Hi, new to the forum & looking at breaking into a more Quant Finance career (background is Bond Sales).Am seriously considering doing the CQF run by Wilmott/7City. Do any of you have any opinion on the course and how is is viewed in the market?I know this is a Wilmott forum but please feel free to be as honest as you like.

go to the careers forum and do a search

Cheers player, good tip. I will learn.

The CQF is hardly known in the city IB's.It's really just a marketing ploy made by Wilmott associates to spread the name of his firm.If you want to get into quantitative areas of employment, it's far better to do just go and do a masters degree which carries significant weight in terms of what you'll learn and the value employers give to it.I cannot see the point of delegates attending the CQF most of whom already possess it seems (if you believe the comments made by past delegates) PhD's in physics.With this sort of background you would have thought they could pick up pretty much the exact knowledge AND MORE from a quantitative oriented book,for if not, then it begs the question how that delegate managed to get a job doing even something moderately quantitative in an IB?It just doesn't tie up.

The course got me to where I wanted to be. Having said that its coming up to 11 in Tokyo and this PRD model is beginning to annoy me!

I did the CQF (and C++ add on) course with Wilmott/7city Sep-Dec last year. At the time I worked for DrKW in Principal Finance/Securitisation, performing much of the desk's cashflow modelling. In the same way that my maths undergrad at Cambridge provided access to field specialists, the CQF lecturers represent a good proportion of my financial bookcase! It was great to find a course that was strong in mathematical content but retained a sense of normality - providing context, and actual implementations of the "dry stuff" from the textbooks... that could be taken alongside an IB job. Made you realise how much better Uni lectures could have been.... Unfortunately I've been unable to attend many of the update sessions held this year - free of charge - that are organised for previous CQF delegates, but always try to catch up via the website recordings.I was so impressed with the CQF programme, that I've switched to 7City for my CFA exam preparation - I'll be taking Level 3 this year. CQF provided me with interesting material to discuss at interviews... and I'm now settling in nicely at Merrills. Having seen my lecture notes, 3 of my friends - one a quant from BarCap (Cambridge mathmo), one a quant at JPM Partners (LTCM) (Cambridge mathmo) and an IT developer at CSFB (Cambridge Compsci) - are all pushing their respective bosses to attend. As for aahmad31 - dont diss it unless you've been on it. And if you have such a low opinion of Wilmott - you enjoy using Wilmott.com??Kathryn

QuoteOriginally posted by: HuishKI did the CQF (and C++ add on) course with Wilmott/7city Sep-Dec last year. At the time I worked for DrKW in Principal Finance/Securitisation, performing much of the desk's cashflow modelling. In the same way that my maths undergrad at Cambridge provided access to field specialists, the CQF lecturers represent a good proportion of my financial bookcase! It was great to find a course that was strong in mathematical content but retained a sense of normality - providing context, and actual implementations of the "dry stuff" from the textbooks... that could be taken alongside an IB job. Made you realise how much better Uni lectures could have been.... Unfortunately I've been unable to attend many of the update sessions held this year - free of charge - that are organised for previous CQF delegates, but always try to catch up via the website recordings.I was so impressed with the CQF programme, that I've switched to 7City for my CFA exam preparation - I'll be taking Level 3 this year. CQF provided me with interesting material to discuss at interviews... and I'm now settling in nicely at Merrills. Having seen my lecture notes, 3 of my friends - one a quant from BarCap (Cambridge mathmo), one a quant at JPM Partners (LTCM) (Cambridge mathmo) and an IT developer at CSFB (Cambridge Compsci) - are all pushing their respective bosses to attend. As for aahmad31 - dont diss it unless you've been on it. And if you have such a low opinion of Wilmott - you enjoy using Wilmott.com??KathrynAfter having seen the pre-recorded example lecture available on the wilmott site,it was evidence enough for me not to attend.There's nothing there that I could not obtain elsewhere from a book of even for free from the web.It's all purely hype for newbies and other suckers.The comparison of Wilmott's lectures and those you undertook at uni are only your own personal experiences.Your lecturers may have been crap at lecturing but maybe good in their own fields - well the same can apply to Wilmott.I have more enjoyable things to do than posting messages on this site but if Wlimott wants to keep this site free for everyone then I'm afraid he and his protoges- one being yourself - will have to take free criticism, unless they wish to start banning people from this site.

QuoteOriginally posted by: ppauperQuoteOriginally posted by: aahmad31It's really just a marketing ploy made by Wilmott associates to spread the name of his firmboy, this together with your opinion's on the man's books !did he give you a wedgie when you guys were kids or something ?Nah - I much younger than him and I grew up north of the border on the rough side of town.I couldn't and wouldn't let some oxbridge toff wallup my arse.It just wud'nae happen mate.

Attending the CQF was the reason why I was able to migrate from an academic career to a quant job at a European IB in the City. In my opinion, 7city has done a superb job in creating the CQF - not only assembling a faculty of distinguished lecturers, but also in using IT very effectively: all 24 lectures are broadcasted live on the internet and recorded on their website, so delegates can access them anywhere, anytime (I saw two of them from abroad).The CQF lectures are in the evenings (once per week, from 6-9pm) which means that you can continue working while you attend it. For me this was much more appealing than a part-time university MSc, which would have taken two years to complete and with lectures dispersed throughout the day. To do a full-time university MSc was simply too disruptive, it would have meant to put everything on hold for a full year - a feat that I suspect very few professional people can manage.The classes are small (about 15 people) so there is a close interaction with the tutors; both in terms of questions and of the feedback you get after each week's homework. The quality of the lectures is excellent. For example Lecture 1, "The Random Behaviour of Assets" takes you from the basic concepts, through the equations to analyzing an actual asset time-series in Excel. This is the crucial difference between passively reading a quant book (in the train on your way to work, or alone at home fighting from falling asleep) and actively interacting with the authors of the books themselves! During my job hunt (last year) I approached several headhunters and IBs and even though some didn't know about the CQF, they all immediately recognized the names of Wilmott, Haug, Jaeckel, Staunton, et al. Don't listen to weirdos: the CQF will open doors for you and will give you the tools to make a fast-track head start in QF.

The CQF is a way of making yourself a bit more valuable, and like any other course it can only build on what you already have.It does have some recognition amongst HHs.