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CashCowCitadel's culture has a horrible reputation. I'm surprised positions there would be that highly sought after.

I've heard bad things about the culture, mainly that it's extremely competitive and has a high turnover rate. But it's still a great place to work for a few years, especially if you're an analyst in the ITAP program. You learn a lot, make great money, and citadel is a great name to have on your resume. And you can live EXTREMELY well in Chicago with the money you make there, due to the city's lower cost of living.

 
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You can say that every major finance firm has a "bad" culture. Moving up is competitive and turnover is high no matter where you are - how many investment banking analysts, consulting analysts, etc. stay after 2 years? Very few. Citadel is not much more competitive. A job there is highly sought after because the pay for new grads is almost double the pay at traditional i-banks, and moving up is more meritocratic and less structured (there are 27-year olds who are desk heads).

As for the original question, Citadel's post-MBA class is very small - I think at max 5 people per year, although that number may have gone up recently. College grads are all either in ITAP or FTAP - ITAP is much smaller, about 3-4 people per year, FTAP has around 12-15.

 
ews09You can say that every major finance firm has a "bad" culture. Moving up is competitive and turnover is high no matter where you are - how many investment banking analysts, consulting analysts, etc. stay after 2 years? Very few. Citadel is not much more competitive. A job there is highly sought after because the pay for new grads is almost double the pay at traditional i-banks, and moving up is more meritocratic and less structured (there are 27-year olds who are desk heads).

As for the original question, Citadel's post-MBA class is very small - I think at max 5 people per year, although that number may have gone up recently. College grads are all either in ITAP or FTAP - ITAP is much smaller, about 3-4 people per year, FTAP has around 12-15.

Insane if the ITAP class is really that small. Citadel probably gets at least 1000 resumes each year for that group. They recruit at all the top undergrads.

 

I think ITAP was larger in past years, but not by much. And FYI, I heard they just got rid of the ITAP program completely, meaning new grad traders are placed into a desk right away without coursework and rotations.

 
ews09I think ITAP was larger in past years, but not by much. And FYI, I heard they just got rid of the ITAP program completely, meaning new grad traders are placed into a desk right away without coursework and rotations.

i heard they got rid of ITAP as well. i guess it's because of the huge losses they took in 2008. the ITAP training was really good; they would bring in professors from kellogg and uchicago business to teach courses.

 

Wow, I thought most people in the business didn't really believe in the theories professors teach, even at top business programs. Guess I was mistaken.

 

Booth gets recruited for the every single major quant funds i.e. AQR, Citadel, RenTech, De Shaw. They have a ridiculous roster for teachers all groundbreaking research such as EMH and CAPM

 

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