Specific Question About Career as a Quant

[tcjstudent]

Hello,

I'm new to the forum but have some career guidance I am seeking. I graduated with a degree in Industrial Engineering and am starting graduate school in OR at GA Tech this summer (distance learning). Modeling finance problems seems incredibly interesting to me but I am not a huge fan of programming (although I did in college and was actually pretty good at Matlab and average with C) or sitting in front of a computer all day. I am contemplating on continuing my OR education and getting a certificate in financial engineering ( Columbia has a program that I believe would only take me four courses post OR grad degree) or getting an MBA in finance.

So I guess what I'm wondering is, do all financial engineers / quants program heavily and if so is there a demand for someone with the mathematical background in line with quants but who has an MBA and works closely with them? Perhaps utilizing, examining, testing, assisting in developing models?

Also for whatever it's worth I'm an officer in the navy currently which I'm not sure how much/little that means in finance / quant world. I appreciate your assistance.

 

[IlyaKEightSix]

From another IEOR class of 09 perspective:

How will you do your math? From my perspective, there are no humans solving optimization problems. It's all plugged into the computer. Therefore, it's all *programmed*.

So what do the quants do? Programming. However: they're not the kinds of programmers you outsource to India. They *use* programming to leverage their math and finance skills.

 

[tcjstudent]

So do a lot of qunats use programs similar to GAMS (more advanced I imagine) and simulation software? Those I don't mind, what I don't want to do is spend all day creating/debugging C++.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

A more realistic approach to your query would be to scout the quant finance job boards out there (here or here) and see what you need to know.
You probably cant avoid programming in some capacity as a quant unless you are at the very top that people will hire programmers to work for you. That said, I would suggest that you become good at programming (C++, C#, SQL, VBA, Matlab) because it will make your life much easier.
If you want to avoid programming at all cost, see actuary.