Sachin

thanks for the response.

I checked out Barra and you are correct about their use of SAS, this is good news for me. I will definitely be contacting someone there to get a better idea if there are opportunities that I may be interested in.

I have noticed that a lot of tech departments in financial firms require the manipulation of "extremely large" data files to asses risk, etc. I know that SAS is specifically geared at this kind of job (manipulation, that is) Do you know anything about how SAS can be used for risk assessment?

What other kinds of jobs can SAs do in finance?

thanks again

Hi Brent,

Very pleased to meet you. Hope we can also meet in person.

I do not know how it is in US but atleast in India knowing SAS is a prized possession. Many companies are willing to hire you if you just know SAS.
I know for a fact that all risk modelling in Barra is done in SAS. Plus the trend here in India is to have everything in Java. C++ is kind of obsolete and there are serious efforts of moving everything to Java..even things in SAS. The problem with SAS is that it is an interpreted language ..which means that SAS has to be on user's PC. Plus SAS doesnot integrate very well with other platforms like C++, Java etc. So, SAS pretty much is confined to individual based research. I also worked for CitiGroup where SAS is mandatory. But the sad part was that SAS was mainly used there for reporting purposes.
But SAS has some really cool stuff like E-Miner where it can easily do modelling for you. SAS is a very expensive tool and it has component based pricing and most of the companies are happy to just have SAS base and SAS stat.
If you can tell me specifically what is it that you wish to achieve with SAS then I can be of some help or atleast talk to people and find some help.

Regards
Sachin

thanks for the reply. Also, I understand that you were accepted into the Baruch MFE program, congrats.

I am about to enter a master's in stats program at Cornell University that both trains and requires extensive programming in SAS. We are required to complete a project that will be half research and half industrial application; specifically my project will deal with incredibly large data sets (tera or peta size).

Obviously, you are entering a program that specifically uses c++ (and it seems that c++ is the financial engineering standard). What is to become of your skills using SAS (i.e. what good do your SAS abilities do you in the quant realm) ?

What jobs are available to someone with considerable fluency in SAS specifically in application to finance and operations research?

Why are you pursuing a degree in FE? What is your goal?

Any relevant info would be great.

My name is Brent, and it is a pleasure to virtually meet you.

Thanks