I'm really interested in joining the University of London Quantitative Finance Program. Does anyone has distant learning experience? Has the program offered by the University of London a good reputation? And even it was taken online? Regards
This is a dead thread but I'll resurrect it since I have something to add. Check out quantnet.com and read the article "The coming glut of financial engineers."
The glut should all ready be here. MBA has become passe and WallStreet aspirants moved to this new path some time ago. One of the cheapest programs in the heart of Exchanged Traded derivatives activity. http://www.math.uic.edu/graduate/degrees/compfinam . Focuses mostly on numerical analysis of partial diffrential equations (PDE) with a smattering of Probability and Stochastic models. It is under the Math and Computer Science department with the Finance department chiming in. You may have to take a number of unlisted Finance courses to meet the Finance prerequisites. The PhD requires an additional 32 hours of thesis research. Feel free to comment and criticize (except about pedigree which is a moot issue). I just got into the more general bachelors program.
Tuition inflation is another crisis worthy of its own thread. Fortunately, I will have a GI Bill with some money left for the graduate degree. But, getting a fellowship/TA will be of supreme importance. Back on topic, forget about Baruch and it's 6% acceptance rate. However, I think some mathematical or hedgefund whiz ended up and may still be a prolific teacher at CUNY-Stonybrook. I don't know if it's Thorpe, Mandelbrot or somebody else. But then a star professor probably doesn't carry the whole program. Or is it some other CUNY?
To add to the list: http://analytics.ncsu.edu/?page_id=4202 Exceptional job placement and relatively low tuition.
Good HBR Review. Masters of Data Analysis. The curriculum seems IT-ish. My research indicates bioinformatics is easier to break into from the outside than the hot, IT-ish areas of data analysis (Big Data) because of the demand for a ginormous database domain knowledge. Back to Finance, I peruse the job postings constantly. Trading firms want the deep math and computer skills: Math, Computer Science (algorithms), Engineering and Physics. Almost always, MS to PhD level. However, trading desks/ front office still run on VBA. A personal relation handles one of the biggest limited matury fixed income fund in the country. He runs it with Ms Access which his IT people can't upgrade because his programming is so non-standard. Which brings up another topic, Wall Street goes thru a refresh of these quant geniuses ( just like the MBA era) like they were m&m's in every business cycle. Definitely painful after going into to hock for $100K-$150K. During the MBA era, I was once on the receiving side of applications (higher position than mine) while in a company I wanted to leave terribly. Seeing all these resumes from incredible people is the most sobering thing. I think I saw a few Managing Directors....equivalent to a mini-president in industrial America.
I'm not in the business world but it seems that sales and leadership skills are more valuable than quantitative genius.