Barclays S&T Reputation

So I'll address your question in two parts: Barclays overall and the best trading desks. This will become a bit preachy but bear with me lol

1. Barclays overall

This is a difficult question to answer because of the variability in how good certain desks are. Barclays is a solid S&T BB. It's not up there with GS/MS/JP or (to a lesser extent) BAML as shown by trading revenues, but there isn't a significant difference in terms of how successful you'll be between the same desk at Barclays and the others IMO.

2. Best trading desks

Equities - structuring, derivatives, and some of the quant desks have some very sharp people. Conventional wisdom applies here that you should avoid places like cash equities

Fixed income - this is Barclays' bread-and-butter esp after absorbing Lehman. Its HY desk is one of the best around, and I heard EM and distressed are quite good as well. These are the most selective and coveted spots on the floor.

Speaking more generally on S&T, the issue with this is that the top desks now will not always be top. Will distressed and structuring desks stick around for the next 5 years when you become associate? Absolutely - it's almost designed not to be automated. Will HY stick around the way it is now? I don't know. I've heard the market size has shrunk significantly over the next decade and automation is in its infancy.

All this to say that you need to balance what the bank is good at versus what will be the future. No one can predict the future, and I'm still early in my S&T career, but it's better to balance the risk/reward when you're early in your career. Look at technical desks, distressed desks, structuring desks, desks that are focused on automating, rather than being automated. These are desks where you learn to do hard things, and even though they might not be the 'top' desks, they're gonna stick. A quanty major/minor probably goes a long way for these desks, but they're probably not necessary (and if you are a CS major reading this, try to pivot into tech or quant trading).

I know some of this may freak you out, but I promise if you're good you'll be fine this coming summer. There are still many good seats, but you'll just have to grind to get on them. And based on you asking this question, I'm sure you're thinking ahead more than most.Best of luck