Physicist gone into finance...now regretting a bit

Hi guys,

Don't know if you remember one of my old posts where i explained my condition. Anyway last year i was at a non target studying physics(1st year of bsc) in italy, but got interested in finance and contemplated to move to a target: i was admitted to the target school of my country. So now i just wanted to give you an update about my situation and ask once again your opinions.
Last year, i finished my physics finals at the (very) non target school and got all A+ (my gpa was about 29.0 /30 ), but still decided to switch to the finance major at the target school. The problem is that now i find it extremely boring and i'm not challenged by the courses at all. The problem with this bachelor is that it's mostly about corporate finance, management, ecc, and not about markets / financial maths, ecc. And these subjects are 90% about memorization, and i really miss the computational / math stuff. So now i don't really know what to do, because on one side i know this school is top continental europe target , msc finance is top notch (it's MUCH easier to be admitted as an internal student) and places really well into ivy leagues' masters (few ugrads went to princeton, mit, NYU, ecc). I really believed "vanilla" investment banking would have suited me, but now i'm questioning this and thinking that maybe quant finance would be better.
Anyway basically i can see only 3 choices:
1) suck it up and stick with this bsc, try to get into IB and if necessary continue with master in finance here.
2) finish this bsc and then get a data science / computational finance master in usa, to switch to amore computational side of finance
3) go back to my non target school and finish my physics bsc (classes started 3 weeks ago and i'm confident i'm still in time to catch up with the material). Realistically this school isn't famous enough to get into some good quant finance master in the US, but few grads went on to UK for their masters, so i could work out something like:
bsc physcs (non target) + msc (conversion) economics in strong UK uni + msc quant finance USA
Really confident in your advices

 

Quant finance is way, way, way more interesting. A lot of early development of the field was done by physicists. The math can get really interesting, and there's genuine quantitative research going on at a lot of shops.

(I was a physics major at a top school with high grades. I did investment banking at a top bank and hated it deeply. I'm back in markets now and I'm so much happier.)

 

Oh, interesting. I'd be really happy to hear your advice given my particular circumstance then. I like programming /maths quite a lot and i find accounting in particular pretty boring, the point is that when i started uni i didn't know about target schools (we don't have this prestige factor with colleges in italy, and even if i was a top student at my high school i never really considered to move abroad to a better uni (this is by far my biggest regret)) so i enrolled in a local uni for a physics bsc with the intention to do a financial maths master later on. During the first year i came across this and other finance related sites and found out this infos about different "levels" of schools, so transferred to a better uni but in a finance program thinking it'd have been more quantitative. Now i don't really know what to do, because i'm sure that having a top undegrad is almost a prerequisite to get into top masters in usa.Regarding the 3 options i posted in the first thread, wich one would you advice me to follow?

 
Best Response

All of the discussions of target schools and networking is much, much, much more relevant for the corporate finance-ish and M&A roles you see. If you find accounting boring, there's a high chance you'll dislike those roles. There are some people who are exceptions, of course. If you like current affairs over M&A news, then markets is probably a better place for you anyway. I found the work in banking mind-numbing, and the hours and working conditions destroyed my health, which made it hard to do my job. I had also interned in S&T as a student and loved many aspects of the role, and was actually quite good at it - but due to personal circumstance I couldn't accept the offer to go back.

I can't give you advice on Masters programs in the US because I haven't felt the need for it (I had a large range of markets based roles open after my undergrad). If I go back for anything, it will likely be a PhD.

What I will say is a lot of the quant teams that I've seen have a pretty high number of PhDs, and some funds are proud of this (and they'll boast that their quant research team are all PhD qualified). I've also seen PhDs (including in physics and engineering) become heads of investment strategy for major funds. Would you consider a PhD in physics or mathematical finance?

 

I know that banks in the U.S. actively recruit physics/math phds for their quant positions. They then learn the finance context on the job. If you don't like the accounting, you'd probably find quant finance much more interesting.

 

Yes, i know. I like computational finance (at least to the extent i know it) much more because i love programming and i quite like maths too. I also find statistics interesting so a data science role in a fund / bank would be nice too (this is why i was thinking about equity research). But i was questioning whether it's a path worth trying given it seems much more difficult to pursue it than the traditional IB road. So basically the question may be summed to this equation, keeping in mind that my first priority is to have a job with good career prospects and pay:

A) do something i enjoy much less, but wich pays a lot and where i have a much higher chance to break in. (let's say 30% probability to succeed)

B) try to follow a path wich brings to a job i would enjoy much more, but with a higher risk of going nowhere (maybe 5% probability to accomplish it)

The thing i still can't cope with is the fact that if you don't come from a top undergrad you can't get into best graduate programs despite you gmat / gre.

 

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