go at all"
He means: "I went to an Ivy League school."
If someone says: "I find the students at [state university] are a lot hungrier and motivated to learn than the students at [private university]"
He means: "I went to a state school."

In any case, I can't judge the competing programs, as I don't know anyone who went there. I suppose this sort of talk is inevitable until we get enough graduates out in the field who can turn around and badmouth other programs.

 

[Dmytro]

i think when it comes to Fin Eng programs at Ivies vs. non-Ivies, the situation is not as straightforward as it is with MBA and JD programs. first of all, many of them don't even have MFE programs (e.g. Harvard, Yale). secondly, given that the majority, if not all, MFE programs are not more than 10 years old, the playing field is much more even (it's harder to brag about "centuries-old traditions" and "countless presidents and senators as our alum".)

i prefer to think of it as a great opportunity time - baruch mfe was early in the game and already has managed to build a highly reputable program, with top faculty and graduates. people on (wall) street notice (as shown by nearly perfect placement stats), and it's just a matter of time that we are on the list of "Ivy"-level MFE programs.
btw, i wonder what the new term will be - "Exotics" vs. "Plain Vanilla" schools ;?

 

[Michelle]

My experience with many hedge funds and shops is that they do not put much weight on where you get your degree from. They will not be impressed or care about where you graduated from. They only care what you know and your ability to perform on the job. The ability to deliver is most important in this business.

 

[Yuriy]

Our Quantnet wiki (Quantnet Wiki) is an attempt to give prospective students an one-stop info source about everything quantitative finance related.

If you pay 90K at school A, would you expect to learn 2+2 = 4 and you get 2+2=3.99 at some other programs :smt102

Andy I have to disappoint you, but Stochastic Calculus is taught a little different at CMU than at Baruch. I took it at CMU and at Baruch and there is a difference.
The biggest difference between Baruch and CMU is in terms of how much is covered in each class and how much homework is given While many courses in the MFE program have course loads similar to CMU, there are courses that have far less homework, for example.

 

[alain]

Andy I have to disappoint you, but Stochastic Calculus is taught a little different at CMU than at Baruch. I took it at CMU and at Baruch and there is a difference.
The biggest difference between Baruch and CMU is in terms of how much is covered in each class and how much homework is given While many courses in the MFE program have course loads similar to CMU, there are courses that have far less homework, for example.

Yuriy, do you mean that CMU has less homeworks than Baruch in Stochastic Calculus or the other way around? If it is the other way around, I do feel really sorry for the CMU students.

Our load for Real Analysis and Probabilities was a healthy load of homework (5 to 6 problems a week) + theoretical quizzes every week. For stochastic calculus, it has been a weekly dose of 6 to 7 problems (some lengthy, some short but the typed answers are usually at least a page long).

 

[DominiConnor]

As a headhunter, I flatly do not believe that anyone gets $500K straight out of school unless they are someone who was a respectable earner before, and took a year off to study. That's not very uncommon, but even then 500K is not likely.

Currently the highest we have seen for someone with no commercial experience was around $260,000. That is a tail of our observed distribution. The candidate was not "Ivy League" or equivalent, not a shabby place, but a school we hear no explicit requests for at all.

They were smart of course, but by sheer blind luck had studied things that the three largest IBs all wanted at the same time.

But...
There is a preference by some managers for "ivy league", but of course this is an international game, and there is no general consensus on which schools are the "Top N".

Much of the brand value of a school is not the quality of teaching which in my experience only correlates mildly with brand, but how many people you had to beat to get in.

But I encourage you to think about the process, and brand will help you get to the first stage, ie interview. But once you are sitting in front of them, you answer the questions well, or you don't.

 

[Yuriy]

Yuriy, do you mean that CMU has less homeworks than Baruch in Stochastic Calculus or the other way around? If it is the other way around, I do feel really sorry for the CMU students.

Alain, CMU has more homeworks on average. While I'm sure that many professors at Baruch have similar course loads in their classes (Professor Stefanica might even have greater course load), there are courses at Baruch that have less course load. For example, Professor Shreve usually teaches 1 chapter per week (at least, it was that way when I took his course). Any other course taken outside the MFE program definitely has less homework and course load in general.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Yuriy,
Obviously, different school will teach it differently. Different teachers will do it differently, in fact.
My point and the point of OP is that it's still the same stochastic calculus, the same formulas. There isn't an Ivy stochastic calculus and second tier stochastic calculus when we all study the same books.

On a related note, anyone knows any quantitative finance forum besides the regular (Wilmott, GD, QN, NP) ? Do I miss any great site out there ?

 

[Yuriy]

No, I don't know any others In fact, I mostly visit QN, been on Wilmott several times, maybe 5 times on GD, and never been on NP

 

[DominiConnor]

Discussion forums are like modelling pools of liquidity, and there is a natural gravitation towards sites that already have exchange of ideas.
The numbers of posts and readers drops exponentially as you move down from Wilmott.com

By the time you reach the 7 or 8th site, they are dark corners.