Msc in Quantitative Finance

MASKMAN

Dear all,
I have admission in the Msc in Quant Finance course for the session starting sep this year.

I also have admission offer from Msc Finance course at TCD.

have few queries regarding the courses - I am a foreign student and will be coming to ireland for the first time this sep. Got attracted to Quant Finance course because I have an engineering background, with exp in IT but interest in Finance - want to make a shift to Finance post graduation and thought the course will allow me to leverae my present background and establish a continuity into Finance.

Wanted to get some opinions on the course.

how is the course regarded in ireland

what are the job prospects after the course if one has no prior exp in Finance

what are the job prospects for non europeans

what is the usual profile of students

will like to get in touch with some students

how does the quant finance course compare to the course at TCD (tho personally i don't prefer the tcd course cause it is new and also because the way the course is designed - teaching a complete module in intensive weekly sessions) -

will like to get some opinions

thanks in advance !!

gerry87

Sorry I can't be much help but i'm in a very similar situation.

The quant finance course is a very specific course, as far as i've heard it won't give you as much of a grounding in finance. I think it's targeted at becoming a quantitative analyst. Search for posts by blucey on boards, he is the coordinator of the tcd course and has made some good posts about this.

Quant finance is a very small course, 16 people last year and i think 18 applicants this year. I was talking to the career guidence guy in smurfit last year who said it was all new graduates in the quant finance course. Whereas the course in tcd seems to have a mix of recent grads and mature students.

Personally i prefer the looks of the tcd course, it's broader, the subject in two week thing is pretty interesting and could be very good, and the subjects offered just seem more useful.

Do you have any idea what you're looking to work as in the future?
What country are you coming from? (I doubt not being european will change your job prospects unless you dont want to work in europe)

nellybelly

gerry87 wrote: »

The quant finance course is a very specific course, as far as i've heard it won't give you as much of a grounding in finance.

I would not agree with this. The quant finance students take most of the modules taken by MBS Finance students, only missing courses which are superseded by quant finance specific modules. The kind of stuff you need to know to have "a grounding in finance" is not particularly difficult.. by which i mean, if it weren't covered in whatever course you end up doing, reading a few well known textbooks would cover it. Although, "finance" is quite a broad term, and it is true that quant finance caters to the more mathematical end of this spectrum..obviously enough. Clearly, it would not be the ideal course for someone aiming for IBD or M&A in some ibank.

As regards reputation/prospects.. I think in finance, it will always be more about the individual. It is a competitive market, but the quant finance course does seem to get interviews, which is all you need. After that, it's down to you.

Student backgrounds range from Maths to general business. Applicants should definitely be prepared to do a few sums. Most are recent graduates, but not exclusively.

However, the course is changing, so some/all of this info may now be inaccurate. I don't know anything about the TCD course.

gerry87

By grounding in finance i guess i mean the other courses seem to offer a broader range of subjects, so a grounding in more areas.

The career guidance guy in smurfit likened finance vs quant finance to GP vs Neurosurgeon, if you're a GP and you take a likening for brain surgery you can train to become a neurosurgeon, but if you're a neurosurgeon and dont like it you're pretty much staying a neurosurgeon. (bit of a messy analogy, but you can see his point!)

I just noticed in my degree (economics) that with some of the pure maths subjects, we didn't always learn how to apply the techniques we were learning or even what the point of them were. Thats one thing i'd be afraid of from the quant finance.

blucey

nellybelly wrote: »

I would not agree with this. The quant finance students take most of the modules taken by MBS Finance students, only missing courses which are superseded by quant finance specific modules. The kind of stuff you need to know to have "a grounding in finance" is not particularly difficult.. by which i mean, if it weren't covered in whatever course you end up doing, reading a few well known textbooks would cover it. Although, "finance" is quite a broad term, and it is true that quant finance caters to the more mathematical end of this spectrum..obviously enough. Clearly, it would not be the ideal course for someone aiming for IBD or M&A in some ibank.

