^ Exactly.
the opportunity cost is not worth it. going back to school for 6 years and taking all those math classes just to take more probability and theory classes and programming. . just to maybe get in finance?
See what itera just said.
First of all, the person is only ASKING what does it take to become a Financial Engineer, and to be honest, we have no idea what kind of background he has so perhaps he doesn’t need to re-take everything?
Second, if the question is “is it worth it to go back to school for this?” then perhaps some of the comments would make more sense.
Third, i don’t think anyone here is a Financial Engineer? at least they haven’t identified as ever being one. I think the more constructive advice is to give the person some guidence as to what degree to graduate in and what kind of firms hire financial engineers. And not simply “you should have known what financial engineer is in grade 6, otherwise don’t bother because it’s clearly too late for you to do it now!”
Finally, is it up to the person to decide whether it’s worth it to go back to school for 6 years. So what if he goes back to school for 6 more years and come out 28, or 30 years old? would you rather him spend 16 years 26 years or 36 years of his career doing something he doesn’t like and wonder “what if”?
I don’t know why people in finance are so quick to jump to conclusion especially this is not a “buy” or “sell” decision, this is life, cost and benefit aren’t always how you perceive it to be.
Agree with you NANA, the other guys are looking at it from a perspective that is essentially based on sunk costs (the OP’s time and money spent on presumably inadequate education). It is up to the OP whether undertaking the requirements to become a financial engineer are worth the prospective costs.
It’s okay to say “if i were you, i would not persue it because it requires this and that… etc, and the income is only this and that…”
But to not give any facts and just jump to conclusion, “don’t bother asking”, is very offensive to the OP.
That’s just how i think.
Let me set the record straight, Zul - 95+% of all and any jobs labeled “financial engineering” are hardcore programming. Do you want to be a quant developer writing and testing many lines of code with applications to finance? Or do you have some more romanticized notion of “financial engineering” where you draw upon your multifaceted skillset encompassing broad knowledge of capital markets, economics and mathematics in order to conceptualize an esoteric quantitative strategy that generates superior alpha for your portfolio? The latter practically doesn’t exist these days - so forget about it.
Having cleared all this, the answer to what you need in order to go into “financial engineering” is much simpler - learn to code really well.