GPA + Macro Buyside
First year in a quant major at a target (Think Caltech, MIT, Princeton) with somewhat grade deflation looking to recruit for any sellside/buyside macro/commodities trading desk. I’ve gotten to talk to many people in the industry, and everyone tells me that while sellside is great, if your really devoted to a particular product, getting to a citadel GFI/DE Shaw oculus type of desk will give you the straightest shot at development, learning a strategy, and taking risk.
Everyone I spoke to in these roles have ridiculously high gpas. I’ve done well in college so far but my courseload is growing and I am thinking my gpa will be around 3.80-3.85 come recruiting.
Look I want to take intellectual risks, which would come with a lower gpa, but if it means more opportunities to take 1 less hard course per semester I guess I could wait.
I know this sounds kind of ridiculous but this is the reality in this grade inflated world, and I don’t go to a school that’s particularly easy. For these buyside roles, can you make up with it with rel. exp, good interviewing skills, etc. They seem like they care alot about being "smart people" and obviously grade grubbing is part of that i guess.
Curious for thoughts.
A 2.8 in Math at MIT is equivalent to a 3.9 in political science at Yale. Seriously you're going to be fine. Grades are not the biggest factor in hiring, not even close. I'd hire a brilliant college kid who studied math with 2.9 before I hired some straightedge humanities kid. I went to a school with terrible grade deflation, never attended class, got a 3.0 GPA teaching myself a double major in econ and math. Sure, you get filtered out automatically some places, but at the same time you have to build a narrative about yourself that you'll believe and enjoy.
Your personality and this as a cause for concern as a first year might be a bigger limiting factor in your success in finance.
This is a risk-return world. Take the risk, take the course you like. Develop your passions. Passion >>> Experience >>> Major >>> School >>> GPA
It seems like you like the idea of finance and working at DE Shaw or Citadel, but ask yourself much more specific questions about this industry. If your criterion is any sellside/buyside macro/commodities, it's pretty clear to me that you don't now whether you like stochastic calculus and term models or whether you want to holler into the phone about the barge crack spread.
Don't get me wrong there's nothing wrong with being a stellar student, more power to you, but being "smart" is really just about being intellectually curious + raw horsepower and not getting trapped in infohazards.
You want advice, studying some combination of statistics, economics, and mathematics. Read some economic and political history. Become interesting and become interested.
thanks man, I've been working on growing a spine. Starting that this year, taking some grad classes + taking in knowledge from professionals + books in the offseason. Look my previous viewpoint was to (max(outcome), min(effort)) as far as the asskissing goes. Safer--sure--but comprimses you in the Long Run. thanks for putting it like this. Finally one more point--you say "intellectually curious + raw horsepower and not getting trapped in infohazards." Is this something you believe in the Long Run or Short Run? Agreed you could extrapolate that top PMs are more often than not magna/summa because they apply their passion/dedication to an academic craft as they do to a professional one. but I've just noticed usually people who end up trading buyside macro products at my school have exceptional academic stats, but to be honest it didnt strike me that they viewed the work as their lifes passion/purpose. In otherwords, they grinded in college and got a good job.
also I know I sound broad/non-descriptive in my post, trying to stay anon w/o revealing professional/personal details.
Long and short run. Intellectual curiosity i.e. the love of the game, is basically a necessary prerequisite to not base your career in finance on comp. Intellectual horsepower is sort of endowed and gives you a skill ceiling in terms of abstract manipulation. Infohazards are the big one. Tons of brilliant people who are really curious about the world get sucked into topics that make them worse investors and thinkers. They can be anything from politically hazardous ideas to becoming obsessed with Rothbard even in a post-Greenspan era.
PM's and GP's are largely products of their time. Making Summa/Magna studying econ/finance in 1975 or even 1990 is seen very differently than it would be today. There's just too much competition and those GP's/PM's actually prefer kids who study math/physics at this point. The caveat here is that one who studies something highly technical may or may not have exposure to finance over a long period of time. The best thing to emulate is essentially a kid who's parents worked as GPs or LPs and then went to study something technical because they found it interesting, but have continued to work in finance and intend to after college.
The biggest dichotomy is finance is those who view it as a vocation vs. those who view it as a career/"good job". The GOATs never viewed finance the way that people on WSO do or even high achieving kids at top schools today do. Consequently you get a ton of kids in finance who will never become GP's/PM's. They'll get spots at great firms, but if you follow them 3-5-10 years down the line, the outcomes aren't spectacular. We can debate as to why, but quite simply this whole industry is an art form and is increasingly becoming a lost art. In more practical terms, keep the GPA above a 3.5 and devote yourself to figuring out your own internal motivations and interests. There's not a ton of seats out of UG that have partner-track potential, they're gambling a lot on you, so it's in their best interest to find someone who will not jump for comp and seems to know much more about the industry than the average 22 year old.
No worries about keeping details out, it's important to stay anon.
PS: Nothing was better for "interview skills" than joining a frat and being able to be comfortable with just being one of the boys. YMMV, but for us spergy math types, it's hard to unlock that skill and it's genuinely just as important as anything else in this job.
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