Top Students are No Longer Going Into Finance
Anyone else notice this trend? At the five best schools (Stanford/MIT/Harvard/Yale/Princeton), the very elite students are no longer going into finance. In the 2000s, all the best students went into finance, but now it is shifting heavily towards tech. Especially at HYPSM, no top student goes into IB.
If you talk to most elite students at HYPSM, (kids who qualified for AIME/USAMO, made USACO plat in high school, placed at Intel ISEF etc.) they usually get a FAANG SWE internship in their sophomore year then get a HFT/quant internship their junior year at somewhere like HRT/Jane Street/5 Rings etc. or go to a top unicorn.
As much as we like to believe that IB attracts talented students, the most cracked kids at HYPSM don't go into IB anymore. It is undeniable that the elite HYPSM kids are way too smart to go into IB. Like these guys placed at Putnam math, made USACO/USAMO etc... and imagine them getting a job fiddling around in excel for 100 hours a week
Thoughts?
you prob dont go to HYPSM then, cuz very few people at these 5 schools go into IB. They obviously can, but they dont want to
At like a Duke or Cornell probably the most "cracked" kids go into finance
it is undeniable that the elite HYPSM kids are way too smart to go into IB. Like these guys placed at Putnam math, made USACO/USAMO etc... and imagine them getting a job fiddling around in excel for 100 hours a week
Thread is dumb lol. We're having a debate over where the "smartest" kids go when we haven't even defined "smart". Trust me, there are various discrete categories of "intelligence", and they're not correlated.
Not gonna type out a whole big thing but I'll just offer one example: at my HYPSM, usaco plat kids are a dime a dozen, we have several IMO / IOI / IxO level guys. Some of these guys could never manage a company (all points on EQ alr touched above by other posters) or work in a tiger cub-esque fundamental role (can't ask the right questions, think about what matters). But their quant skills are obv unparalleled. So why do u think these people go and work at places like desco or jsc? Bc unless ur stupid, u do what ur good at and play to ur strengths in life. U do what interests you. You're using technical skill as the defining criteria for "smart" and then observing that all "smart" people by your definition are going into tech.
There's also just way too much information bias here because the other categories of intelligence are more difficult to measure, you don't have these nice and reputable international competitions simply selecting for who is the best at building elite networks or synthesizing information to connect the dots. It's easy to defer to hard STEM achievements as a proxy for general intelligence. One of the biggest fallacies of all time
So what you’re saying is you went to Duke
Update: Nvm OP edited his post to remove Duke from the (Standford/Ivies/Duke) group :(
So I was definitely correct lol
Yes, CS has gotten more popular over the past decade, and Tech has cannibalized all non-tech fields to an extent in terms of industries students are pursuing.
The elite students you talk about are largely measured by STEM accolades, and those students were never interested in IB in the first place. To get to that level, you have to have a very strong interest in STEM, and very few of those students went into business-related fields like IB and Consulting historically. They've always gone for quant/tech/academia, and that hasn't changed ever since.
Within kids interested in business, anecdotally I've noticed consulting becoming more popular than IB. Maybe college kids have woken up to the fact they don't want to work 80-90 hours a week or something.
Within finance itself, buy-side has somewhat cannibalized IB as the destination for top students. Whereas most buyside didn't hire from undergrad a decade ago, far more firms do now, and top finance students are making their way to KKR/Blackstone/Insight/GA-type roles, as well as other MM-UMM buyside firms.
That being said, things have still been stable overall. Plenty of top students at elite schools are still going into IB.
hmm, but dont you think the smartest and most elite contingent of students at HYPSM are CS/Math majors? Like these guys are on a different level compared to the Econ guys/guys going into IB
Loool the future leaders of business/politics aren't studying maths degrees and joining quant trading firms...
What soft skills do they have? How good is their EQ? Can they manoeuver office politics? Are they an inspiring manager?
No. Take a look at literally any executive board in a global corporation. Is anyone there a math nerd who spent his career cranking out trading algorithms. No.
Your definition of top student is someone who's a genius at maths. I'd argue a "top student" is someone with a excellent mix of IQ, EQ, drive and passion. It wasn't Jeff Bezos' quantitative skills that built and grew Amazon, it was his relentless passion, vision and inspiring leadership skills. When Bernard Arnault built LVMH he didn't use any maths skills. Oh and guess where all his kids went after university? MBB and IB before joining LVMH.
Going to a target does not equal elite student at HYPSM. I'm talking the HYPSM kids that are like top 100 in math in the nation, placed at Intel ISEF competitions, placed top in USACO/national competitions. None of these guys are going into IB
Dumbass, you're outlining a subset of maybe 100 kids total. Also, shocker, getting those awards does not guarantee that you'll be able to land a top hypsm, so you're looking at an even smaller number of kids who accomplish those things and wind up at hypsm (yes, it improves chances but still difficult to get into those schools with those accomplishments given, legacies, diversity, "personality")
Why is it so shocking that they don't go into IB? Why would you expect them to go into IB in the first place. A lot of those guys don't even care about money (yes, you wouldn't understand, but it's true). In order for them to become the top 100 kids in math/science they have to be extremely passionate about that shit, and why would they throw all of that away just to make some money at a boring job. Even DE Shaw has trouble recruiting the super geniuses because they really aren't motivated by money. The "super cracked" people likely wind up becoming professors or researchers in their respective fields
You'd have to be an idiot to expect a guy like Terence Tao (look him up) who gets his phd from princeton at 21 to go into IB or even anything finance related.
I feel like this gets posted at least once a month by some dork in the tech space to try and flex.
No one cares...
In my opinion, top students never went into finance - they did engineering, medicine etc. Business students have always been smart kids that don't want to work or study that hard but still want a pile of money.
Top students never went into finance. They went into academia and became world-famous professors/researchers. As for the students at HYP who aren’t mega-geniuses, the best of these people go into politics or finance. Average students will typically recruit for tech or engineering positions. Bottom-tier students will usually end up in some journalism/marketing role. This has been the norm for years now. Source: an HYP graduate.
What is happening to this place?? Is this a finance forum, or not? Every other day, this same topic comes up. My ego can only handle it so much lmao, it’s getting too damn big.
But in all seriousness, it always boils down to doing what you love. Who cares what the “top students” are doing?? Do what you like and are good at, and get extremely skilled at it, and you will be handsomely compensated plus it will barely feel like work for you.
Personally, there’s no way in hell I would’ve pursued tech if I didn’t like math and logical problem solving. Just no way. I would’ve stuck with the IB path - it’s an awesome, tried-and-true career that leads to wealth as long as you put in hard work.
So seriously, have some confidence in yourself. I thought you guys were the ones who always say tech guys are nerdy. For example I make really good money for my age but my social life is severely lacking and I don’t really have any other hobbies because my free time is usually spent learning some new concept in software development. Meanwhile I know for a fact most of you IB guys party it up and have no trouble with the ladies. So the grass is always greener.
Edit: BTW pls don’t group all of us tech/quant ppl with insecure weirdos like OP. There are some straight up geniuses on my team that are also some of the most humble and kind ppl you will ever find