Risk Quant at BB - 2nd master to break into FO?

Hi everyone and thanks in advance for any advice,

As the title suggests I am currently a risk quant (counterparty credit risk) at a top BB (MS/GS/JP) in London, I have been here for about 6 months and previously I did an MSc in Applied Maths from Obxridge. 

The job here is not stressful and the hours are good (9:30 to 6:30 most days), but it's very boring and I am not doing any pricing/stochalc/C++, mostly Python quant development. 

My goal is to end up in structuring or at least front office quant. I applied for some desk quant roles and got a couple of interviews at other BBs but didn't pass them (although I am doing much better and I think I did reasonably well in the last one I did). I also have an offer to do a 2nd MSc, specifically Maths and Finance at Imperial (which I think is top 3 in europe along with oxford MCF and Dea El Karoui) and now I am really not sure whether to resign and do the masters or just stay at my current job and keep applying for FO quant roles. The tuition fee is not a big issue, it's more the fact that I really don't want to go back from working to being in university. But I would do it if it's the best choice.

The way I see it, the pros of doing the second master is that I can apply for summer internships in S&T and off-cycle FO quant, that it is very well-known in the city and that perhaps I would learn some useful stuff (even though I already know most of the stuff in the curriculum tbh). The cons are the opportunity cost of leaving my job and the risk of not getting a job better than my current one even after the MSc (if I don't do the master, my plan would be to move to a FO desk quant job as soon as possible and then try to move from that to structuring in 2/3 years)

What do you guys think?

1 Comments
 

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