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You'll find out after about a month of work.

There is nothing wrong with doing a PhD then going into finance. But the idea of doing a PhD in a technical field SPECIFICALLY to get into finance is backwards. Remember that in the course of getting your PhD, you are spending 5 years of your life on a single topic. It is absolutely not a good...

Nobody said these were all from students who could not make up a good metaphor... they were just the most humorous.

http://www.losteyeball.com/index.php/2007/06/19/56-worstbest-analogies-of-high-school-students/

I liked the article, but this quote was rather overblown: "Envision a world where artificial intelligence could vanquish human trading altogether." People who state these things don't stop and think about why markets exist in the first place. Perhaps algos will dominate executions, but in the...

You are being willfully ignorant. Nowhere there does he quantify "close to 100%". Is 90% close to 100%? Is 75%? Is 51%? 51% is closer to 100% than 50%.... I doubt the placement is bad, but my god dude... don't get duped by simple wordplay.

Not to imply that Feynman was less than brilliant, but... Feynman was rational, brash, and unapologetic. He also knew many dazzling numerical tricks. These personality based factors would easily cause most people to over-estimate his IQ.

Fine. I declare the hijack over.

Translation: I am reduced to cracking jokes because I ran out of good arguments.

It's called a mispricing. This occurs when the subjective valuation of one asset drives its price away from the value determined by a fundamental connection between two or more assets. In this case, the futures price is different from the value determined by a cash and carry argument. If...

Thank you for completely ignoring my argument. The so called "objective value" is determined in the end by the value assigned to them by human beings, who assign those values by their own subjective judgment. If there were an objective value to everything, then there would be NO trading and no...

Even suggesting that there is a objective value shows your ignorance of basic economics. Economists invented the notion of a utility function specifically to quantify subjective preferences, and the whole underpinning of micro-economics is based on the notion of utility functions. Just taking...

Sales IS a skill. It's the skill of creating value by altering perception. It's not necessarily a flaw of the US, it's due in large part to how human nature is. Like I mentioned above, value is all perception. There's no reason to invest in something that you cannot perceive to have value. And...

Does he go over why this occurs? That would be far more interesting than just the fact that it does happen.

That's a legitimate point. I don't know. Perhaps in mature economies, optimization of risk transfer (which is essentially financial innovation) pays off more than additional risk-taking itself (entrepreneurial innovation). I agree with the overall sentiment, but you have to wonder why things...

The conclusion? What conclusion? If you get paid more to do something in one field than another, it implicitly means that society's spending power as a whole demands more people in the field where you get paid more. We are not talking about a 10k/year difference, we are talking an order of...

That's interesting. I'm not going to surmise about why they value accountants more but for sales... Perhaps because value (in the economic sense) is mostly perception. Perhaps because making a car 10% better in quantifiable metrics doesn't make it sell 10% more. Perhaps because there's a better...

"Gordon Gekko - some nice guy! The Challenger blows up and he's on the phone 30 seconds later shorting NASA!" - Wall Street Too bad NASA isn't a stock.

Not implying they are, although I see how what I said could be misleading.

Also, there is a difference between USC MFE and USC MSMF. MSMF is the more reputable one. I made this mistake as well, although fortunately it ended up being inconsequential.

I'm partial to vector/list based and functional programming languages. It's so much easier to do certain things. I like C/C++, R, q. Throw in some unix shell scripting and python for good measure.

If I had to guess, I'd put A&M ahead of UH.

Ok, let me modify my statement. 53k is roughly what I paid for 2 years at Caltech. Think about that. If you want to work in TX, you should note that companies have stronger ties to local universities. OSU might be a better bet in that case. I went to one of the CFA dinners in Dallas (I grew up...

I assume this is per year. 53k/yr is more than I paid for Caltech. Think about that. I have no idea what justification you could have for paying that much to go to a school that's not even in the top 50?

I don't know, sometimes you just have to face the fact that not everybody is a good writer or a good public speaker or a good... whatever. There's a reason creative talent is valued.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest

This is slightly off topic, but I see no rogue traders breaking British banks this time around... yet.

