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@Vladimir: anything finance-related that will give you a chance to show your work ethic and your effectiveness. "Brand-name" education is neither necessary nor sufficient. We have plenty of people in my group (at a big bank) without Ivy degrees.

@ABrown: Don't do it. Be 100% honest. Provide an explanation, if necessary. I know people that have been kicked out of grad school for submitting misleading information and people how have been fired for submitting false applications. This kind of error can haunt you for your entire career.

Vladimir, we hire lots of people from all kinds of backgrounds. Work experience trumps school almost every time. Get a job. Work hard. Then worry about making your case to grad schools.

I seek the fourm's collective wisdom on a education-related matter. In addition to working on Wall Street, I teach at three universities. One is a very highly-ranked private program at a university from which I have received two graduate degrees. The second is an up-and-coming program where I...

I can arrange for that, AlgoCan. I have some connections.

I tried the tutorial using VS 2010 Express C# and Excel 2010, and no luck with it. Do you know something about it?

I interview dozens of quants and quants-lite every year. Those of you who don't really have a fire in your belly - I have bad news for you. You're not fooling anyone. It's usually quite obvious. Even when it's not immediately clear, it comes out after a few minutes.

Pick 10 companies form the bunch. Download their 10k's. Spot check. If you find one difference, throw your dataset out and use Bloomberg.

SPH, I know dozens of people in private equity and sit on my firm's investment and valuation committees for this business. I am unaware of any quants among them. They are all very smart but all have very general business backgrounds. A masters degree in finance does not provide optimal...

SPH - what you've described is a position well-suited to an MBA, not an MFE. MFEs typically go into market risk, quant development, or model review. we hire many each year at my firm.

Did you accept the offer? If so, then you're being disingenuous.

I attend many of these types of functions. Many students effectively take themselves out of the running by being rude.

I review hundreds of resumes each year. I usually ignore it. I focus first on experience, then coursework. If the person is from a good school, I don't pay much attention to grades.

That's a bit too simplistic. There are lots of smart people. Success often isn't a function of pure mental horsepower. Rather, it depends on common sense and hard work. You don't need an advanced tech degree to do tech VC. Some backgound is what's really needed - enough to appreciate the...

Not true. I cover PE and sit on MS investment and valuation committees. Plenty of non-Ivy PE people. A quant degree, hwoever, would be wasted in PE. You need corp fin and accounting.

Andy, I thought you were referring to certain posters on this forum...

Firms do this all the time late in the year. Don't read too much into it.

Uncle Max: are you forgetting seasonality? I'm getting 17.427%

Don't do it for the money. You'll find yourself in competition with people who really like what they do. They'll always be willing to put in a little more effort.

andrewchang, once again, Andy's right. If you become a quant because you think it's exciting, you're in for a big disappointment.

saving the world I agree with Andy - I've told many people that finance is not the means with which you can change the world. People in the business are able to justify their existence in other ways, however: 1) many people do a great deal of volunteer work, often organized through their...

futures I believe that it's to establish a pricing basis independent of coupon. Coupon introduces a potential tax impact. There's been a lot written about this, most of it in the 1980's. Contact me if you're interested.

There are some good financial podcasts from NPR.

I agree. Get a job first. Make sure this is what you want to do. Pay off your debts.

FRM/PRM I've written and edited questions for the FRM for several years. I have also been a reviewer of the required reading list. The questions are geared to actual practice, not theoretical backdrop. I've never looked at the FRM as a necessary qualification for employment, but I have...

internships It's unlikely an employer would post internships in this manner. Most internships are quickly filled, since the qualifications are usually few and the supply of people meeting them many.

suggestions for undergrad The single most useful, plug-n-play group of undergrads I've worked with are from Wharton. Perhaps not the best for cocktail party small talk, but consistently excellent and ever-practical.

The job part is more important. The market is saturated with PDE-types who don't necessarily understand how things work or how to get things done. It's kind of like having a 1000 hp engine with no transmission. You also want to distinguish yourself from the many, many people who don't...

alain is right ...but it's not without its rewards, both financial and otherwise. You work with smart people in a fast-paced environment. If you're really interested in finance (and I see many who are only attracted by the $), it can be a lot of fun.

If you have a family to support I would not recommend making a career switch. There are now 50-70 QF programs, all churning out graduates. Many of these grads have real experience, which makes them marketable.

program ratings Andy - there used to be 5 quant finance programs. I think that there are now between 50 and 70. Have you considered compiling this into a book?

letters In my opinion, generic letters are perfectly acceptable. I've written both - one glowing letter for an undergrad who aced my risk course that he can use anywhere and several school-specific letters for people applying to top business programs (NB: 2 got in at top 5 programs, 1 was...

Something in a financial institution where you can a) gain some practical knowledge and b) prove that your interest in finance is based upon experience and not just visions of dollar signs. People who fall into the latter category tend to move from firm to firm frequently, always looking for...

My advice: don't go straight to grad school. I've hired quant-a-be's from most major programs. The ones with experience usually make better candidates. Figure out why you need all the incremental education before you pursue graduate studies. It makes your study much more focussed.

where do traders go They go into management, risk, audit, ops, banking, capital markets - all over. Trading provides some of the best prep for many jobs in finance. I'd be willing to bet that most ex-traders didn't do it for 10-15 years. More likely 2-5. It's one of the hardest jobs you can do.

