Mba Career..game Theory, Decision Sciences,etc

Q: I've been mulling over for a while about pursuing an MB

A: I hadn't given it a serious thought since my interest areas are in game theory, its implications to business strategy etc. I'm also interested in the mathematical underpinnings of decision theory etc. Mind you I've no prior work experience with either areas, only an academic interest in that field, coupled with a strong interest in math that is reflected in several courses at grad school level. Now, with a current career in s/w dev. that is not very exciting to me and to my persona, I'm faced with this option to switch to doing an MBA and thus change my field. Here's where I want you MBA/Ph.D gurus to help me, in understanding the prospects of an MBA that focusses on the aforementioned areas. What alternatives, if any can I pursue? Any suggestions/ideas/feedback? Thanks a lot to you all in advance.

A:bk2, B-schools don't really delve into Game Theory or prisoner's dilemma. There is one or two sessions that talk about it amongst others. Frankly, it is a cool concept but has less real life applications than many others that you learn during your MB

A: I can understand people getting enamoured of it after seeing "Beautiful Mind". But these are the people who would have loveed Peter Druker in the 70s, Barbarians at the Gate in 80s and Sun Tzu in early 90s. If your general intrest is in OR/Decision sciences try for a career with a financial services/Insurance firm. However typically they have a PHD (math) who would analyse the quantitative data(a lot of people from east europe/Russia do this in the USA) or a computer model. Give his results to the decision maker(most likely an MBA) and he takes a decision based on several factors (generally gut feeling). My point is that post your MBA you are not expected to do this heavy quantitative stuff. There are people/computer models that help you. Again this is from a few companies that I have seen. Limited sample size If you are really good in math I will recommend pursue finaicial engineering career. The money is huge. Look at http://www.iafe.org/home.php Try to get into (in order of ranking) math finance/financial engg program in: 1. Univ of Chicago/NYU 2. Carnegie Mellon 3. Stanford/Columbia 4. Berkeley Haas Expect heavy usage of stochastic calculus (Brownian motion, Ito etc). The financial engineers are called the quants. Typical job profile includes : derivative/fixed income/exotic 1. traders (max money totally depends upon how much money you make for the firm, the hot shot traders make 100 mil$ + but unless you are as cool as ice you will burn out in max 5-6 years ---- offcourse after that you go and make big bucks in more advisory roles --- very cutthroat be prepared to get fired if books are showing negative P/L for as little as 2 weeks) 2. hedge funds --- they pay like hell and squeeze you like a lemon ---- once again burn out after 5-6 years (once again small mistakes and get fired in no time, you will always be in a pressure cooker). 3. mutual fund/investment bank quant/portfolio managers/risk manager more relaxed job with offcourse lesser remuneration 4. quant developers --- programmers developing quant models in investment banks

Discuss It!

Most Popular Articles

More