There is no conspiracy against fat people at Baruch MFE. I am also a powerlifter (haven't had too much time to train these last few months though), I'm carrying around 180 lbs on a 5'-6'' frame. I'm in the pictures above. It does seem like a freakish coincidence though... that everybody above...

If you are an INVESTOR (and very particularly a value investor) not a trader, then it makes sense to listen to him. Simply because the returns are mean zero doesn't imply that everybody trading so often is a loser... it's most likely a positively skewed distributions with the top hedge funds in...

Warren Buffet also said that his ideal holding period would be infinite - it minimizes the costs of trading. He also did a back of the envelope calculation of stock market returns vs aggregate trading costs and concluded that the trading community at large gave whatever profits made from...

Or you are reading too much into what I write. I posted to explain that we were not assholes simply for the sake of being assholes. The question as stated originally is ridiculous for anybody who has spent serious thought on trading, quant or otherwise.

There are two main problems with trading such a small account using a strategy other than fundamentally based buy-and-hold. 1) Transaction costs are a huge % of your account. At $5 per trade on $2000 acct size, that's 0.25% per trade, 0.5% per round trip trade. That is getting close to the...

"Investing strategies" do not include pairs trading. If you are not interested in putting in a monumental effort, the most rational investment strategy is to just go long the market and sit on it. The waters of alpha are infested with sharks.

Look through a few yearly filings, they usually show institutional ownership %.

I'm glad to see somebody's willing to pay for their education. Buy the dip. Short the hump.

I can say that the experimental section on my particular test allowed me to use a crappy little built in calculator.

Reminds me of a Star Trek episode where a little 8 year old kid runs out of a classroom crying to his parents... "But MOMMY, I don't WANNA learn calculus!!!!"

[Humor]

I saw this a while back and I agree on a lot of the points.

I interviewed with Wendell Collins. She wanted to know about my leadership experience and mentioned that "We train leaders, not quants," and that while they certainly have a place for quants, that's not their focus.

To me, MIT is a great quant name and Princeton is a great general name.

High frequency trading is not a financial derivative...

If you have a roommate or two, you can get Manhattan for around $1000 +/- 200.

No, you just need a slightly longer elevator pitch. The Ivy league pitch is just... "I went to Harvard." A normal person pitch might be... "I have a double major in math and CS, 4.0 in all my courses, head of my school's investment club, and I turned $1000 into $10,000 trading my own account."

If you have connections in Asia, you should ask them. I don't know much in this area. However, generally speaking you just sell your strongest asset. Pretty simple... if you went to Podunk U but worked at Goldman Sachs, you play up Goldman Sachs and omit Podunk. Or if you took on an important...

Consider this for the future... If you have the background to get into a name brand school, you will likely be able to get into one in the future. You'll have to think about what you are looking for and what you can afford to pay for. And you have to think about what brand name recognition...

If you agree to give me a vanilla milkshake and if I agree you to give a chocolate milkshake (and chocolate > vanilla), but the only place you can buy vanilla is out in Russia and customs won't let you ship vanilla, then it's not an arb, it's called defaulting.

Yeah, I went to a public university (University of North Texas for those curious) for two years as a high school junior/senior. I slept my way through 5-6 classes a semester to a 4.0. Yes I'm an exception, but it's still a 4.0. Contrast this to Caltech, where I busted my ass and barely...

Cultures are different. One of my humanities teachers in high school said he was invited over to Japan to try to get their students to be more creative. When they introduced him to the school, they marched their students out in formation. He said it was this amazing sight, but the culture was...

I wonder what the long term effect of this type of hiring practice would be. For every HYPSer a firm hires, there's a hundred other guys who are just as smart and much hungrier. To use a sports analogy, a lot of teams didn't rate Jerry Rice highly in the draft because he ran a 4.59s 40. But as...

No stats, but broadly speaking... In the end, you earn big bucks by making deals and doing big business. Doing those deals means either being very innovative (entrepreneur side) or being able to handle people (management side). With a good idea/business model in place, the rest of business is...

When I say "true distribution" I mean corrected for socioeconomic factors. BBW, are the numbers you quote corrected? Would be nice to see the source. Positive racial stereotypes necessarily imply negative ones. If someone is smarter, then that means someone else is less smart. If there is an...

