In this blogpost, I will try to give a brief overview of some of the key incidents in my life, due to which I decided to study Quantitative Economics at Indian Statistical Institute (MSQE).
While I was doing my engineering, I was actually thinking of writing a novel. And in those days, the novel writing phenomena was very popular in IITs and IIMs because of the works of Chetan Bhagat.
When I started writing, I showed it to one of my friends. She reviewed my writing and remarked, “you don’t develop your characters, they suddenly come up to the scene, do their act and vanish.”
This got me thinking and she also handed me a list of books to read. Then I went through a bunch of books in the hopes of possibly mastering the skill of novel writing.
It was just an example from a part of my life to set a context here.
So what is that context? When I was in my class 3, 4, 5 and so on, I was not really good in mathematics.
I was a very mediocre kind of student and the reason behind that is, that I never studied that well. I just studied before my exams. And maths is a kind of subject that you cannot pass if you study it just before the exams.
With the passage of time, few things changed, I started to get better at maths from class 6-7 onwards. And then in class 9-10, I was so good at maths that I was among the top 3 rankers (only in Maths) of my class and I used to be liked by my maths teacher a lot. And after that when I went to class 11-12, mathematics became challenging in nature, but physics was my refuge. It gave me the room and the freedom to apply conceptual understanding to solve physics numerical problems. It has been very well said that if you have learned physics, you will never forget it, just like you never forget riding bicycle. But with mathematics, practice is of prime importance.
So when I went into IIT with this background that I am good in maths and I really like physics, I wanted to do some kind of research. When I started studying in IIT, the research interest started dying out. There was no maths, no physics and whatever there was, it was not interesting for me.
And later on, like other IITians, I started moving towards the domain of consultants. Unknowingly, I started taking baby steps towards MSQE.
I was crystal clear in my mind that I wanted to do something in mathematics. To do something in mathematics, engineering is not a very good option. There were options like actuarial science, and statistics. But unfortunately, in those days, I was not very familiar with the domain of statistics. And actuarial science was something which required a lot of commitment.
So, out of all these constraints, I gradually developed an interest in Finance, Investment banking and had also done few internships in these domains.
Post my graduation from IIT, a major chunk of my work life was devoted to teaching physics for JEE and NEET. Due to my prolonged physics teaching stint, my interest in mathematics never subsided and while I was reading through all sorts of thing available around me, I understood that there is something in which I can do work on, i.e., Analytics.
At that time, data science had also started coming to the picture. That led me towards the courses which I can do, in which I can mix finance, mathematics and analytics. Meanwhile, I also passed CFA level 1.
In CFA level 1, the economics section was a bit tricky for me.
After that you already know my story of how I decided to do MSQE.
But what is the part between my economics and analytics interest to MSQE, that is something which even I do not know, I just have a very vague kind of a memory; it was somewhere around the month of May, 2013 that I thought I will do some kind of course related to analytics. In this regard, I talked to a friend, who was preparing for CAT. He gave me an idea that there is a course called MSQE in ISI.
Till late 2014, when I started researching about Quantitative Economics at Indian Statistical Institute (MSQE) (and to be specific, only in the month of December, 2014), I decided to study MSQE, with this idea that I want to study Economics, Finance and Analytics.
So, altogether I can say that it was not because of some allure of placements at ISI Kolkata, but it was my interest & passion towards the domain of economics and finance that drove me to the door of ISI MSQE.
So this is why I decided to study Quantitative Economics (MSQE) at Indian Statistical Institute (ISI).
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