Academic Masters vs Professional Masters vs PhDs
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- Опубликовано: 7 сен 2024
- Should you get an academic or professional masters?
Academic masters are designed to prepare a student for a career in academia. These degrees are typically more theoretical however they are often more rigorous.
Professional masters are designed to prepare students for a career in an industry. These degrees are typically less rigorous however the education is tailored to working in an industry (in this case quantitative finance).
For quantitative finance it really comes down to the curriculum and company preferences. I provide two perspectives in this video on why someone at a firm would prefer an academic masters and the opposite perspective of why someone would prefer a professional masters.
I also throw in a PhD for comparison as they are a high level of an academic degree however they are not always preferred over a masters.
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I agree with Dimitri. I find more value in the academic MSc, and I say this from experience. Im in my last semester BSc Math and Stats, and I've taken as many math/stats courses as possible, even my electives are math or stats when possible. last semester I took a graduate level Financial risk management class (my school lets you take graduate classes if you have the pre-requisite). the class had ~15 students, all from Commerce undergrad or Msc Finance, but me, and I was the only one who understood all the math and how to apply the greeks in R. It was very obvious the other guys had no idea of what was going on. However, in another graduate class (Financial derivatives), the people from the academic Msc Stats and Math, were better than me at building these models, even though most of them never took finance classes.
So lately, I've wanting to do an academic Msc instead of an MFE. The only benefit I see in the MFE here, is that they are offered at the top 3 schools here, so companies do hire more from those places, and therefore get paid more, on par with Phds in the same position.
I’m doing my masters rn. I feel like dropping out twice a day. It’ll never get better, degree fucking sucks. Can’t wait for the next 2 months to end and for me to be done with this shit for good. Keep grinding boys.
They can be a real struggle. Oddly enough some of us miss them after they have ended.
I’m getting my Masters in Data Science and Analytics. My distance is Human-Centered Science Design. I’m not totally sure what I want to do yet, but I would like to stay finance/FinTech. I currently work in risk, product, and marketing analytics at a bank.
The the thing is there are a lot of academic masters programs out there... if you want to enroll in one you can find one that will enroll even if you're an accounting major...some of them would then allow to to make the your missing course work while in the program, essentially adding a second undergraduate major, and just add that on to the programs total length which is not finite unlike with an FinEng program where it's like an MBA and you ha precise number of semesters to get in and get out.
That is a possible route however it gets really expensive.
Oooo. This ought to be good. I’m in the process of applying for my second masters in data Analytics. (I already have a masters in statistics). Can’t wait!
Wow. Why are you re-applying for the second masters even if you have masters in statitstics. Is masters in statistics not enough?
@@hoow_j It is. However, I want to specialize into a niche domain. So far, as a data scientist I have worked in a generalist capacity where problems didn't require deep knowledge of the underlying domain. I'm tickling with the idea of specializing into Quantitative Finance. Therefore, I've applied to places where quant finance programs are rigorous enough. Dimitri's channel was a major help in sifting through programs, so shout out to Dimitri ! Big ups. haha
@@SA-rn1bn masters financial mathematics
@@SA-rn1bn if you want to work in investing and trading, get a quantitative finance masters. They ask have different names but are the same. Examples are masters in financial engineering, masters in financial mathematics, masters in computational finance, and masters in quantitative finance.
I wish I could see who's on that blacklist but I understand not wanting to put that out there
I try and refresh it once in a while as well. Doing the annual program reviews helps me keep up to date with programs that improve.
@@DimitriBianco can you make a video on the blacklist?
@Dimitri Bianco also wondering if you ever look at people coming out of actuary programs. worked for a quant who did structured products once, he specifically hired actuaries, imagine their course work must overlap with MFE a lot
I have seen and worked with one. It is a possible path however the focus is a bit different even though there is overlap. An MFE has the advantage of focus on quant finance. An actuary degree will have similar stats however the focus will be more on insurance. For example, quants will never see tables to look up values.
Hey Dmitri! I'm a CS undergrad coming to the US for a master's this Fall. I initially applied to Georgia Tech's QCF program because it had a dual degree option with CSE and it seems computational/data science-heavy which was better for me. I even got in but then rejected their offer because of many reasons not only related to their program itself, and decided to continue with a masters in CS. I know that the QCF course has more coding/data than math when compared to other quant finance masters, but am curious to know how you view this program in particular as I don't think it comes in your "top" MFE degrees?
Also.. Berkeley has a 1 year quick MFE degree - would you not prefer it? Do you prefer pure stats/quant degrees very much over more "computational" degrees?
I'm not super familiar with Georgia Tech's program. There are other programs that focus on the CS side like Baruch which is a good program.
In general I'm not a fan of 1 year programs. You can't learn enough in a year.
@@DimitriBianco thank you! The fact that you aren't super familiar with GaTech gives me an idea of what I wanted to know. I actually thought Baruch was quite math heavy, will check it out. Berkeley though is very very good with the CS side of things, for example they already have a DeFi course which is great. 1 year is indeed a downside. Thanks for your inputs though!
Can I do a PHD with my professional master certificate?
In the US, yes. You only need an undergraduate degree before starting a PhD here.
Europe and many other places require a masters first. As for a certificate masters, I don't know what that is but it would depend on the country and school.
Thank you Dimitri for your insights! I'm actually having the exact problem/dilemma right now: pursuing an academic master in stats or an MFE. Both are top schools with high overall and subject ranking(UChicago and Cornell, respectively), but it seems to me like doing a stats master provides a wider range of choices two years later(quant, DS, maybe a Ph.D.) and a higher future potential, whereas an MFE gives a direct entry to the financial industry with more certainty to land a decent quant job(more likely in sell-side?).
On the other hand, I'm a bit worried that an academic stats education would be too theoretical to be applied in the industry with little career service, which means I need to do extra work in coding, interview practice, and networking. If the eventual destination is to be a quant researcher rather than doing trading/risk, which path is more suitable? Any advice would be highly appreciated!!
For quant research a PhD is typically preferred. The next best choice for research would be a top rated MFE.
If you are wanting to open a lot of opportunities because you are unsure where to go career wise, a traditional stats masters is a great choice. Having the rigor of an academic masters is great and applying it later on is actually fairly easy. I prefer the traditional masts in stats for hiring in the risk space because I know the students can apply the ideas to multiple areas (less training for me).
are you alright man? your eyes look a bit different
It's from working manual labor during the day and shooting videos at night now. I'm dead tired by the time I get to working on RUclips.