VBA advice Intern

Hi all,

I am currently doing my MSc in Financial Mathematics at LSE and yesterday started a 1-month part-time internship in Quantifi (risk, analytics, and trading solution provider), at London office. The tasks I have to complete throughout my internship are mostly based on VBA programming and Excel in general. My concern is that I have never written a single line of a VBA code (I am totally a newbie on it). In general, I know little things about programming (I am currently learning C++ as part of my master's degree, but I am quite novice).

  • What would you suggest me to do now? Is there any fast as well as effective way to learn VBA and deliver at least some tasks, considering the time constraints (it is a 1-month part-time internship which means I will go 8 full days in total)?

  • Also, I am wondering if VBA is essential for someone who wants to become a quant to learn it. I know that programming languages like Pyhton, C++ and Java are must for a quant career, but haven't heard of extensively using VBA.

PS: I never told the recruiters I know VBA programming!

Thank you in advance for your contribution!

2 Comments
 
Most Helpful

VBA is very easy to learn...just pickup VBA for dummies to start off. and do a few simple example exercises to learn

example 1 - given a column of data (say, 100 items), write VBA code to loop over the column of data and pickout items that fit some criteria, and then make a new column with just that data in another worksheet.

(this will teach you how to use variables, loops, if/else/then statements and that is the bulk of programming).

VBA is powerful, because it has access to the Excel object and all the features of excel (which can be convenient), but programatically. The downside to VBA is that compared to other languages (like C++ or Python) it executes very slow (measured in milliseconds, not nano seconds). This is not an issue for small projects where 1000 iterations takes 1000 milliseconds = 1 second...but if you have a loop doing millions of iterations to solve a problem, then that time lag starts to show. Also, Excel itself has memory leaks that appear randomly (not often, but often enough to cause problems every now and then), which can be annoying and hard to track down.

just google it...you're welcome
 

Ut quisquam consequatur necessitatibus nihil facilis molestiae. Recusandae quasi ducimus saepe mollitia.

Ipsam aut corporis ipsum aut et. Animi aliquam delectus facere est sed unde. Molestias praesentium ipsa maiores nesciunt. Est eveniet error ipsam deserunt autem.

Tenetur facere omnis vel quo quaerat. Eos eos eius sit suscipit dolorum. Dolorum sed saepe et repellat est ut magni impedit. Autem aliquam neque maiores nisi reiciendis pariatur. Optio a facere ipsum provident laboriosam. Aspernatur facere exercitationem iste rem.

Ut impedit pariatur est impedit dolorem dignissimos sed quisquam. Corporis quasi at quia eveniet eius et qui.

Career Advancement Opportunities

June 2026 Hedge Fund

  • Point72 99.0%
  • D.E. Shaw 98.1%
  • Citadel Investment Group 97.1%
  • AQR Capital Management 96.2%
  • Magnetar Capital 95.2%

Overall Employee Satisfaction

June 2026 Hedge Fund

  • Magnetar Capital 99.0%
  • Millennium Partners 98.1%
  • D.E. Shaw 97.1%
  • Blackstone Group 96.1%
  • Citadel Investment Group 95.1%

Professional Growth Opportunities

June 2026 Hedge Fund

  • AQR Capital Management 99.1%
  • Point72 98.1%
  • D.E. Shaw 97.2%
  • Citadel Investment Group 96.2%
  • Magnetar Capital 95.3%

Total Avg Compensation

June 2026 Hedge Fund

  • Portfolio Manager (9) $1,648
  • Vice President (27) $464
  • Director/MD (12) $423
  • NA (9) $320
  • Engineer/Quant (86) $288
  • 3rd+ Year Associate (26) $284
  • Manager (4) $282
  • 2nd Year Associate (32) $253
  • 1st Year Associate (76) $192
  • Analysts (240) $181
  • Intern/Summer Associate (28) $146
  • Junior Trader (5) $102
  • Intern/Summer Analyst (282) $96
notes
16 IB Interviews Notes

“... there’s no excuse to not take advantage of the resources out there available to you. Best value for your $ are the...”

Leaderboard

1
redever's picture
redever
99.2
2
BankonBanking's picture
BankonBanking
99.0
3
kanon's picture
kanon
99.0
4
Secyh62's picture
Secyh62
99.0
5
DrApeman's picture
DrApeman
98.9
6
Betsy Massar's picture
Betsy Massar
98.9
7
CompBanker's picture
CompBanker
98.9
8
dosk17's picture
dosk17
98.9
9
GameTheory's picture
GameTheory
98.9
10
Jamoldo's picture
Jamoldo
98.8
success
From 10 rejections to 1 dream investment banking internship

“... I believe it was the single biggest reason why I ended up with an offer...”