Robert Xu

“Before I came into Questrom, I knew nothing about the types of jobs in finance. I heard all these terms without really understanding what they meant—but now that I’ve gone through this program, I’ve heard so many industry speakers come in and explain exactly what they do. Hearing about their backgrounds has helped me figure out where I want to go.”

After triple majoring in mathematics, economics, and computer science as an undergrad at BU, Robert was seeking a way to combine his passions and further his education. “Throughout undergrad, I didn’t really know where I could take all this knowledge. Then, I found out about the Master of Science in Mathematical Finance program, where you can put math, econ, and computer science together and see how they’re used in finance,” says Robert.

“I looked at some other schools, but I saw how the Questrom MSMF program had different tracks—a risk management track, an asset management track, an analytics and research track, and a quantitative analysis track. I found the quantitative analysis track was really on the computational, mathematical side, which was just a much better fit with my background,” he adds.

In the MSMF program, Robert learned just how dynamic the field of finance is. “I think in finance these days, the biggest strength you can have is learning these complicated concepts and implementing them to solve problems,” he shares. “It’s a field that’s been developing rapidly; in the past ten years, AI was the hottest term, then it became machine learning—and now, it’s cloud computing, and maybe five years down the road it’ll be blockchain. It’s ever-evolving.”

Even in such a dynamic field, Questrom has expert faculty who are on the cutting edge of it all. “Questrom Professor in Management Steven Kou has been incredible,” says Robert. “He’s done so much great work in finance so far. It’s really interesting hearing from such a smart guy—in terms of the way he thinks, he just really takes finance to another perspective.”

Right before graduating from the MSMF program, Robert realized he wanted to push his skills even further—so he added on a semester to complete Questrom’s Graduate Advanced Financial Technology certificate program. “The FinTech certificate is really exciting to me. I’m glad I did the MSMF program first because it’s how I knew what I wanted to delve into—but the FinTech certificate is really what I’m the most excited about,” says Robert.

As for the future, Robert says he has a much clearer idea of his career goals than when he first enrolled in Questrom. “Before I came into Questrom, I knew nothing about the types of jobs in finance. I heard all these terms without really understanding what they meant—but now that I’ve gone through this program, I’ve heard so many industry speakers come in and explain exactly what they do. Hearing about their backgrounds has helped me figure out where I want to go.”