You are having a knee-jerk overreaction and are apparently arguing (poorly) against nobody. There are easily measurable physical attributes that vary in statistically significant ways across different races, things such as height, limb/torso length ratio, proportion of Type IIB muscle fibers...

My mistake, USC is in the 20s this year. National Universities Rankings - Best College - Education - US News

You realize you're talking to BBW who I presume is a Brit, where a First (A equivalent) is 70%+. I get your point though. Even though I took university classes my last two years, I slept through half my classes on the way to a 4.0

It was still a terrible guess. I have no idea why you would single them out. Low tier => below top 50. USC hovers around 30 ish. And for the record, no I did not go to USC.

Whether you can get a quant role straight out of undergrad is highly dependent on: 1) Whether hiring companies even look at your school. Apparently they do... 2) Your passion for the subject as evidenced by your choice of electives and outside reading/study. 3) Your ability to sell #2 in a...

I went to a program where I took university classes exclusively for my last 2 years of high school.

The original Black Swan was.... an actual swan which happened to be black. The point is that nobody even knew they EXISTED. Not highly improbable, but wholly UNCONCEIVED OF. Hence, if we are even thinking about events as described above, no matter how improbable they are, they are not Black...

It's not a Black Swan if we are sitting here discussing it.... Interesting though.

Nociton: sounds like you'll be fine. Just sell your strong points, acknowledge your weak points, and make sure you get thorough (i.e. non generic) recommendations. If I were you, I wouldn't give up on the job search either.

WTF, what college ranking have you been reading? USC is not "low low tier". Its football team may be its most famous thing, but it is not low tier. Nociton... when you say "because of athletics" do you mean that you were on one of the teams? Or does that mean you just liked the fact that the...

Example: customer calls you up and wants to buy 5000 shares of a stock. So... should you fill it quickly? Slowly? Using limit or market orders? If you fill it slowly, you run the risk of the market moving against you; your average price will go up if the price goes up. If you fill it...

As far US cultural attitudes towards people with technical aptitude, part of is the fault of those technical people for not being socially apt. In my own experience, my intelligence has never been the target of hostility; any social awkwardness I may have felt was due to my own lack of ability...

I never had a real physics course until my senior year of high school. It was not even offered in 9th and 10th grade. Fortunately my genetic average IQ is 105 and not 100, allowing me to essentially not study for physics while my peers crammed desperately. There is an interesting caveat to...

Quantitative background (math, phys, engineering, computer sci) are far more important than CFA. But CFA does help. It brings you up to speed on finance with a very broad overview. You get a little bit of econ, accounting, corporate finance, etc... along with knowing what each role in finance...

This is a gem.

It sounds like you've made up your mind that you can't compete.. Given this, why ask for advice at all?

Koupparis's advice is very solid and practical. To kind of give you my mindset, here's some more food for thought: If you go to a middle of the road school, you need to set yourself apart. This can actually be a good thing in some cases. Given the choice 1) Mediocre student from a stellar...

As high as I scored on the verbal, the vocabulary words on that are so worthless. I am not American born, I just have a strange but remarkably good memory. SAT words I'd say generally get into the realm of "standard pompous" speaking. You could see the old masters of the universe talking...

LOL but trading is zero sum.

I actually ran out of time on the last question and still got an 800. At the time, I thought "Aww CRAP, no perfect score." Then a few minutes later I got my 800.

I really have no idea here. I did explain away a few bad grades on my statement, but there were only two and my GPA was decent. Maybe Dan or some other major player can weigh in?

My guess is that those tutors tried to help you with math, not test taking. I suggest going to a local bookstore and picking up one of the larger GRE books and browsing to see if you can pick up any strategy hints. If you can, use them, and if there seems to be enough value, buy the book and...

If you are actually adequate at the math, I would look seriously at your test-taking skills. Do you perform well under pressure? Do you have strategies that save you time? Do you execute these strategies automatically and without hesitation? This could make the difference. If you are not...

I wonder what kind of training quants get when they start at a big bank. Often times the recruiters go for the smartest math/physics/engineering undergrads/grads/PhDs who often have no understanding of finance. They then brush off the objection that "I don't know a lick of finance!" with...

