NEW YORK, October 27th, 2016 – QuantNet today released its 5th rankings, selecting the Best Master Programs in Financial Engineering, Mathematical Finance, Quantitative Finance in North America. The 2017 rankings also provide much greater statistics on each program, making it easier for prospective applicants to decide on where to apply and enroll.

QuantNet surveyed programs administrators, hiring managers, corporate recruiters, and finance professionals to get the information used in the 2017 rankings.

In additional to the top 30 rankings, this year we rank the top 10 programs with the best employment outcomes and the 5 most improved programs.

Lays Out Plans to Attract Additional Stellar Practitioners to One of the Oldest and Largest Financial Engineering Educational Programs

BROOKLYN, New York – One of Morgan Stanley’s top quants is returning to his academic roots full time, as chair of one of the world’s oldest and largest financial engineering programs. The NYU Tandon School of Engineering announced it appointed Peter P. Carr – managing director and head of market modeling at Morgan Stanley since 2010 – chair of its Department of Finance and Risk Engineering.

Carr, a recognized expert on derivatives who has produced seminal work on volatility, remained a prolific researcher and adjunct professor throughout his professional career at Morgan Stanley, Bloomberg LP, and Banc of America Securities.

He was honored as Quant of the Year by Risk Magazine, shared the ISA Medal for Science from the University of Bologna, and was named Financial Engineer of the Year by the International Association of Financial...

QuantNet has been compiling the annual list of best-selling quant books our members purchase every year since 2010 (see the best-selling book lists of 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010). The following list is 20 best-selling quant books of 2015 (both hard-copy and ebooks), compiled from aggregate, anonymously collected data, provided by Amazon with QuantNet tags....

An Interesting Development of an Offshore Strategy

I was talking to the head of fixed income Strategy at a major investment bank last week. He described their current hiring pattern as follows:

• Junior quants – campus recruiting
• Mid-level quants – imported from offshore locations

I thought that latter was really interesting. What a smart move to let talent bubble up through the lower cost regions, then import that talent, a known commodity, to the head office. The strategy provides great career growth for the individuals involved, is less expensive for the firm, and less risky than an outside hire. This strategy has obvious implications for quants in NYC who are considering a lateral move. To be sure, this is one observation, not necessarily an industry trend.

CDS Market is Dead

I wasn’t paying attention, but the CDS market has died. Once the synthetic CDO market disappeared, it turned out there was little demand for CDS....

QuantNet has been compiling the annual list of best-selling quant books our members purchase every year since 2010 (see the best-selling book lists of 2010, 2011,2012, 2013. The following list is 20 best-selling quant books of 2014 (both hard-copy and ebooks), compiled from aggregate, anonymously collected data, provided by Amazon with QuantNet tags.

1. A Primer For The Mathematics Of Financial Engineering, Second Edition - Dan Stefanica...

If you’re someone with a mathematical bent, for whom ‘challenging’ maths questions are elementary and differential equations are fun, there is – allegedly – one place where you’ll feel especially fulfilled in banking: Goldman Sachs’ ‘strats’ Group. All banks have mathematical wizards, but the warlocks in Goldman’s strats team are reportedly higher paid, happier, and more empowered than those elsewhere.

“The strats team here is broader in scope than quant teams at other banks,” one strats vice president at Goldman in London tells us, speaking off the record as he is not authorised to talk to the press. “As well as quants, we have quant developers, technologists, structurers and salespeople.” Goldman’s strats team is at the...

Since writing for this blog in January about the HFT/algo job market, I’ve received many inquiries from students asking about the “requirements” for quant jobs on Wall Street. “Do I need a PhD?” is a frequent question. Each time I receive one of these inquiries, I struggle with the answer. My instinct is no. But when I look at who is working in these jobs, I do see a predominance of PhD’s in the top positions. PhD’s in mathematics, physics, operations research, EE, etc. are common in the quant community. So it’s tempting to tell students that a PhD is helpful, but it feels like the wrong answer. In my gut I know that the people getting these jobs are not getting offers because they have extra letters after their name. The people in these positions are there because they have proved over their academic and professional lives that they are:
List 1

• Very smart
• Quantitative thinkers
• Good at...

At the end of last year I sent a State-of-the-Talent-Market email to colleagues. In that mail I wrote:
@Ken Abbott, a frequent contributor to QuantNet, replied to my mail:
Subsequently, he asked if I would elaborate on the job market in algo and HFT for this blog.

The simple answer is yes, there are jobs in Algo/HFT, and some of them are paying very well. However, that jaw dropping salary that you heard from a...

This article appears in QuantNet 2013-2014 International Guide to Programs in Financial Engineering.
The job market for quants has changed inexorably. The “particle finance” trend of the last 20 years is on the wane. While funds will still be able to trade on a prop basis, banks’ ability to do so has been severely restricted.
Some may see this as a pendulum, but most agree that the aggressive trading styles seen in regulated financial institutions will never be seen again.

Does that mean that there are no more jobs for quants? Certainly not. It does mean, however, that the nature of the job market will be different. The growing number of quant finance programs also suggests that there will be much more competition for these jobs.

The following suggestions may be helpful in the job hunt.

1. Stop focusing upon HFT positions—there aren’t that many...

This article appears in QuantNet 2013-2014 International Guide to Programs in Financial Engineering.

When applying to a master’s program, it is not possible to specify the exact requirements necessary to be accepted, because there is flexibility in the process. An application that is weaker in one area might be accepted because of strengths in other areas.

For the most part, the standard of the applicants is very high; however, in some cases, it is apparent that a capable applicant would have fared better with more careful preparation. There are things that candidates could do to improve their chances of admission, especially if they give some thought to this well before the application submission. The purpose of this article is to help prospective applicants to improve the principal components of their applications.

Course Work
Your undergraduate and graduate course work is shown in your transcripts....