Stressing over lack of Sophomore Internship

Currently non-target math major (3.7 gpa) with some cs knowledge trying to get into quant strats. Have solid leadership experience but no freshman year internship. Can’t seem to land an offer (ideally risk or data science) and starting to panic a bit. Really love financial markets especially FX, but understand my lack of experience closes many doors in that arena. Would take literally anything closely related.

What I’ve realized is that I haven’t obtained many marketable skills and even though my major is applied maths, there is very little programming instruction to apply your ideas into reality. Graduating early and working my part time retail job has given me little time to work on independent projects and I’m starting to feel like my first two years of college has just been me going through the motions to get good grades.

Summer research opportunities are limited and I feel like almost every internship posting I apply to I am not qualified for. Any recommendations? Worst case scenario I spend the summer going back to what first drew me to finance which was my fascination of trading algorithms and random processes. Wish I could work with a professor on a research project but was a commuter student to save money my first 3 semesters so I haven’t gotten close to anybody. Literally any words or advice I’d appreciate it, stressing over internships while also taking a ton of credits this semester is really taking a toll on me.

Cheers,

Moping Mathematical Monkey

2 Comments
 

Honestly I'd quit the part time job and make recruiting a full time job. Quant shops/and data science stuff generally happens after banking but at this stage it's late for a role at a large bank doing anything you outlined. I would recommend going for SnT. You need to paint a stronger picture of why finance and get something on the resume. School investment fund. Investing on your own. Anything. There are also career sites dedicated to placing you for summers. Look into that. 

 

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