You do not know the precise reasons for those rejections because the candidates themselves do not know either. If their posted academic background was truly good, you can only assume something else contributed more to the rejections e.g. statement of purpose that says "I want models and...

If I remember your academic background correctly, you're certainly competent enough to get in. All the other stuff you suggest is the finishing touches. C++ can be taken pretty slowly, some type of intro to finance as well. CFA Level 1 is mainly time consuming, not intellectually difficult...

I find the whole premise of this thread to be a giant oxymoron. Legalize illegal immigration... so all immigration would be legal? So we are just opening up the US border completely? In any case, what should be a cut and dried issue of legality is much complicated by... 1) A huge border...

What's the old saying? Anyone under 30 who's a conservative has no heart. Anyone over 30 who's a liberal has no brain.

You realize that the full time programs themselves are 1-1.5 years long? And that the part time programs are merely programs in which you can take 2 classes each semester instead of the full 4? And therefore the questions you ask about finishing in 1/1.5 years as a part time student are...

You should be taking both. Application wise, theoretical lin al looks redundant with the lin al course you already have, so I'm leaning towards real analysis.

Mark Joshi has a guide. http://www.markjoshi.com/downloads/advice.pdf As far as what you would like to do, it comes down to personality. A good rule of thumb is that the more front office you are, the more you have to deal with clients and the more deadline pressure you are typically under.

This looks fine. You have a good background. I don't have much advice for picking recommenders. For finance background, my personal advice is to do CFA level 1. It gives you a very nice broad (mostly qualitative) overview of what happens in finance. This will allow you to talk intelligently to...

Honestly, you are the first person I have ever seen in this field who actually seems to WANT to be a post-doc. I cannot fathom why. Go to the right firm and you'll be working on interesting problems (though hardly blue skies) and be paid far better than comparable post-doc.

This article had nothing to do with recruiting and embarrassing yourself to recruiters via social media. Reading comprehension fail.

If you don't need it for production, (i.e., academic or other non-commercial use) there's a 32 bit trial version.

Why not try to get some kind of trading or trading support position if your eventual goal is to do something trading related?

Transcripts are an extra 2-3 pieces of paper with tons of information that companies in general do NOT want to look at when there are 100-1000 applicants per position.

How easily would you be able to get the money to stay in the PhD program? I think overall, a job would be a better idea. You can't build algo trading without some knowledge of actual trading unless you want to be the technology guy of the operation. Market intuition and microstructure...

That's a good point. I always took the concept of a pointer for granted. Yet my parents, who programmed VB for a long time, always referred to pointers as the hardest thing to master in C/C++. It amazes me when other people fail to understand this concept; the name is so suggestive! A pointer...

LISP stands for Lots of Irritating Stupid Parentheses. Caltech moved from Scheme to Python for its Intro to CS course within my 4 years there. I took the Scheme version and it was certainly intellectually challenging. Interesting if I wanted to be a CS major. However, everybody complained...

I agree with Mr Krause here. All of the engineering majors I knew in undergrad would have been more than prepared for an MFE program. Then again, everybody at my school was required (regardless of major) to take... 1) Calculus, Lin Al, Multivar Calculus 2) ODE, Probability/Statistics 3)...

Baruch is much much larger than just Courant... Remember a search for Baruch includes the undergrad, MFE, and MBA programs. On the other hand, "Courant" by definition limits the search to NYU's graduate math dept.

I definitely think China is a bubble. Whether or not the bubble will burst... that's a different story. China does have massive growth potential, so it's conceivable that even if Chanos is right at the moment, the market will never reflect his view.

Reads like a conspiracy theory.

I have no idea what the Berkeley course offers. Andy's recommendations are a good starting point. I would add some basic work in differential equations and complex analysis just to get comfortable with it. A full blown course isn't completely necessary, but more is better of course.

More math will help. To me, that experience is rather sparse. What was your major?

Real analysis may be overkill, but you definitely want some knowledge in basic mathematical logic. If you can find a course for that, take it.

In case Dominic wasn't clear enough... If you want to do non-quant finance, Finance/Acctng etc... would be ok. For quant finance, you should do neither.

Agree, HFT is here to stay.

