<p>Hi, I am very interested in finance, economics, and mathematics, with an overall interest in investments and the stock market. My undergrad degree will be a double major in Economics and Mathematics from UMich with finance classes from Ross sprinkled in and i am now trying to figure out the best route to my goals. I have an interest in hedge funds and investment banking, with basically anything involviong investments catching my interest. What do you think is the best path to take? Financial Engineering or an MBA?</p>
<p>What are the pros and cons of the choice?
thank you for your help in advance :)</p>
<p>financial engineering will usually lead to a more “mathy” job, like calculating the risk of investments or writing a computer program to monitor stats in the stock market and find investment opportunities. more and more, trading is dominated by this type of thinking as well, so it could position you for opps in hedge funds.</p>
<p>mba will usually lead to a “people” position like investment banking, where you will negotiate deals between corporations and help companies issue stock to prospective shareholders. </p>
<p>thus, it really depends on your attributes and interests. if you are a programming/math geeky type, financial engineering is the better choice. if you are decent at math but not great, and love working with people, go mba.</p>
<p>I agree with Boston.</p>
<p>I can see myself doing both, considering i love math and am a very good people person. what are your opinions on a program that mixes financial engineering with an MBA such as Columbia University’s program? Would benefit more from a program like that or would i benefit more to just focus on one of those?</p>
<p>MBA requires work experience, MFE does not necessarily. You could opt for the quant route initially (get an MFE, work in quant finance for a while) and if you don’t like it go back and get an MBA. This could be fairly costly, and I’m not sure of your financial situation, but would be a good trial and error approach. Not to mention you would be come very experienced in various aspects of finance.</p>
<p>i would try my best to get an internship in one of those areas on wall st. michigan is a great school so it should be at least possible. figure out how to make it happen, and then you can test the waters to get a better feel.</p>
<p>if you are truly good at both math and people, then you just need to figure out which kind of job you want to be doing each day. </p>
<p>most of the MS Financial Engineering programs are not STRAIGHT engineering degrees, and do have some mba-like components. perhaps that would be the best fit, at schools like UC-Berk, Carnegie Mellon, Princeton, Columbia, NYU. i believe those are the best.</p>
<p>Are there certain internships/jobs that would give me the best work experience to get accepted at the top MBA/Financial Engineering programs?</p>
<p>-investment banking/consulting would be favorable for MBA.
-software engineering/stat work/quant work would be favorable for MFE.</p>
<p>i would guess i-banking/consulting would also be fine for MFE though, but engineering might not cut it for top MBA (less chance at least).</p>
<p>thanks for your help everyone!</p>
<p>Weren’t most quant jobs in the parts of the economy that were most damaged? Are there still plenty of jobs available?</p>
<p>I hear hedge funds getting bashed a lot on all of the risk, and how it effects the whole economy when they are wrong but I’m not sure about the effect on quant jobs. I graduaute in 3 years for my undergrad then work for a while then get an MBA or MFE and then work as a quant possibly so if you are correct maybe it will turn around before i try to place myself in the field. At least 5 years from now I would say, a lot can happen. Hopefully good things lol</p>
<p>i think there are currently both positives and negatives in the quant market. on the positive side, many people now see that risk management is a serious and high-priority issue when dealing with financial deals. on the negative side, there is less money flowing around with less risk tolerance, so i bet the market is down for “rockstar” quant traders.</p>
<p>I’m fine with not making millions, lol. I wonder though whether there will tend to be a lot of instability in the market. It’s also discouraging to see quants routinely bashed for dishonesty and other issues, but my biggest concern (by which I mean the thing I care most about when looking at any career) is job stability. I’m also a freshman, so obviously things will be different by the time I’m out “in the real world” - though that could go in any direction. Maybe I’m just a pessimist, but it seems like any “hot” job market quickly becomes oversaturated. The TA for my math class this quarter worked as a quant and has a masters from NYU (not sure if it was in their financial math program), so hopefully I’ll be able to ask him some questions eventually.</p>
<p>wall st isn’t a good place to go for stability i think :P. however, if finance is a passion, you should still pursue it while you are young and can afford the risk. save stability for your upper 20’s and beyond.</p>
<p>what school do you go to ThisCouldBeHeaven.</p>
<p>and BostonEng that is exactly the mindset i have for all of this and why im pushing for it. Take the chance while I’m young</p>
<p>I’m a math major at UCLA. I was also interested in going to grad school, then academia, etc., but that seems like the only career path with less stability :p. The other possible choices seem to be actuarial science (saturated) and computing (priority for CS majors). I’m so pessimistic, lol.</p>