Considering a second MFE, what are my chances to admission? not doing great in career after a Quantitative finance degree from a nowhere school in us

[j_turk]

Hello,

I got a MS Quant Finance/ MBA dual degree from a nowhere school in US and I have ended up not doing really great in my career. Currently I work as a data scientist since stats was my main forte and I learnt to program through a coding bootcamp (I did what I had to survive) . I have cleared CFA level 3 but even that doesn't seem to help much at entry level careers and hence within an year of graduation (may 2019), I am considering going back to a more elite school, if not now then sometime in the near Future. What are chances of admission in a better school.

 

[jeffsnguyen]

I think it would be hard to convince adcom why they should admit you to let you take the same courses again. You want to ride the band name/ strong career center to an internship and a fulltime but that reasoning alone might or might not fly.

PhD might be a more straight forward route albeit a bigger commitment.

 

[IntoDarkness]

just leave out your last ms in your app and dont even mention it you should be fine

 

[kunalkumargur]

But in Job interview? those gap of 1.5 years

 

[bigbadwolf]

But in Job interview? those gap of 1.5 years

Make up some malarkey of travelling the world on a voyage of self-discovery.

 

[Onegin]

90k and 1-2 years of your life. . .to repeat similar coursework? Dunno, might need to hit that CFA material and run a little NPV magic on this.

Is there a way to vector in to your desired track by starting in risk or something?

 

[bigbadwolf]

90k and 1-2 years of your life. . .to repeat similar coursework?

Probably the idea is to use the brand name and the placement services. But that aside, there's a difference in coursework between top-tier programs and the ersatz bum programs, even if the courses have the same name.

Edit: Though having covered some of the material already, even if ill-taught and at a low standard, will stand you in good stead for the stronger program. Just as having taken undergrad complex functions, differential geometry, and abstract algebra is good preparation for the more rigorous grad courses that seem to cover the same material (but are more rigorous and cover more ground).

 

[RowYourBoat]

I think it's a good choice. Maybe a 1 year program would be better. I would do it just for the free internship and the name recognition. Best would be to pick an MFE with high employment stats. And I would leave your last masters program in your application.

Admissions will think you didn't get a job either 1. because you were bad or 2. because your program was bad. If you can convince them it is the latter they would probably want you. Just because you would probably do better in interviews.

Dunno, might need to hit that CFA material and run a little NPV magic on this.

Agreed. Make a binomial tree and see which option has higher NPV

 

[noether-skolem]

90k and 1-2 years of your life. . .to repeat similar coursework? Dunno, might need to hit that CFA material and run a little NPV magic on this.

Is there a way to vector in to your desired track by starting in risk or something?

While I largely agree with the above, I think OP wouldn't have even considered this option if they weren't desperate enough.

Maybe do something non-MFE which still allows you to pivot into quant roles, like MS in applied maths, comp sci? I know people who have opted for those programs over MFE with the same goal of doing quant research/trading/etc after completion. Just make sure to actually get into a good program (e.g. applied maths at Courant, CS at CMU).

 

[Xerium]

Like how @bigbadwolf has alluded tot, is it possible that your MFE was a pseudo-MFE, and was realistically an MS in data science? Was your curriculum similar to this? https://mfe.baruch.cuny.edu/curriculum/ (Look at the required course and click on their hyperlinks).

If so, everyone's advice here is solid.

If not, you could still apply to a better school. When applying, sell your MS as a MS in data science so it doesn't look like you're coat tailing the school as @jeffsnguyen pointed out.

 

[kunalkumargur]

How about doing a master's in mathematics from the top 5 US colleges?

 

[noether-skolem]

If you're a foreigner you might benefit from the career services of a program specifically aimed to get you a job (e.g. MFE, MFin, MBA) since they're ranked by career placement, rather than research publications/citations. If you want to do MS in maths, try to find out their career placement info (talk to alums, check their linkedin) to see if most of them end up where you want to be.