I'm not Dominic, but from observing his MO, I can take a stab at this. He believes it is bad to do FINANCIAL Math and/or accounting at undergrad probably because these are both too soft/specialized early on. For quant, it's better to get real hardcore scientific/mathematical training i.e...

This little bit is a gem from Derman: "I've interviewed a lot of people in my time at Goldman Sachs who when you ask them why you can price options they tell you 'Because of Girsanov's theorem,' which I think is a really bad answer."

Having spent my 4 years of undergrad at an elite school, I can tell you that the people are for the most part like anyone else... just with a big brain. Extremely intelligent people have neuroses and personality flaws just like everyone else, they may even have a higher number of them on...

Ken, I never mentioned pure mental horsepower. "Tech oriented" (my words) doesn't necessarily mean "an advanced tech degree" (your words and inference), although you may have inferred that interpretation from my background. I agree mine is a simplistic view... but that's all we're discussing...

True and I agree with the assessment in the case of general schools. But they are also referring to FOR profit educational institutions in particular here, and by many accounts their sales tactics... well...

I've often heard that the goal for many in traditional IBanking Analyst roles is to do their 2 years at the bank and then move on to PE or a hedge fund. A successful PE firm requires some type of value add. An LBO based firm needs solid management (presumably better than the management of the...

I agree. As the field gets more competitive though, you will start to see a shift towards quants who are both numerate, practical, and easy to communicate with. It's only logical.

If you're going to do this, please include the VIX.

Do whatever you have to do to demonstrate that you can survive and succeed in the program as well as on the Street. That is the bottom line. Your GPA demonstrates to the contrary. Be it with an explanation, more recent courses, or whatever... find a way to demonstrate...

Buy VIX call, short VIX put and you've got a synthetic VIX forward. Or you could just use VIX futures. Same delta, just a different theta exposure.

You might ask your recommenders to describe/mention how tough the grading policy is.

Your chances may be the same, but your decision timeline can be drastically different.

But also keep in mind that quite a few people who interview you will have physics backgrounds.

I can't comment on the elite specialist quant firms, as there's generally little data on them to draw conclusions from. On the other hand, you'd have a good shot at a bank. I have no idea why you wouldn't include your classes on a resume. As an undergrad or recent graduate, your education is...

What's the school? GPA and background are important, but they mainly serve to give you a resume, which in turn serves only to give you a shot at the interview. Once you get a shot at the interview, I believe your passion and ability to talk about the business will get you in. I probably...

Fun. Thanks to everybody who put the logistics together!

Exactly... I thought the point of getting a PhD is precisely to get into industry, research, or academia. So what... you want to do research at CERN but not be a professor at any university?

Re: averaging policies (or lack thereof) I'd actually contact the admissions offices directly and ask. I never had to worry about this myself.

The approach they take definitely makes sense.

As far as I know, these are percenTILEs not percentages. I'm not sure how I would convert % answered correctly to a score. Some books have a conversion scale, I would recommend finding one of these at your local bookstore.

This is what I was looking for. If you have had a course like this, a good book on analytical probability (foundational) and a book like Shreve vol 2 (specifically stochastic processes) will do you well.

While I found the entire article interesting and very revealing for the Greek situation in particular, I found this quote the most interesting from a worldwide perspective: It got me thinking about how the investment of borrowed funds relates to long term solvency. E.g. if you buy a huge...

What's your math background? As I'm finding out, the quality of undergrad math courses can vary widely. Was your calculus and linear algebra very proof oriented (i.e., did you DO a lot of proofs)? Are you familiar with the proof techniques yourself? Can you wrap your head around abstract...

Proximity is going to be a big issue for the simple fact that it takes quite a lot of $$ to fly candidates cross-country for interviews.

I'm from Dallas. I have no problem cheering for the Jets though.

I remember my friend used to read this book about college admissions at Ivy Leagues. He kept on saying how the admissions committees did NOT want "bright well rounded kids" and even gave them an acronym (BWRKs - I never said it was an elegant acronym). Instead they preferred brilliant students...

How bout dem COWBOYS!

If you are a "typical" MFE candidate, GRE quant prep should take you a few hours max (half of it just familiarizing yourself with the test). Verbal 1) Is far less relevant than Quant. Many of the words you will never encounter again. 2) Takes a long time to prepare for if you don't have a...

