Graduate School (or Not) Advice

[rskowro]

I am currently a junior majoring in Mathematics and minoring in Physics, Business and possibly Stats at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. I would like to pursue a career in quantitative finance/quantitative analysis after I graduate. My question is this: What is the best path to take if I want to pursue a career in this field? Do I need to pursue a MSFE or something similar directly out of undergraduate or is it something that can wait?

I have a very strong background in mathematics and have already begun graduate courses in PDEs and functional analysis. I have one year left which as of now will be dedicated to finance, stats, and grad math courses (any recommendations to courses are welcome as well). I also have done research in modeling stocks and an internship in modeling large losses.

Any insight is appreciated. Thanks all.

 

[Connor]

For a quant career, you will probably want to pursue either a Masters or PhD but not necessarily straight away. Digressing shortly, how are your programming skills? With as many minors you have listed, I would recommend studying some computer science.

If you could get a job in finance, at a bank for example, you could get some good experience there for a few years and then go complete a MFE (or other Masters).

If you can't get a decent job, you can just go straight into a Masters.

If you really wanted a PhD, I would probably recommend for you to go straight into that and maybe try to get a finance internship for some exposure.

 

[rskowro]

Connor, thanks for the response. I would consider myself to have a solid background in programming. A majority of my experience is in MATLAB and Excel, but I am also learning SAS now. I have taken courses in Java and C++ and taught myself SQL and R. I'm only 3 classes away from a CS minor, but the remaining required courses are more theoretical CS as opposed to programming, so I figured those classes wouldn't be as useful.