Financial Engineering

<p>I have been doing some research and I have discovered that many financial engineers go on into capital managment or investment banking. I was just wondering if any of you guys (p.c. or girls) had any knowledge about this field, as it is business related. Btw I am going to Cornell, and Cornell apparently has one of the best programs for it, therefore, I am kind of curious about this field.</p>

<p>I really want to hear some of your opinions about financial engineering.</p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=2295%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=2295&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I was not aware that Cornell was a big "player" in this, FWIW.</p>

<p>It's "worth it" if you want to be a financial engineer. I suppose. Though most practitioners probably have/need advanced degrees, I would guess.</p>

<p>What if I did operations research, and attempted to pursue an analyst job for i-banking, example being citigroup.</p>

<p>Suggest try to contact some seniors there who have been through the interview process. You'd want to find out what firms are actually hiring OR majors for what kind of jobs; this is difficult for an outsider to say.</p>

<p>I used to work in investment banking. At that time, we interviewed at, and hired from, Cornell, but some of the other Ivy League schools were much more highly represented in the analyst pool. All the analysts from Cornell that I recall came from Arts & Sciences or the Ag school, not engineering. But this may have more to do with the personality and attributes of these individuals than their schools. I don't know if OR grads got interviews; maybe they did.</p>

<p>I also attended Cornell, and have a degree from their engineering school. At that time, my recollection is a number of OR majors went off to business school after undergrad, Some also sought work in corporate jobs, but I don't recall people heading off to finance jobs. Mostly I recall them heading off to Corporate America- the Exxons, Fords and GEs of the world. The finance jobs were more the purview of the Econ majors in the Arts school, and the Ag school business majors.</p>

<p>At that time, in my recollection.</p>

<p>But this is a new day.</p>

<p>..thanks :D And which type of engineering degree do you have from Cornell?</p>

<p>My engineering degree was not a factor in my subsequent career in finance, following my MBA.</p>

<p>Monydad, I thought you went to Yale (was that for an MBA or am I just plain wrong? just curious).</p>

<p>You were mistaken.</p>

<p>K...actually, I remembered...it was a heated discussion about engineers from Ivy leagues being able to related better to I-Banking clients, etc. Thanks for the reply.</p>

<p>And yes, I was mistaken...I mixed somebody else's argument about a Yale engineer with your background.</p>

<p>The big problem with financial engineering is that jobs are getting very hard to get. In the past at some career fair, I met two guys who work for Goldman who told me that they couldn't offer the quant position to P.H.D Stanford comp. sci majors because they were filled and no openings. </p>

<p>If stanford p.h.d's in comp. sci are having a tough time getting quant. jobs, I don't what you can expect to get with a masters in financial engineering. I met a guy who got his masters in fin. eng. at purdue and now he's working in IT department / back office. </p>

<p>Hopefully, the market is not saturated with quants and jobs are still good.</p>