Send me a PM. I did my undergrad at Caltech.

I don't know much about the Columbia MFE brand itself, but know this: A reputation, once made, can still be unmade.

:D You ever thought about being a lawyer?

No. Only the last semester of the program is in Manhattan.

But Lyosh... I assume you took more mathy classes than just Mechanics, E&M, and calculus. CS itself is fairly mathy.

There's a nice no-arb proof that an American call on a non-dividend paying asset must have the same value as the corresponding European call, thus allowing for Black-Scholes valuation.

I do like Wall Street. The "greed is good" speech is so powerful; unfortunately it's often taken out of context and only that one part of it is quoted. I also do like Family Man. Reminds me of long lost lovers. But my #1 so far is definitely Rogue Trader. Is there any other movie that...

Your GRE quant score is good to show schools. But to me, it says absolutely nothing about how you would do in higher math. My advice is to take some harder math/physics classes and see how you like them. For starters, something along the lines of... 1) Differential Equations (ordinary and...

I've always been partial to Rogue Trader. It's always amazing to me to see the massive failure of management and internal audit procedures in that movie.

When you realize they believe in the predictive power of models - that's when you take their mo... err... charge for liquidity!

I certainly don't think so. That's why I'm careful to say "value" and not price. I'm not here to discuss model risk. Whenever one picks a model, one should be aware of the inherent strengths and weaknesses of that model. However, to go into these strengths and weaknesses for all models would...

Whatever the case, the value of the CB is just the sum of its constituent parts (i.e., the bond itself plus whatever options are embedded). Bond pricing proceeds by present value. The option on the issuer's stock is just an equity option, which have standard methods for valuation...

Not all math is useful for a quant. Not all quant math is interesting to a mathematician. What you wrote above is a decent list. Here are some more ODEs PDEs Numerical methods Game theory Probably the most important thing to be a useful mathematician to a finance firm is to be able...

Roni, All the online apps will allow you to keep it open until you are ready. LoRs can come in any time after you open the app. They are primarily submitted via online form anyways. The official line is they will only consider your app once it's complete. It really should not matter, it is...

The question is... how can you compare two candidates? GRE/GMAT is easy to compare... check! Better GRE/GMAT => higher chances. Sure, cultural/educational background will affect the English based writing and verbal sections, but the fact of the matter is that American universities teach in...

It's based off the European system of entrance exams. I remember my ex (German) mentioned how she had to take exams to determine what high school she would go to (gymnasium being the only one from which entry into university was allowed). This reminded me of the Chinese system, so I asked my...

My point is that "trading" is a very broad term and also frequently used/misused/abused. The specifics of what type of trading you want to do will determine what path you take. If you didn't know the "terms" I listed, it behooves you to look all of them up, whether they are listed in a logical...

They key question here is... What type of trading do you want to do? Prop? Flow? Market making? Speculation? Stat arb? The answer to that will guide your decision.

It's unfortunate that the pro-business policies have to be tied up in their social agenda.

What? No, abstract algebra is Group Theory, Rings, etc. It has nothing to do with straightedges and compasses. That would be geometry.

Aggh the rankings keep changing! It's not Huntington though, it doesn't even make Men's Health's list.

Opera. Here's to resonance frequencies and shattered glass.

Houston, the fattest city in the US of A.

I don't know you yet, so for now let's keep this going via private message on quantnet. Ask your questions that way.

I once programmed SCHEME, a dialect of LISP. This chart could explain a few things.

Ask yourself why you want to do MFE but took math only as a minor. You need to at least be able to tolerate the idea of doing tons and tons of higher math.

Worrying about things out of your control is a waste of imagination. I just never got that worked up over rejection letters and I'm glad I didn't worry about the prospect of rejection when I wrote my statements of purpose. If I had, I would have definitely watered my statement down and taken...

Not all shots are fair. It's easier if you live in e.g. California [UC system], TX [UT], North Carolina [UNC Chapel Hill] among others. Not all public school systems (i.e., affordable schools) make the top 50. I agree with your premise, just pointing a disparity out.

Somebody who gets it! Refreshing.

