Top target schools for quant hedge fund or quant/algo prop shop?
I'm a high school senior this year and am deciding where to apply early. Was wondering what the general consensus was on what the top tier of undergraduate schools are for quant hedge funds and algo prop shops. MIT, Harvard, and Princeton are up there, right? Is UChicago good for prop shops in its backyard? What about Duke and Yale?
About me: I have Penn legacy but don't really want to go there. Am looking to get a degree in math, stats, or financial engineering probably. Don't like frats but not a fan of activist lefties or weird kids either. 1580 SAT and good all-around stats, course rigor, and application.
You have it about right ... can anyone else add to this? One thing that I've heard to keep in mind: Yale introduced a new data science major and is investing a lot into their stat program
Add Columbia to your list. Looks good though.
I work at a top quant hedge fund (one of D.E. Shaw, Citadel, Two Sigma). We recruit primarily at Harvard and MIT where most of our researchers come from, and all other top schools are considered roughly equally (Princeton, Stanford, Yale, Caltech, Chicago, Columbia etc.). The other places I interviewed at I got roughly the same vibe, with the exception of AQR (who focused on Penn and Chicago). The prop shops are also more of a mix. For whatever reason Stanford has historically not produced many quants, but we're seeing an increasing number of good people from there.
Great, thanks so much for the info. Obviously I don't know what I'll do for sure in four years, but it would be nice to go to a target so I don't have to play catch-up if I really do want to be a quant trader/researcher or something along those lines.
Two questions: does your firm recruit at Yale as actively as Harvard (I like yale a lot even though their math/stats programs aren't as great)? and do you know if Duke is well respected?
Thank you
We have historically focused on just Harvard/MIT, but if you really wanted to work at a quant firm out of Yale, I don't think it would be a disadvantage (and certainly not large enough to base your college decision off of). At most, you may have to take some more initiative. Once you are at any of the top schools, getting top quant jobs is much more of a reflection of how good you are than how good the school you're attending is.
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Don’t suppose you know which UK unis are targets for these firms?
The top shops really only target Oxbridge. The Cambridge MMath programme is just the training ground for Optiver and Jane Street. Then you will get some from imperial, couple from UCL, LSE
Same target schools as the ones top tech companies target..
e.g. MIT, CMU, Berkeley, Columbia, Harvard, UMich, Princeton, Caltech etc
This is a really old thread but following up as programs at top schools have evolved:
1. Is econometrics (economics, heavy on maths) a good bachelors option to get into quant roles?
2. How would you rate LSE (London School Economics) vs US top schools (Harvard, MIT + Princeton, Stanford, Yale, Caltech, Chicago, Columbia) if I want to get into quant
Even if bachelors does not land me straight, what is the best path: what kind of jobs, or jump straight into masters?
top US schools blow LSE out of the water. Can't recruit for the US if you go to a UK school and LSE doesn't produce that many quants anyway compared to Oxbridge, Imperial and even Warwick.
The only programmes in the UK which compare to the top US unis are the Maths, Physics and CS programmes from oxbridge
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