As regards reputation/prospects.. I think in finance, it will always be more about the individual. It is a competitive market, but the quant finance course does seem to get interviews, which is all you need. After that, it's down to you.

Student backgrounds range from Maths to general business. Applicants should definitely be prepared to do a few sums. Most are recent graduates, but not exclusively.

However, the course is changing, so some/all of this info may now be inaccurate. I don't know anything about the TCD course.

Not entirely true. MBS Finance courses are
* Corporate Financial Management
* Strategic Finance
* Capital Markets
* Derivatives
* Financial Asset Valuation
* Financial Econometrics
* Portfolio Management
* Applied Time Series Econometrics
plus two modules.
MSC Quant Finance are
* Financial Econometrics
* Introduction to Numerical Methods
* Risk Management and Financial Instituitions
* Derivative Securities
* Advanced Specialist Course
* Time Series Econometrics
* Fixed Income Securities
* Financial Theory
* Stochastic Processes
* Applied Portfolio Management

So there really isnt much overlap. And the issue isnt so much the difficulty or not of finance - your right, its not that hard. What is not available even in the best quant finance courses is the breath of financial knowledge. So they are not best considered versus each other - they are different products.
That said, its useful to note that the TCD course offers three very quanty modules : advanced econometrics, financial programming in matlab and econophysics (aka stochastic processes in finance) as options. So, horses for courses

nellybelly

I'm afraid copying and pasting is misleading in this case.. due to the inconsistency in the names given to modules. There's far more overlap than that. Working through your list of MBS modules..

Corporate Financial Management (MBS) was on the quant course.
Capital Markets (MBS) is an option.
Derivatives (MBS) = Derivative Securities (MSc).
Financial Asset Valuation is an option.
Financial Econometrics (MBS) = Financial Econometrics (MSc) ...as you have italicized.
Portfolio Management (MBS) = Applied Portfolio Management (MSc)
Applied Time Series Econometrics (MBS) = Time Series Econometrics (MSc)

The MSc course was two years for this reason, effectively covering the MBS courses and doing the same again in quant stuff. I'm not trying to convince anyone to make any choice, just trying to clear up the picture a bit. I agree that a quant course should not necessarily be considered as an alternative to a general finance course, but I think it is misleading to give the impression that if you take a quant course, you become some kind of one trick pony, doomed to be coding models for the rest of your life! Quant-y courses should attract people who like this side of it, but quant grads could (and do) end up working in the same jobs as MBS grads, if they so choose.

Again, with the caveat...the course is changing, so some/all of this info may now be inaccurate, and I don't know anything about your TCD course.

blucey

nellybelly wrote: »

I'm afraid copying and pasting is misleading in this case.. due to the inconsistency in the names given to modules. There's far more overlap than that. Working through your list of MBS modules..

Corporate Financial Management (MBS) was on the quant course.
Capital Markets (MBS) is an option.
Derivatives (MBS) = Derivative Securities (MSc).
Financial Asset Valuation is an option.
Financial Econometrics (MBS) = Financial Econometrics (MSc) ...as you have italicized.
Portfolio Management (MBS) = Applied Portfolio Management (MSc)
Applied Time Series Econometrics (MBS) = Time Series Econometrics (MSc)

The MSc course was two years for this reason, effectively covering the MBS courses and doing the same again in quant stuff. I'm not trying to convince anyone to make any choice, just trying to clear up the picture a bit. I agree that a quant course should not necessarily be considered as an alternative to a general finance course, but I think it is misleading to give the impression that if you take a quant course, you become some kind of one trick pony, doomed to be coding models for the rest of your life! Quant-y courses should attract people who like this side of it, but quant grads could (and do) end up working in the same jobs as MBS grads, if they so choose.

Again, with the caveat...the course is changing, so some/all of this info may now be inaccurate, and I don't know anything about your TCD course.

Thanks for the iterative clearing-up!
Im not suggesting that quants are one trick ponies - I am saying that someone with no finance background maybe should consider going general-to-specific as an approach.