I am currently in an actuarial trainee job, which I find to be quite boring so am interested in being a quant. I have an MSc in Financial maths and am 23 years old living in the UK.Now, I could qualify as an actuary but those exams might take me another 3/4/5 years and even then in the UK the salary as a newly qualified actuary is around 40/50k, not that it's THAT important to me as I don't like the job anyway, but junior quants do seem to start off on those amounts. I could qualify at the age of 26/27/28 .Instead I am considering going on to do a PHd (solution of finance pde's with C++ using wavelet methods) which would take 3 years i.e. I would hold this PHd hopefully in 2006 and I would then be 27 years old. Is that too old to get into a quant job? How old is too old? Say i postponed this PHd and didn't start it until 2004 or 2005 and finish it when i was 28/29 would that be too old to get into quant?

Apparently, the ages you specified appear to be in the range of an average entry level quant.

There is naturally No limit on how old you can be to get in, just remember to retire (with all the money that you will make from your quant job) before it is too late! Life is short!

I got my first quant job when I was 30 after spending 5 years lecturing.

mj,Just out of curiosity, where and in which subject did you lecture? Was it at the same place where you got your PhD? I am undertaking a PhD and want to know about opportunitites in academia for when I finish (which is not for a while!)Sam

BA Oxford 1990PhD MIT 1994 theory of pdesAssitant lecturer cambridge univ 94-99joined natwest as senior quant analyst july 99

What is the definition of a 'job'???P