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Depends on strategy tbh. Quant is v different to L/S.

Really only see Citadel/Point72/Millennium hiring undergrads in L/S.

Generally, Oxford/LSE/UCL make up a lot of the grad classes for these shops. I've seen LBS, Cambridge and Imperial, too, but generally not as much as the other unis, but you can naturally assume recruiters see them as good as the other three. I've seen people across unis being invited to interview for SA/FT, though, so the target term is a bit of a misnomer for HF.

Quant and macro idk

 

I have offers from imperial and ucl, which one should I pick for hedge funds, does the under representation of imperial compared to ucl stem from the quantity of undergrads that have attended or is ucl just better for a HF role?

 
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I've seen 1 person from Imperial in one of the top 3 L/S grad roles.

I've seen numerous people from Imperial in the quant grad roles. Imperial isn't worse than UCL; no one is putting it below UCL; it just doesn't have as much of a focus on traditional/discretionary finance vs quant.

It's not as simple as what university is more prestigious, it's about your own ability more than anything. In terms of your university, it depends on what you want to do. For careers, Imperial will be better. It's basically the same, if not better, than UCL for traditional finance, especially sales/trading, but it has less of a culture around gunning for them vs UCL. You will have a massive leg up for quant roles, which pay a lot out of school and what I suspect most people at Imperial are gunning for.

I'd go to UCL because I could never become a quant, and Imperial's social scene isn't for me. But Imperial is better for careers.

edit: also, I wouldn't pick a school based on L/S HF recruiting. There are literally like 10 spots a year across these funds, and they get thousands of applications. Unless you want to do quant, neither school is going to give you a material advantage over the other. 

 

Well part of it is just the fact that Imperial is a STEM school at heart and more focused on stuff like hard sciences and engineering rather than finance and quant stuff.

 

LBS is ultra rare too. Not sure about the masters hatred. You do see MM funds across strategies still hiring from LBS I guess. But fairly alumni network driven.

 

From what I’ve seen:

- Quant role: Oxbridge, Imperial

- L/S Equity: Oxbridge, Imperial + LSE/UCL

Also I know grad quants from LSE/UCL but these tend to be postgrads with an undergrad in maths/phys from French Schools or Oxbridge

 

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