Hey
@OldFinaceMan
Thanks for sharing your experience and opinion on the program's strengths/weaknesses. Compared to traditional students joining these programs, you have a pretty unique profile. It was very interesting to read it.
I like the last paragraph, where you stress the importance of presentation skills and how one needs to learn how to sell oneself to move up in this industry.
It goes to show you that Programs and Admissions Committees at some schools are willing to think outside the box. Given who I was in my career, I have enough cache that an Andrew Lo or Leonid Kogan will be kind enough to respond to an email. MIT year in and year out is outward looking. 90% will be foreign and about 50/50 split male female. Many of the non-NYC/Megaopolis programs from DC to Boston are finding it hard to maintain enough demand for seats and are shutting their programs down. Will make the remaining programs even that more competitive to get into. Given my purpose of pretty much wanting to just research and write papers the remainder of my life, there are places for an older student, if the Professors know you are willing to do the work. I had the advantage that I taught quite a bit through the years at "Business Schools" in investments, macroeconomics, international economics, derivatives, finance, international finance and M&A. Making the leap to go all out on quant and my real goal to do theoretical finance caught the attention of a few people at Stony Brook and some other programs. Frey, Stan, Mulhaupt are all a generation older than me, so I don't feel that old. The newer and younger professors (2) are outstanding. I suspect that in coming years, Stony Brook will expand the number of Professors in Quant Finance to around 8 or 9 and bring in some new blood. The upside of Stony Brook is "mathematics" in general. While at the MS level, you will only do 2 electives and you might not be brave enough to dabble in a pure math field or very advanced applied mathematics, there are plenty of opportunities when you are GA/TA PhD student and can take courses. Stony Brook doesn't require additional courses after the 12 from the MS. You just do your 1st year PhD test in probability/statistics and analytical methods in finance. If you fail, you get 2nd attempt to stay in PhD program. If you fail 2nd time, your are out. For year 2, you will be writing a paper than hopefully contributes later into your dissertation. You will do the Princeton Initiative that Bendheim runs for 2nd year PhD students nationally on intersection of quant finance and macroeconomics. So for anyone going down that route, I high suggest you do the U of Chicago, John Cochrane Canvas 2nd year PhD course for free on Asset Pricing because he develops the macroeconomic modeling linking to asset pricing theory. Then your 3rd/4th year hopefully you are doing great joint research with a professor on campus and getting published and completing your PhD. Stony Brook advisors like to try to keep their PhD students longer and publishing yearly, but for those going the academic teaching route, you can get done in 3-4 years and get an Assistant Professorship. The interesting thing about Stony Brook PhD is that you could end up in mathematics department, engineering school, business school or a pure financial engineering program. There are avenues. If you use your time and say get a 2nd masters in Economics, you widen your opportunity for teaching.
Let me conclude. Stony Brook is not a bad place to be. There are very bright people. It is cheaper than living in NYC, but you are only 50 miles away. There is customizable opportunities at PhD level and the MS level course sequence everyone takes whether terminal MS or moving onto PhD. Unfortunately, all the funding is slotted for PhD so it is pay as you go for MS students. The new SPIR Program with State of New York is creating 1 year internships. As most of these are arranged by the professors, the best and first slots are going to PhD students, so not only do they have a fellowship, GA/TA, many of them are in NYC working and drawing as salary for a year. The program asks that 50/50 split between corporate work and academic work. The long-term goal is that ALL MS/PhD students will have opportunity in SPIR and that many financial firms and other firms are proving 1 year of employment paid for all the quant finance cohort. This means that after about 6 courses, you have a good enough base skill set that you can be thrown to the wolves and see how you do. School Year 1, Work/PT School Year 2, Year 3 wrap it up and graduate and for those who want (about 50%) move onto the PhD in Quant Finance and start researching and writing.
If you ever saw mapping trees of PhD School to Assistant Professorship school placement, the choice of your school really matters tremendously. For industry, less so. I taught on 3 continents where my work took me. I taught at elite schools and local good colleges. I have outstanding students from good local colleges go onto being Managing Directors in London. I have had my 1% stellar students go to elite places like MIT, Harvard, LSE for PhD and then struggle to get Assistant Professorships and end up in places like Kean College, but then eventually move on.
The Top 5 for Quant Finance have earned their reputation. You all should apply. However, like in MBA and other fields, the information is generally a commodity. You could learn it all for free from books. For most part, we are all learning mostly the same financial theory from the same original source papers. We learn coding, mathematics, statistics and other maybe some IE/Operations Research. The mix of these skill sets is very useful whether quant finance or doing computational biology and working alongside David Shaw. There is a convergence when you have modeling skills, math skills and programming skills. The information set may change from money to molecules but the analysis is analysis and your have findings.
Thus, pick the school that is right for your for the right reason. Don't want debt, go to a school that either funds you are is inexpensive. Want to be a professor at a Top 10 university, well, you better go to a Top 10 university and write a lot of top tier journal papers as a PhD student. If you want a job on Wall Street, it helps to be near Wall Street and networking. Just aspire to be the best version of yourself and do the hard work consistently for 2-3 years and you will have endless opportunities. Your professors see who is good and put the word out there in their networks. When you interview, these people do this tens if not 100s of times and they know BS to the person who is on point, thoughtful or even resourceful for creating a structure for response to very hard interview questions. Everyone wants the best available, so just create the best you that you aspire to be, whether it is Stony Brook MIT, EPFL, Columbia or wherever.
This is one of the more difficult undertakings in academic Master's programs, but if you are good, there is economic rewards awaiting you down the line. Sometimes immediately, but for sure within 5 to 10 years when you really start to get to apply what you know in the financial world. Good luck to your followers. Encourage them to explore options, apply, and commit to the work ahead.
