Summer Intern Pay

I work at a proprietary trading firm in Chicago. We compete with the top trading firms and investment banks for talent. We recently made an offer for a summer internship spot and while he didn't come right out and say it I got the feeling that he thought our offer was a little low. This is for a heavy quantitative position analyzing tick data and other high frequency strategies. Does anybody know what students from top-tier schools get paid for a summer spot? I specifically want to know for Chicago, not New York.

Thank you.

11 Comments
 

You should offer as competitively as a BB IB bank. 70k prorated, but since it's a heavy quant prop trading firm... maybe something along the lines of 80-90k prorated or perhaps a 30-35/hr

 

Basically what jc said, BB IB and even many MM IB is about 70k prorated, but since this is a highly quantitative role, it should be about $85k prorated. So for the three months, it should be around $21k.

Array
 

Only fair to follow-up. He did accept our offer which was far lower than what you are all suggesting. I'm not sure if you are basing this on NY summer pay which I know is much higher. I don't want to give the exact amounts but it was less than $3k/month. He did tell us that he was offered a little bit more at a different firm but thought that our position was the better learning opportunity and he really liked what he saw from our firm.

Thanks for the replies.

 
Best Response
zeropower^ No idea what the people were on about above either. Granted, i've never worked in NY, but if it's anything like London, interns do NOT get the same amount of pay prorated, as they obviously don't have the same responsibilities as a FT employee. 2/3 to 3/4 of FT prorated pay sounds fair for an intern.

I have no idea about prop shops or buyside, but at least in MS, JPM, GS and Barcap interns get paid 1st year salary prorated. Plus relocation bonus of 1 or 2k (depending on the firm) if you're not from the UK. So around 8-10.5k for 10 weeks, so roughly 4.5k-6k per month in dollar terms (4.3 weeks in a month) I've worked at 2 BBs myself and my 3 roommates are all in BBs and it was like that for them as well, so it's likely that all BBs are doing this now. No idea about NYC though, but I'm assuming there's a similar system?

 

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