MIT Quant Sophomore - Need Advice

"Basically, I'm wondering if I should try/or even if I have a chance to recruit for less technical-heavy roles for my full time career? Things like IB, HF, PE? I know these are still technical, but I feel like these have more of a people-skill added to it and may have longer term career growth when it comes to building real wealth. I'm just a bit lost since I don't know if those opportunities have already left me, as I know a lot of recruiting is getting earlier and earlier. "

Well for one, summer 2027 roles have closed down a lot. That much is true. What else is true is that maybe you're limited from the top .1% roles, sure. But realistically, most people never get there either. 

I started my career in a bank, on a rates trading desk. After 2 years there, I moved to a prop firm, one of the big ones but not tippy top ones like JSC. I will say my own experience with the talent, WLB, and other such was night and day. You will 100% work with more talented, dedicated people. And the tech. Oh my god the tech is so much better. I cannot tell you how buggy and crappy and old bank tech is. And the politics were 10x worse in a bank. I am a good people person, but I could never STAND the audacity of some people. The hours are worse, the pay is worse, the progression is worse. My desk head made less than some new grads at JSC/HRT/Citsec. It's insane the disparity. 

Look, quant is not 100% what it's chopped up to be. But neither is IB, SnT, PE, HF, or any of these paths. They're just jobs at the end of the day. Jobs with ups and downs. Jobs that have shitty people, great people, and everything in between. You'll do well in any of these. But tbh, You'll probably do best in quant. 

"The reason i'm not as confident in quant is that I feel like I'm not a math or physics prodigy, which makes me concerned about my long term standing vs just out of new grad."

Most aren't. Hiring PhDs who just end up working on linear regression for 10 hours a day. Trading is also way more about personality and experience than genius. Smarts outweigh genius in trading. Hell, I'd say being a genius in trading might come with some downsides, because eventually you get to the point of intellect where you can mentally spend too much time creating a mental model that causes you to fail at your job, which is making fast decisions under pressure. Being sharp and quick minded is arguably far better in trading. Geniuses will go to research more often. 

And if you do want to go to PE/HF after a while, I'm sure there will be quant HFs that will take you on. And maybe there are some quant heavy PE firms eventually, idk the space well enough to say. 

I'd just say that, in this day and age, things are moving towards technical skills, not away. Don't go to IB where you'll take an MIT physics major and just make them do fucking spreadsheets all day.