i asked one of my professors about it, and his honest opinion was the course was really bad. i guess he would know.

People from cass may well do well getting a job in the city however i'd be interested to know how many people from CASS were able to get a job as a quant?My point is that people from CASS may well get good jobs in the city but at the upper end of the quant area..........I doubt that very much......this is mainly due to a perception in certain heads of departments that CASS is a joke or CAss does not supply the required skills........Even on this forum we have people thinking this who have or have not gone to CaSS...I doubt you would get this opinion if you had gone to MIT or Oxbridge.....

Depends what you define as bad.....If you feel that strongly agianst it then go and do the part III course at the MAths place.....There is no beter maths department in the country...plus the course allows you a lot of latitiude in the courses you take....hence you can make it almost like a fin math course........plus its cheaper.........the only downside is that you dont get an internship place on hte prgram.....If you dont fancy that then do the STATs course...you also get funding for it

>> and I never implied he was knobFair comment and I appologise for having misconstrued your post.

Linux,Don't worry about my dignity buddy! I was trying to be a bit more diplomatic in my post, but I guess you don't have the intelligence to sense these things. I don't know where you studied or where you work but I do know u seriously need to chill! The problem with cocky guys like you is that they've never received a good headbut in the nose to calm them down.I suggest you take a good cold shower from time to time, maybe start using Windows, it's not that bad... really! If you even want to meet up sometime to talk face to face rather than go on posting little messages, not a problem, say the time and place, we'll see if you are as arrogant as you are here!

Berty You say:QuoteOriginally posted by: BertyLinux,Don't worry about my dignity buddy! I was trying to be a bit more diplomatic in my post, but I guess you don't have the intelligence to sense these things. I don't know where you studied or where you work but I do know u seriously need to chill! The problem with cocky guys like you is that they've never received a good headbut in the nose to calm them down.I suggest you take a good cold shower from time to time, maybe start using Windows, it's not that bad... really! If you even want to meet up sometime to talk face to face rather than go on posting little messages, not a problem, say the time and place, we'll see if you are as arrogant as you are here!So if someone disagrees with you or points out flaws in your arguement then you think that headbutting them in the face is a good responce? One of the marks of a First Rate education is the capacity for rational debate - people should probably decide for themselves why you dont seem to have picked that up.I would actually suggest that we have now established one of the flaws in the Cass programme - you must have been a bundle of laughs to study with.

linus,U truly are hopeless... I knew you would were going to reply within 15 minutes... do you spend ur time in on this forum or what? a piece of advice... try to get away from your computer tonight, and go out with some some friends if you have any (I doubt you do considering the attitude you consistently demonstrate), and have a couple of drinks, you'll feel less constipated tomorrow!

QuoteOriginally posted by: JamesH83your right, you cant generalise, but i have to apply for an MSc for next year. I think I'm going to apply to Imperial, Kings, LSE and Cambridge (where I am currently). How am I going to decide which is the right one?I personally like the look of the Kings course structure and it isnt as expensive as LSE or Imperial. But people tell me "it doesn't have such a good brand name"opinions?I was seriously considering to apply for the KCL Msc course(part-time),but on closer inspection of the course,meeting some of KCL's lectures at seminars and also from the viewpoint of the employers, I went for the Imperial choice.Anything to do mathematics, Imperial has the overall edge over all other academic institutions in the locale of London.In the end,however,I didn't join Imperial due to unforseen personal circumstances.

QuoteOriginally posted by: playerPersonally I'd stick with Cambridge....Imperial is better than the Kings course..but kings has far hotter women both at the uni and on the course (which may or may not be important)....and as for LSE i dont think it has enough famous lecturers in financial mathematics to warrant applying thereIf KCL has better looking females on the course then they must be part-timers already working at a financial institution since IB's and the like subconciously base part of their decision to hire females on their looks.I've never seen hot looking females doing physics/maths/engineering anywhere in the UK so I had to deduce they were already employed.Anyway if you're employed in the city, who the hell would want to go for greasy smelling student when they are ample top-notch looking females employed all over the place over there?

I have just completed my work for the CASS MSc in Mathematical Trading & Finance. Obviously I now have an interest in praising it highly (especially because they haven’t yet given me my grade) and I have no direct experience of any of the other courses. I won’t claim CASS is perfect but I will say this in its support. Sorry it’s not more concise.I think that if you take a course which prides itself primarily on the depth and rigour of its mathematical content then you may risk missing out on what’s really important. Professional quants need to be able to do the sums but they ought to be pragmatists too. Don’t underestimate the value of the close contact with traders and other finance professionals that CASS emphasises. At CASS, prospective full-time students can also gain additional benefit from close contact with part-time (ie. already employed) students.CASS has a fair amount of respectable ‘hard’ math content but it does take the vocational element seriously. For example, they employ Harry Kat who gave an excellent & very entertaining course on the practicalities of derivative structuring this year, based on his book. (His jokes alone were almost worth the course fees.) If you want to excel on the technical math / modelling side then you have very approachable and respected academics like Nick Webber and others.This week I was lucky enough to hear Emanuel Derman speak at the Quant Congress in London run by the publishers of Risk Magazine. One of his main themes (also discussed on his website & Risk articles) was that many quants just don’t think independently enough – they tend to swallow the financial orthodoxy in an uncritical fashion. He even said (and I wrote this down) “Dynamic replication is a bit of an illusion”. In other words, we should all be careful not to take the highbrow maths too seriously and it’s certainly not an end in itself. Finance is a social science – it’s not theoretical physics or number theory. Therefore I ask: is an ivory tower necessarily the best place to study it?If you want to be impressive at a job interview then you’ll need to show some common sense and some ability to think. None of the MSc classes can teach you this, but some will push you in the right direction more than others. If you want to be employed in a practical (bank-type) environment then it may help to consider the MSc a stepping stone from pure academia into reality. I would encourage prospective MSc students to research the whole market very carefully but place a strong weight on the vocational content of the MSc.If you don’t have the numerical skills before you start your MSc then you’re unlikely to gain them during it. I think it’s debatable whether or not the benefit of a Masters course should really lie in developing your technical skills to a deep level. What you should be able to do is develop, analyse, understand and critically assess financial models in terms of whether they’re fit for purpose. You might even say that the better your technical background, the greater is the value that taking a practical course like one at CASS can add. I did a pure maths undergraduate degree at Cambridge and I’m not sure that taking a more “pure maths”-type MSc in finance would have made me more employable. One might even go so far as to say that if you have a weak or indifferent CV then you should maximise snob value by aiming for an ancient or traditional institution – but if you already have a decent CV then you should be confident enough to try to get your hands dirty with a more practically-oriented course.Tom Lehrer said “Life is like a sewer. What comes out of it depends on what you put in.” And MSc courses are no different. If you want to wow your future employers about your deep knowledge of option theory or whatever then you’ll almost certainly have to do some serious independent study, regardless of the particular MSc course you choose. And if you study too hard in isolation from the real world you might fail to see the wood for the trees.Sorry to go on but one final point. CASS has a good library which you can access after you graduate – it’s about 5 minutes’ walk from Moorgate tube. You don’t need to take a train or drive up the M11 or the M40 to get there.Neil PalmerCASS Math Trading & Finance part-time student 2002-04