You should know the big picture of finance, especially as the environment gets increasingly competitive. That said, you don't necessarily have to take a class to get that big picture. Self study on how finance works is a lot easier than self study in advanced math. Personally, the CFA books...

Re: Ellen Brown - yeah you can bet on anything with derivatives. But derivatives have legitimate purposes such as hedging of risk, a point she completely misses. You COULD use derivatives markets as a casino, but chances are if you think of it as a casino, you're an amateur and you will have...

Your quote is EXACTLY what I mean by "higher moments version of the Black-Scholes". Do some digging and this should be obvious. The fact that you seem to think it is new information to me makes me wonder if you know what the quote is really saying... You said you were trying to "counter...

The Richard Hamilton thing... yeah... ok I get that. And that shows his integrity. But this quote... "[The prize] was completely irrelevant for me. Everybody understood that if the proof is correct, then no other recognition is needed." That's what I'm talking about.

I disagree with TraderJoe on this one. Nothing is so absolute. Your GPA hurts your chances, but in the end they are just that... chances. You never know what might come through for you: maybe a great set of recommendations, an incredible essay, or a convincing interview. These can and do help...

I'm not a trader but I'm sure everything gets traded. Why? Because there's the chance to make money betting on any of these things: vega, gamma, theta, etc. That's why I think options are interesting - so many strategies are available. What a trader uses options for is largely dependent upon the...

It's hard for me to even imagine the amount of mathematical talent one would need in order to not value those famous prizes. Wow. I'm not even talking about monetary value, but to refuse the honor...

None

Nothing exciting to report. Very routine submission and very routine rejection.

Phone interview. Princeton only interviews their top 100 applicants so I was rather proud to even be interviewed.

NYU was overall very unresponsive to my communication. They also said my Caltech transcript was not legible, yet they require an upload size of only like 100kb. I sent another copy and they never acknowledged receipt of it. I was not happy with my application experience with them and would have...

Phone interview.

Offered $20k Knight scholarship.

Phone interview with Dan Stefanica.

I was going to write a bit more but there really is no point. Life is not fair. Genetics, location at birth, parents' wealth, parents' social status, parents' knowledge, and much more are all out of your control and all well-accepted to be important to one's potential. To quote Rocky: "The...

If you're sure they will copy your essay if you give it to them and you're truly their friend, you would refuse to give your essay to them. I sort of talked about this in the thread about schools checking essays for plagiarism. If you can't come up with your own reasons for going to a program...

Far in the money and far out of the money. I guess you could also say "DITM/DOTM" d standing for deep.

At least on exchanges, option prices are driven by market forces, and the market makers must try to balance these forces as best they can. If there's a lot more demand than supply for a given option, the price will rise (obviously). If the price rises and the other important and variable...

Tigga: I was thinking the same thing.

Having a high IQ in no way guarantees that you will not do stupid things. I've witnessed this firsthand countless times, both as an observer and as a participant (though not in a quants context). Paul's statement gets a thumbs up from me.

Andy: I checked the box for colleges to send me emails. I just brought it up in this case because EMTM itself happened to have sent me an email - glad I did not waste my time with it. Addendum - most of the emails I received through the opt-in GRE list were junk. However, Berkeley MFE did...

Re: CFA I've only taken the level 1 exam so take this for what it's worth. The pass rates are below 50% for nearly all 3 levels of the exam. Some people are so scared they don't even show up. Some leave mid-test. That said, nobody with quant-level brains should be scared of it. The...

Interesting. They started sending me emails after I took my GREs.

If you have the time/money/patience to have every item you buy and use painstakingly designed and hand-crafted, be my guest. Are you also a hopeless romantic? This is not a black and white issue, rather there's a continuum of choices, trading cost/time for quality. And each item in question...

Professors reusing recommendations is more an issue of truth than plagiarism. Discovery of such a practice for a specific professor should call into doubt the veracity of the recommendation. While I don't believe it should be grounds for disqualifying a student, perhaps the recommendation itself...

Yes, I remember being taught certain formulaic ways of writing essays for various things - for class, for standardized tests, and for college apps. Also ironically, I got the best responses to my essays by just writing in a way that came naturally. Ever since I dropped all the standard...

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