<p>Hello everyone,</p>
<p>I have just finished a BS in Mathematics at a top 10 university in the UK with a semester abroad at Berkeley (GPA at Berkeley was 4.0) and I guess my UK grades would be translated to some where around a 4.0 as I have had a first class in every module which is equivalent to an A or an A+ depending on the score. I'm about to start a MSci at the same university again in Mathematics, but with most of my modules coming from the disorder systems groups/statistics/finance departments. I am also currently doing research into a particular type of Bayesian learning with a prof at my university. </p>
<p>My time at Berkeley is one of the factors that has strongly encouraged me to pursue a PhD in the US, another reason is that there is a lot more funding available.
Now comes my dilema, a phd in finance or in statistics. Clearly I have very little direct experience in finance but I have been told with my strong mathematical background picking up the theoretical aspects shouldn't be too much of an issue.
Basically according to one of my professors a PhD from a Business school will be to application driven and will not allow for much fundamental research and he recommends getting a PhD from a more theoretical department and working on fundamental problems and then later on moving into more applied research. My questions is how true is this?
But then another prof, this one works at a business school in america, suggested that there is a lot less demand for people with stats phd compared to finance, and it will be a lot easier to get a good tenure track position with a finance degree. (And the pay is almost double for finance)
I know I want to do research, and I know I can do well in either discipline, what I don't know is exactly how much scope will there be for doing theoretical research in a business school, as supposed to solving data driven problems, and how many possibilities will there be from a stats school to go into a more finance orientated position?
Also with my background what would you say seems like a better fit?
In general which of the two is perceived as "better"? </p>
<p>Thank you.</p>