Is Finance Considered Quant or Just Soft For Trading/Hedge Funds?
Hi,
I was wondering if, for the trading and hedge fund industry, finance is considered a legitimate major in that it builds some quant skills or if its just considered to be a bullshit/soft major? Does anyone know people without crazy quant abilities (i.e. just finance majors that take the regular finance math classes) that still get into this industry, because it seems to be moving more toward those who are mathematics geniuses as opposed to those who understand finance really well.
Also, in general, what makes a major "quant"? For example, there's a ton of stat in finance, but finance may be considered "soft" while stat is considered quantitative. The thing that I don't understand is that, while stats in more in depth into the statistics, whenever I do stat classes, half of the class feels like its just about knowing how to input stuff into your calculator, and had very little to do with improving problem-solving skills. Sure, it helped me analyze data better, but other than that, I didn't really think it was that quantitative. That's why I'm trying to figure out what constitutes "quant"? Is it limited to just engineering/math or can things like finance that deal extensively with numbers and analyzing data also be lumped into this?
From my recent experience, it seems like traders don't really care what your major is / was as long as you have the quantitative chops to answer the interview questions. That's what the probability and brainteaser grilling is for anyway -- to weed out the people without quant skills
From my experience as a Finance undergraduate, I feel my professors with purely finance backgrounds simply lecture on the plug and chug calculations for statistics. This semester, I have a Finance professor who is a math PhD and has us deriving every single common finance and statistics formula/proof/principle. I feel this experience is more "quanty". Generally, I would assume that more "target" your school is, the more quanty a regular finance degree will be. I come from a non-target whilst this professor came from a target and is shocking us with his thoroughness.
Does being a Finance major represent Quant skills? (Originally Posted: 12/23/2012)
How do MBA programs view Finance majors? In terms of difficulty, quant-heavy, etc...
For the vast majority, i don't think that a Finance major is very quantitative. Did you have to take a calc sequence (Calc 1-3)? Differential Equations? Linear Algebra? Set Theory? Econometrics? Advanced Statistics? If not, then definitely not quantitative.
In any case, you can put these courses in you relevant coursework section (if you have one) to show that you have developed some quantitative skills.
Are you calling those advanced math classes? If you are, I disagree. I wouldn't consider those course quantitative or advanced math, those are all the basic math classes everyone should take.
I wholeheartedly agree. Those aren't very advanced classes, but they are levels of math higher than those required in a vast majority of UG finance programs. That was all just to say that, because classes of even that level are generally not required to graduate in finance, it is unlikely for anyone judging you just based on your major to believe that a Finance major is very quantitatively challenging.
Definitely not, though some masters in finance programs, like the ones at MIT and Princeton, are very quantitative.
The only majors I would consider quantitative are engineering, math, physics, statistics, and probably computer science too (though computer science is quantitative in a different regard).
I disagree with the above statement about those courses are "basic math". For the vast majority of majors, with the exception of those listed above, those courses constitute math classes beyond the required level. So by mere definition they really aren't basic math. Even still, even marginally quantitative majors such as chemistry don't require any math beyond multivariable calculus so taking differential equations/linear algebra/etc. is, at least in my opinion, advanced math.
The bottom tier of "basic" math classes constitutes calc (up to multivar), diffEQ, and linalg. Some may even throw in real analysis. For anyone who wants to get into a remotely quant area, those are the bare minimum you need.
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