Looking for 6 months -- need guidance

[Pete]

I was in the PhD programme in mathematics in a top 20 (but not top 10) school in the US studying probability theory and stochastic analysis. For a variety of reasons I dropped out from the programme about 6 months ago with a master's degree in mathematics with 3.95 GPA. Since then I've been trying to break into the quant game but things aren't going very well -- I've had very few interviews and though they went pretty well I didn't end up getting any offers, and recruiters have been just plain ignoring my emails. My undergraduate was a first in mathematics from a top 5 UK university, and I don't have any relevant work/internship experience.

Needless to say, with the 6 month mark approaching, I am starting to ask myself whether I have an entirely wrong profile for a quant job and whether I am going at this all wrong. Do I even have a chance at a quant job right now or should I focus on trying to get an internship? Any advice? Should I put the dream on hold and finish my PhD? I really appreciate any help you can offer.

 

[lonely]

how long will your phd take? if its year or so then dropping out will be one of the most stupid decision. Phd is valuable degree particularly in maths, there are tons of other analytic jobs after maths phd. In quant finance it really matters what you do. If you wanna do HFT than its again waste of your talent, if in some other quantitative investment area that makes sense, derivatives will also be good. All the people who wants to go into algo trading have no clues what they are talking about. Study some material on derivatives, financial time series etc, I think it will help

 

[Andy Nguyen]

What is your experience with programming?

 

[Pete]

The PhD would be another 2-3 years. I don't have any formal programming experience (except one course in undergrad) but I've been programming since high school. While I've been looking I've spent time getting back up to speed with C++ and coding up some models I've been thinking about. (I also have kept reading about derivatives pricing and have been attending statistics classes.)

 

[AWilliams]

how long will your phd take? if its year or so then dropping out will be one of the most stupid decision. Phd is valuable degree particularly in maths, there are tons of other analytic jobs after maths phd. In quant finance it really matters what you do. If you wanna do HFT than its again waste of your talent, if in some other quantitative investment area that makes sense, derivatives will also be good. All the people who wants to go into algo trading have no clues what they are talking about. Study some material on derivatives, financial time series etc, I think it will help

Perhaps you can elaborate a bit more?

 

[Andy Nguyen]

@Pete
It's often the number game. You have to interview enough times to crack in, specially now when there are many people in the market.