Hi everyone,Could you please tell me how would you rank these PhD for someone looking for a future career in the quant industry? Thank you very much! Between parenthesis are the specific research groups found in each of the departments.1) Oxford Maths (Comput. and Math finance)2) LSE Stats (Risk & Stochastics)3) Columbia IEOR (Financial Engineering)4) Imperial College Finance (assuming it's possible to have a co-supervisor from Math finance)5) UCL Maths (Financial Maths)6) King's College Applied Maths (Financial Maths)

Good PhD

You have offers from all 6?I would seriously consider a career in academia compared to being a quant.

The best PhD is one where you have a genuine and deep interested where you objectively feel you are most better than other people.Choosing a PhD for career is buying 3-5 years of misery and a risk you don't complete.But...My ordering would be:315624 is uncertain, which Imperial is offering the business school or the university (Imperial college is a university not a college

UCL financial maths is a poor joke... Obviously, Ivy League and next Oxbridge.

It depends almost entirely on the supervisor and the kind of work you would be doing. If you do a PhD from a top university and do nothing but coding, it's not going to be of much help to your career.

There are very few British quants. So if you care about alumni networks - I would opt for Moscow State University or Ecole Polytechnique. If you care about PhD as it is - a good PhD from any university will do.

My order would be:13 - but not financial engineering2 - but not Risk and Stochastic

If we eliminate Columbia from the list, one could (I think) reasonably rephrase the question along the lines of "what is the best math finance PhD program in the greater London area from the perspective of somebody who wants a job in industry?" This would seem to be reasonably well posed, subject to all the usual caveats about ranking multi-attribute alternatives and the general wisdom (or lack thereof) of pursuing a PhD for a non-academic career. Once you relax the geographical limitation, however, it is completely non-obvious why Columbia would be the first (let alone only) additional school to consider. If you specifically want to get a job in NYC, then Columbia, NYU and Princeton have locational advantages, and all have a pretty good reputation in math finance (and are difficult to get into). A little more background color on what you are really interested in doing (and where you would like to do it) would be helpful.

I agree and there is alot of subjectivity here in choice of utility functions.For instance the LSE seems to teach well but has lowered the relative quality of people it admits, or not, like everyone else I see a skewed sample.Cass seems to have good teaching, and there is a striking difference between Imperial College and its businessschool.Americans like the LSE, which is not quite the same as saying American banks like it, depends on who interviews you.Some HR departments believe anyone from Oxbridge & Harvard automatically outclasses anyone from anywhere else.From that we see the rather intuitive dichotomy between getting a job and being good at it.

IMO any of these would be fine. The difference between them won't be very relevant to what job you get as a quant or how successful you are as a quant. What will matter is the hard skills you learn and your ability to navigate the quant space while maximizing your utility (soft skill).

Dear JacobYW,I would say being in a top university is probably the most important factor. Then, the topic, your supervisor (his industry contacts) and your motivation are (not necessarily in that order) very important factors. Regards your list, it looks odd to put Imperial College Business School next to Maths departments in other places. Why not the Maths department directly (where you have a large Math finance group)?Best,

It doesn't matter.The best Ph.D. is one that you are willing to spend a good chunk of your life obsessing over. Once you finish that, then everything else is easy.Also, I have a strong bias against programs that are too focused on financial engineering. By the time you get out, the stuff will be obsolete.

QuoteOriginally posted by: AntonioI would say being in a top university is probably the most important factor. Really? I recuited tens of people, never did care about universities of their PhDs.

QuoteOriginally posted by: GamalQuoteOriginally posted by: AntonioI would say being in a top university is probably the most important factor. Really? I recuited tens of people, never did care about universities of their PhDs.Depends on the entry route, if going through a HR filter before getting to the hiring manager it can make a difference.We work mostly with the recruiters directly at my place so that's never been an issue.