Good day to all rocket scientists, practitioners, kung fu masters, headhunters, number crunchers and fellow applicants.I am currently doing a MSc in financial engineering and will be graduating in 2005 april.As such I am thinking of doing a Phd in finance focusing on the quantitative aspect.I have a few questions to ask our esteemed readers.i) What are the chances of getting into the Phd programs of the following,1) Insead2) Zurich3) Cass4) LBS ( not very quant though)ii) After getting into them am i able to find job as a junior quant/ risk manager/ investment banker from a probabilistic point of view. Here could the faculty members, head hunters and black belt practitioners toss your two cent worth?ii) What is their reputation for Phd in finance given that they are giants/titans when it comes to MBA for Insead and LBS.iii) I am thinking of taking more mathematical stuff likea) complex / real / functional analysisb) probability theoryc) martingale, sde, spde e) lie algebra and some pdef) tensor analysis, differential manifoldsfor interest sake. My question is with all these mathematics are they relevant? or is it better I spend some time picking up C++?iv) My undergrad result wasn't spectacular, had a gpa of 3 overall but 3.5 for mathematics and I did some hardcore pure maths for undergrad but my grads were pulled down coz I had to take some other modules. As such would it affect my application? I hope to obtain a 3.6 - 3. 8 GPA for my Masters. I am quite keen to do a Phd.v) I have been thinking of working on incorporating the ideas of geodesics into finance but this may be a bit unrealistic.Finally I would like to thank you all for taking the time to read through this and thank you for your replies.

Hi all, wasn't trying to be funny or arrogant.coz one of my professor kept talking abt the 'real kung fu ' when he teaches hedging strategies. So as I am someone new to this forum and all so I believe that I have something or everything to learn from my betters who are termed kung fu / black belt practitioners according to his definitions. (here I wonder if they award Dans to the practitioners. Like in japan where they award dans)Actually my more urgent question is can someone tell me abt Phd finance in Insead, Zurich , LBS and CASS.LBS does not seem to be very quant.I wish to specialize on the quant side.Thank You

i mean phd finance in insead, zurich as compared to the american universities and also on the job market.My understanding is that phd in finance is more flexible but having looked at orgtel and huxley's requirementi felt that a phd in finance might be a waste of time.Rather a phd in physics is more applicable.(joking)However I am personally very impressed by the MSc fin math at warwickit has econs, maths and C++ programmingenough to sort the interviewers out.