I feel over qualified for MFE program. How to make the most of the program ?

[amateur-quant]

The moment you read the title, you must be thinking - 'look at this tool'. But believe me, I am not here to stroke my ego. I just wish to get guidance to how to maximise my time and resources at the mfe program which is worth my money.
As the day looms nearer for joining the mfe program, I am more and more pessimistic about my decision to join. I have been accepted into several schools in top 10 programs, joining one of the programs in top 3-4. (I don't wish to name the program)

So, all of these programs have most of their students who have come out fresh out of undergrad or have max 1-2 years of experience. There are few in far and between. The discourse in some of the sessions conducted and in the discussion is to do leetcode, study green book, do mental math - all of which is giving me a feeling as if I am a fresh grad, the feeling which to be honest is not what I was looking forward to when I thought of doing an mfe.

Okay, so before I move ahead, here is my past record, things I have done etc. -

Engineering background, with a minor in Maths.
5.5 years work experience as software engineer in companies very well known for their software
I have 2 research journal publications (at the intersection of engineering and optimisation)

I am well versed in programming. Comfortable in c++, java, low latency development, system design.
I have done around 450 questions on leetcode.
Familiar with most of the chapters in green book except brain teasers and little bit of finance. I studied them once again to see if anything new is there.

The first quarter courses are just very basic introductions to the topics like pyhton, stochastic process, options pricing - which I feel would be a waste of time for me. From second quarter, I see some electives which have a broad range of topics but I hardly find any course which delves as deeply into the subject material as I wish it would have.

One goal from my masters is obviously to get an internship and then a job. But at the same time, I want to learn as much as possible and learn new things, not the basic version of stuff which I already. know. I want to learn from my peers, I have nothing against people who are coming fresh out of undergrad. It's just that I wish there were people who knew much more than I do so that I can learn from them.
I haven't met many from my class yet. And I hope to find more people from diverse background and experiences from whom I can learn a variety of things. One topic on which I have very little idea is machine learning. I will be looking out for people who have past research or work experience in this domain.

Given my circumstance, how should I best make use of my time at an mfe program ? My goal from the mfe is to get a quant researcher role. The real qr role, not the fake qr titles which some companies give out for their quant analyst positions.

I hope that I am wrong. I hope that I have prematurely come to a conclusion and the reality is different.

 

[latus_rectum]

One suggestion from my end is that you can target applying for a slightly senior level roles and not entry level roles during internships and job placements. For instance, senior qd rather than qd, and qr rather than junior qr. And with the kind of preparation you have, you should be able to get those.

 

[QuantCoach]

The purpose of MFE is much more suited towards the industry rather than academia. You could take several PhD courses if you want more advanced material, or work with a professor to publish something, some people in my cohort extended their internship part-time during their last semester too. If courses are easy to you then get the highest GPA; although people say GPA isn't too important, my personal belief is that it doesn't hurt if you have the best test scores in your class. Honestly most of your time should be interviewing/preparing for interviews. I skipped probably >50% of my classes as did a good portion of my cohort from just interview prepping + interviewing. I would definitely not underestimate how brutal and time consuming the interviewing process is especially if by "real QR role" you mean at Jump/Cit Sec/HRT/etc.

 

[achirikhin]

If you are good at programming, you may just get a job as a quant dev. The risk is that you may be stuck with doing more technical jobs, e.g. vectorising stuff or working on compute graphs.

If you do do the program, do electives. This may broaden you knowledge of the subject. It is a bit like doing a proper PhD: it broadens and deepens your knowledge of the subject area dramatically.

Just to be clear, MFE programs are never prerequisites for getting either an internship or a job.

Check out Chapter 2 of Quantitative Analyst, Developer, Strat: The Profession for different types of quant jobs in different organisations, the possibility of migrations between those jobs, and specific requirements on programming tech skills for different jobs.

 

[MikeLawrence]

You're actually in quite a good spot. Many of the students at top 3-4 schools (especially top two) have better profiles than you do. The benefit of joining these programs is that companies know the profile of students who came from there previously, so they know you're a quality candidate and the bar for interviewing you is much lower.

It is more posturing and getting down all the little details, learning some ins and outs of various models, than it is sucking in huge amount of knowledge and seriously leveling up your theory. It's still a lot of work, but in a different way than a normal 2 year Ph.D prep masters.