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#21
11-07-2007, 10:40 PM
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Re: Quants without phds?
if you know you want to be a quant and have the knowledge you need, there's absolutely no reason to stay in school.
there will always be people with higher degrees in quant, because the type of people who make good quants are the same type of people who think getting a phd would be interesting. but an advanced degree is far from a requirement to get a job. 
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#22
11-07-2007, 10:58 PM
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Re: Quants without phds?
I have worked with great programmers with degrees in stuff like classical literature, art history, etc, it's more common than you would think actually. it is a lot like music in some ways, in that it requires a certain type of intuition and thought process that most people who are successful in it are wired that way to some degree.
I would think you would pick up programming very quickly barron, it really is not that difficult. the best way to learn to code is to get a job as a programmer, second best way is probably to take a class.
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#23
11-08-2007, 12:00 AM
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Re: Quants without phds?
[ QUOTE ]
if you know you want to be a quant and have the knowledge you need, there's absolutely no reason to stay in school. there will always be people with higher degrees in quant, because the type of people who make good quants are the same type of people who think getting a phd would be interesting. but an advanced degree is far from a requirement to get a job. [/ QUOTE ] This makes a lot of sense.
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#25
11-08-2007, 12:15 AM
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Re: Quants without phds?
[ QUOTE ]
Depending on specifically what you mean by 'quant', I think that a PhD is becoming more and more needed to get a truly top job. [/ QUOTE ] I didn't know this was a baseless comment thread.
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#26
11-08-2007, 12:42 AM
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Re: Quants without phds?
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] Depending on specifically what you mean by 'quant', I think that a PhD is becoming more and more needed to get a truly top job. [/ QUOTE ] I didn't know this was a baseless comment thread. [/ QUOTE ] ? didn't you read the first response to my question by soko? in all seriousness, are you saying you disagree with the person you quoted? Because it seems to be in line with your first post. Am I wrong?
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#27
11-08-2007, 02:25 AM
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Re: Quants without phds?
while i'm happy to see that this thread got to a more productive place, eventually, there seem to be a lot of people interesting in pursuing this type of career so maybe we should be a bit more careful with our advice.
there are a number of different jobs that quants hold. mathemagician54, what type of quant position are you looking for? are you interested in building derivatives pricing models? risk models? trading models? what do you really want to do? it may be that you don't really want to be a quant at all, but a trader and in that case this thread may be on the wrong track.
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#28
11-08-2007, 04:51 AM
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Re: Quants without phds?
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#29
11-08-2007, 11:23 AM
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Re: Quants without phds?
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ] [ QUOTE ] Depending on specifically what you mean by 'quant', I think that a PhD is becoming more and more needed to get a truly top job. [/ QUOTE ] I didn't know this was a baseless comment thread. [/ QUOTE ] ? didn't you read the first response to my question by soko? in all seriousness, are you saying you disagree with the person you quoted? Because it seems to be in line with your first post. Am I wrong? [/ QUOTE ] the move will take time. it isn't like all quants now require PhDs. the job specs all say "quantitative finance experience. MS/PhD preferred" i have something equivalent to an MS Finance (i was one of only 4 out of 260 MBAs to take the math fin concentration meant for phds and ms fin students) but the job specs also say "excellent programming ability a plus. familiarity/ability to program in C++/Java/comparable language required" the % of quant jobs that i've seen (efinancialcareers/monster/hotjobs etc.) that require a PhD (i.e. specifically say "phd required) is probably less than 10%. the reason is that the "quantitative" title can legtitimately be applied to risk analysts, trade idea generators, economists etc. so there are wide ranging job functions don't necessitate a PhD. it may be the case that PhDs are becoming "more required" than previuos years but i can't speak to that... Barron
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#30
11-09-2007, 05:45 AM
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Re: Quants without phds?
[ QUOTE ]
while i'm happy to see that this thread got to a more productive place, eventually, there seem to be a lot of people interesting in pursuing this type of career so maybe we should be a bit more careful with our advice. there are a number of different jobs that quants hold. mathemagician54, what type of quant position are you looking for? are you interested in building derivatives pricing models? risk models? trading models? what do you really want to do? it may be that you don't really want to be a quant at all, but a trader and in that case this thread may be on the wrong track. [/ QUOTE ] To be honest, I don't know enough to say. All I do know is that I would like to try to do something related to finance that will let me use a lot of math (not trivial things though). You mentioned trading... i had some traders from a hedge fund come to my school for an info session. I spoke with them, and they said at their firm they don't really distinguish between quants and traders because they essentially do the same thing. Is this true of most hedge funds? The reason I asked about quants as opposed to say, traders, is that after speaking to people who may or may not know what they are talking about, I was given the impression that traders did not necessarily use very much math; rather, they just implement trading strategies that say, the quants develop. (This greatly contradicts what the traders told me from the info session, since they said traders and quants serve the same purpose at their place.) Is what the traders told me pretty standard for hedge funds, or no?
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