Benefit of Online Courses in Strengthening your CV

[Kodar]

Hi, I have recently graduated from a Top Indian Engineering Institute and am currently working as a Software Developer at a FinTech Consulting Firm. I wish to pursue a MFE program to switch to a Quant Role.

Going through prerequisites, I learnt that there are multiple math courses (with high grades) to be required by multiple colleges. I have a good finance as well as coding background to cover other prerequisites. As my degree was not very computational in a sense, so I don't have particularly math heavy background. I wish to cover these gaps in my resume. What do you recommend can help me in this case?

1) Obtaining online certifications from Coursera/other MOOC Platforms
2) Obtaining online certifications from reputed Universities

Also, would getting any other certifications such as CFA/FRM also help in my case?

PS: It would be great if you could drop some links to those courses too (if there are some)

 

[benzenephi]

Coursera is completely useless. Do pre-mfe courses from Baruch, ucb or any other accredited course.

 

[Daniel Duffy]

Coursera is completely useless.

Out of curiosity, what's the reason(s) for this? Content, style, exercises?

 

[Kodar]

Out of curiosity, what's the reason(s) for this? Content, style, exercises?

I personally feel somewhat the same way. That Universities don't consider courses from these sites credible enough for it to cover the gap for prerequisites(as in my case would be certain Math topics). They are much preferred for personal growth/learning than being recognized as a credible credential. I raised this question as I saw many seniors from my college doing these courses before going for a MFE too.

I saw the Pre MFE courses from many universities, but they seem too costly and at the end, still are not equivalent to a course done as part of a degree so to say. But still it is better to proceed with these courses than to do nothing. Would make your CV a bit better. .But I am still not able to make my mind of what course would be of best ROI

 

[QuantCoach]

I graduated somewhat recently from a MFE and now work on the buyside so I have a better idea how recruiting is like from the other side. No online course, no matter if it's coursera, online certificates from the most reputable universities, etc. will help you land a Citadel/JS/DRW/IMC etc., we just don't care what extra courses or certifications you have when we have dozens of MIT 5.0 math/cs double major undergrads applying + some of the best PhDs. You need to distingush yourself some other way. Even current top MFE students are having a hard time landing any FO full time job offers right now, please don't take any online course with the mindset that it's going to help you land a top quant role.

I cannot say definitively for top sellside (Goldman/MS) front office recruiting as I don't work there (but did receive offers + have friends that do work there), but I'm under the strong impression that they don't really care what online course you did either.

Now, if your goal is just to get into a MFE, then sure some of these online courses will probably help. If you want a middle office quant role like in risk then extra certifications may help too.

 

[ferdyanggara]

Even current top MFE students are having a hard time landing any FO full time job offers right now

this is concerning for me. any way to differentiate and give an edge for MFE students? also how about the internship search for MFE? they always said that the stack are against them due to top firm recruits in their first semester. seems joining MFE, point blank without work exp or any related quant roles will not land you a good job.

 

[jedi]

Univerisities may only count the accredited courses. Netmath is one common online option.

 

[benzenephi]

netmath and baruch are 1500$ which is cheap compared to something like stanford online which is 4500$ for a course. harvard extension too. good value too.

 

[benzenephi]

Out of curiosity, what's the reason(s) for this? Content, style, exercises?

I personally took machine learning on coursera and I could've learnt the same thing from a youtube video. Its too surface level. Academic rigor is not there. I like courses which go in depth and are rigorous. I then took ML from my university and it was 10 times harder with practical assignments that I learnt a lot while doing.

 

[QuantCoach]

Even current top MFE students are having a hard time landing any FO full time job offers right now

this is concerning for me. any way to differentiate and give an edge for MFE students? also how about the internship search for MFE? they always said that the stack are against them due to top firm recruits in their first semester. seems joining MFE, point blank without work exp or any related quant roles will not land you a good job.

Ashley Cross (CMU career services) have various posts on her Linkedin about the current state of the job market. Basically people without return offers are having a hard time getting full-time offers because there's just a lot less hiring going on. It's very very easy to think about what gives you an edge - the difficulty is executing.. Just think from our perspective, we can hire anyone we want from any university we want, what can you do that most of these other people cannot? The easiest way to distingush yourself (from my experience and what I did for my full time job search) is just being a top student in both your MFE and undergrad, publishing some papers, landing decent buyside internships, some self-awareness of how to get better (I never asked anyone what I need to do to get where I want to be, I reflected on this myself). This was much easier for me compared to winning an IMO/IOI, etc. and even then I only heard back from ~5-8 buyside firms.