Any hope for traders?
This week, I had a chance to meet a group of booth part-time mba students who are traders at top chicago prop firms and funds: Citadel/teza/drw/Getco/jump/imc. They are all very bright and doing quite well financially. Much to my dismay, they all said that they applied to HSW for full-time but got dinged! They opted for booth part-time since they're in chicago, and their firms agreed to pay for it. They all said that it's virtually impossible for traders to get into top schools now.
I had no idea it was this bad. Seriously, why do top schools hate traders so much?
intelligence is not a pre-req for being a successful trader. top schools know that. Booth PT is not terribly selective btw; if those guys got dinged at HSW FT, they got dinged at Booth FT as well.
prop traders r in a different intellectual league to some random b school bimbo thank you very much(and i am in banking surrounded by b school bimbos lol).
Yeah, this didn't make any sense. A successful trader at a top prop shop is a lot smarter than the average student at a top b-school. But mba admissions is not really about intelligence, once you cross a certain threshold. It's about pedigree, leadership, team work, demographics, "interesting" life experience, etc. And a lot of traders don't have the set of experiences and skillsets that b-schools prize.
Also, the vast majority of booth students were dinged at HSW, so the assertion that if one got dinged at HSW they also didn't get into booth is not that accurate.
Can't feel too bad for them. Free Booth + Top Prop = Pretty good deal.
All the guys I know at those shops are all extremely bright, so I don't think intelligence has much to do with it. More like being a trader has little value in the MBA world, and that makes sense to me.
This isn't that surprising. Top b-schools don't like traders because their experiene and skillset don't translate well into mba programs. This is especially true for those who work at prop shops. BB and large hedge fund traders have had more success at top mba admissions.
But don't feel bad for those guys. Working at a top chicago prop shop, making 300K+/year, and getting a free booth mba is a pretty good deal.
What Brady said. Plus the opportunity cost of doing an MBA full-time is absurd for those guys.
there're too damn fucking much of laid off guys from top shops and top BB desks now. you ain't special in this environment.
to start the 'occupy b schools by top prop traders' movement, im going to run against the argument that 'traders are not intelligent' seeing as im pretty sure i have a much better grasp of the macroeconomic structure and financial markets than just about anyone else who would be going in -- is THAT not useful? is it more useful to have a pricing analyst at general mills in your program bvecause they work in a team? im gonna end up at a top 10/top15 school and make whatever i need to have happen work out in the end but its annoying that we get kind of ';kicked' to the side...
investment bankers working in excel and repeatedly doing things over n over again for their assocs/VPs/MDs is much better?
Amen. I agree with everything you said. MBA admissions has become a joke.
traders are the smartest fucking people in the industry, hands down, because their bread and cheese depend on them knowing what the fuck they are doing and not their cock-smoking skills, which is IBD and sales.
If you are going by raw intelligence, maybe the Indian and Chinese students with high GMATs should take all the spots. Also traders are merely following their market and have the knowledge related to that area. It's not like they are experts in music of West Africa (few might be) or something random.
yes because being an expert in didgeridoo playing is definitely a pre req for a biz program :)
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