Strats/Quant Interview

Hey monkeys,

I have an interview at a top BB for a Strats/Quant position coming up. I'm a computer science major and I've groomed myself for tech interviews, but I was not expecting to interview for a strats position.

How should I prepare? I'm ready for any programming question they can throw at me, but what about math questions? I'm familiar with probability (Bayes etc.) but I've never taken linear algebra or differential equations.

How should I spend my time preparing? brain teasers? Brushing up on probability? how important is it to have a background with linear algebra and differential equations?

Thanks for any help.

 
Best Response

I doubt they'd ask you any high-level math stuff if that's not in your background. When I interviewed for quant positions at BBs the questions were reasonable stuff along the lines of CS and math (my background was in math). Here's some of the stuff I was asked, for reference:

CS: designing algorithms, algorithm analysis, reading/understanding some code, basic data structures stuff Math: linear algebra (super basic, finding eigenvalues, etc.), probability (Bayes', conditional, coin tosses, dice games), basic stochastic processes (this was only at buyside firms).

I actually did not get any brainteasers, I only got those at prop firms (same deal with mental math). A few of my friends recruited for quant/strat roles at BBs as well and said it wasn't that difficult, just basic probability and programming. If you can do well in a tech interview and are decent at math I wouldn't be afraid.

 

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