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<p>I’ve not only been through the financial math course descriptions, I’ve taken a number of the courses to fill my electives. They BARELY TOUCH ON STOCHASTIC PROCESSES/CONTINUOUS MARKOV CHAINS??? Sorry, you’re out of your mind. 526 is not only split ~50/50 between discrete and continuous time processes, it’s extremely difficult (the course description is very watered down, even inaccurate. General advice: course descriptions are a good guide, but for a lot of them, it’s important that you do not make a judgment unless you’ve spoken with the professor about to teach it, or at least looked at the syllabus). I’ve known multiple very intelligent people who’ve dropped that course because they couldn’t cut it. (Can’t say I can comment on lp.) Which brings me to my next point: you are confusing financial math with actuarial math. The financial math major is quite difficult on the whole – certainly more difficult than IOE, LMAO. That comment you made is just outright false. I have a handful of friends in IOE, including two roommates. I’ve seen the courses they take. I help them with their courses. The courses I’ve taken or am going to take/have sat in on that are fin math required are far more difficult than the required IOE courses (see: Stats 426, Math 451, Math 525, Math 526). Granted, the beginning of the fin math track (the one that is shared between it and actuarial math) isn’t terribly hard on the whole. But after they diverge, it becomes much harder. It’s the actuarial kids who take that risk/insurance bulls***. Notice, I haven’t even brought up CompSci here as the second major which I advised. That would essentially end the argument (but I would still definitely rather do Fin Math alone than IOE… you still have to learn intro. C++ for Fin Math which will at least set you up to learn further programming when you enter FE).</p>
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<p>No, I never wondered, I’ve known. I looked into the FE track in a fair amount of depth before I decided on banking (for the foreseeable future). Are those courses part of the IOE undergraduate major? No.</p>
<p>Sorry, the Fin Math stochastics/probability-based stats run a train on the IOE equivalent.</p>
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<p>So narrow-minded. The LSA distribution is great. I’m quite glad I was able to fit in philosophy, polisci, pysch, history, anthro, and various science courses while still being able to double major, essentially get a finance/accounting minor, and be set up to graduate a semester early. To each his own.</p>
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<p>Please elaborate on discussions you have had with your quants. I will respond with discussions I’ve had with professors and FE admissions officers.</p>
<p>“The econ major who is doing his first internship on the other side of the chinese wall.” Let me rephrase that for you: “The Math + Econ major who is far more capable of moving on to a quantitative graduate degree than the vast majority (I’ll refrain from saying all) of IOE kids, who happened to decide he wants to try out banking for a couple of years.”</p>
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<p>haha</p>
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<p>FE and grad FM are very similar – FE is more applied, involves more programming, and is shorter/easier. In turn, FM is more theoretical, involves less programming, and is longer/harder. Trust me OP, you will be much better off combining CompSci with Math/Applied Math/Fin Math wherever you go to undergrad as opposed to IOE.</p>