PhD in Finance If you want to teach, get the PhD. If you want to practice, go to work. Experience and perspective are precious. Grad schools churn out thousands of quant-to-be's. There's no substitute for hands-on experience.

Wall Street hiring The street is hiring. That's a fact. What's relevant for readers of this forum is that many of the positions require quantitative skills, but are not necessarily trading positions nor positions that will lead directly to trading jobs. Too many people seem to think that...

I am an adjunct at three QF programs and I work for a major financial institution. I have zero tolerance for plagiarism. If I became aware of a copied essay, I would try to have the copier expelled. (I would probably succeed.) I would also go after the person from whom the essay was...

next steps Real-world experience can compensate for grades. Get a job in finance and make sure that it's really what you want to do.

Undergrad help Denyo, it's counterproductive to over-prepare at this stage. Get a sound foundation in math and statistics and concentrate on getting a summer job and then a permanent one. While I'm not a "real" quant (MS Stat from NYU), I can tell you that you're likely to absorb much more at...

Garbade, Fixed Income Analytics, MIT Press, 1996. None better.

advice Go to work, get a job, work hard. Once you have some experience under your belt, GPA won't matter as much.

strat as entry point It depends on what you want to do. Coming in as a strat may brand you as a quant and make you less marketable for some positions. It will allow you to see from a lot of different angles.

commodities interview prep The following is everything you need to know about nat gas, tied up with a bow in a neat little package. Read the first 75 pages or so. http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/REPORTExcessiveSpeculationintheNaturalGasMarket.pdf For oil liquids, get ahold of...

beginners book Figlewski's book provides a great foundation for options. I read it as a young man and the light went on...

quant jobs Look folks, it's quality that counts. There used to be 3 MS programs in Finance. Now there are close to 50. I see lots of people that can solve PDE's, but not that many that can evaluate and test a pricing model, query a 100 million record database to find the information needed...

part time vs full time part time. experience is priceless.

MSFE v MSOR Sorry to burst bubbles, but I personally don't distinguish between them. The real distinction is studied technical material at the graduate level vs didn't.

Valuation control You will have to ask how quant focussed the role is, but these jobs usually are. The positions are usually part of controllers. The people I know who do it like it. If you're worried about status, don't take the job. What you need is an entree into the firm If that's not...

FE doing MBA job It is doubtful that a financial engineer could do an MBA's job. Generally, FE's lack practical corp fin experience (i.e. how cash flows through a company) as well as accounting expertise. I surveyed the class I teach at NYU and less than 10% of them had any accounting...

getting started Get your foot in the door. These jobs are highly valued within the firm.

over 40 If you can convince an interviewer you can add value, you can be 22 or 50. I've hired quants at both ends of the spectrum. The key is getting the right intro and not being too pushy. Also, if making a career switch, make sure you have a good "story" - e.g. saying you want to make...

Steve Allen has a good one. The problem, however, is that there is no one book that covers all areas. The best overall survey is the readings for the GARP exam. (Full disclosure: I have written questions for the exam in the past and have been on the review committee for several years.)

Trading vs Risk vs Everything Else Andy, one doesn't "jump into [a] vacant trading seat". That's just not the way it works. People have to be trained, then they sit on the desk for a while - often doing support work. And while risk management does differ from firm to firm, the basic job...

work or school Work first. Then you'll be properly motivated for grad school.

devoid of feelings? C'mon. that's a bit extreme. I've met them both and attended meetings with them both. "Sociopath" is not a word I'd use to describe either.

IDEAS It's Morgan Stanley's quant group. It has a lot of IT folk in it too. It houses our "strats" as Goldman calls them.

Calc Book The best one I've seen is Fundamental Methods of Mathematical Economics, by Chiang. Logs, basic linear algebra, calculus. It was my post-college refresher in my first masters program. Applications, not empty problems. Readable.

thank you notes It feels weird if we've decided not to bring the person back. It's never made the difference (for me, anyway) between hiring and not hiring.

tick data???? no, no, no. Hundreds of traders * thousands of positions + hedges + currency data + legal entity data+ security master info... We store gigbytes every day. Many risk people feel that it's easier to train an IT person in finance than to train an finance person in IT.

interview I personally never expect them.

quant + database I'm surprised to hear your comment. Market risk teams at big firms rely squarely on both - it's what we look for in candidates. Every day, we collect hundreds of millions of records (yes, that's right, hundreds of millions). Many quants use market risk as the stepping off...

Energy Trade Life Cycle Try to get a look at Weiss, "After the Trade is Made - Global Securities Processing". If the question comes up, turn it around, i.e. "I understand something about fixed income/equity, trade entered into front office system, aggregated, reconciled, posted to ledger and...

Goldman is a Bank Holding Company and is a state-chartered bank. It is subject to Fed regulation, but not that of the OCC. It would not be easy for them to switch back - they would likely be accused of regulatory arbitrage.

If you want to be a quant analyst, I would say you need to be more proficient in the use of analysis tools such as Excel, Matlab etc... Quant analysts need to prototype models and tools such as Excel and in particular Matlab are superb for this. Then on top of all that knowing C++ can only be...