I'm going to be very corny but hear me out. Every time I watch CNBC and it's 9:30 AM I always notice the Citadel traders in their coats yelling and working with their 4 screen monitors. It looks exciting and I honestly would LOVE to be on the trading floor even if I was paid terribly.
It would be awesome to work for a hedge fund so relevant. But to be realistic, what kind of people do these top funds recruit? I'm not a genius but I work really hard. I know I shouldn't get ahead of myself but would I need to get into IB first (which is already .01% in my situation) to stand a chance to work at Citadel Securities?
I am looking to transfer into UIUC so I can have a chance in the Chicago Prop Shops then maybe get into a good HF. Do I have to be a CS major (very hard to transfer to UIUC for this) or can I be Finance major for these type of positions?
In any case UIUC, UW Seattle, UT Austin, UC Berkeley, Georgia Tech, UMich, and UW Madison all have excellent engineering and/or CS programs that are at parity with or better than the Ivy League in terms of both research productivity and placements.
For Citadel Securities (and top tier firms like Jump, Teza, etc) they are looking for a 3.5 GPA in CS to interview you, and then you have to NAIL the interview. For market making, know how the compiler for your language works, techniques for making stuff run faster, etc. The guy who gets the job in market making will be a bit of an expert coder already, perhaps just as much as the guy who gets hired into Google research.
I have a friend who got an internship there as a sophomore/junior for the quant side. He is a top notch candidate. Pursuing finance + CS at a top target and he has a 3.8+. He is extremely technically equipped and does well in interview settings as well. I would say that it is fairly difficult. He told me most people who also interned there were grad students and extremely technical. In any case it might be harder than BB IBD
*way harder than BB IBD
*way way harder than IB