Trading from UIUC

1.) Switch to CS or ECE. If you can't do that, consider a double major in something a tad softer like Industrial Engineering, maybe Stats or Actuarial Science. You do need to crank out some As in hard-hitting math and stats courses though, and ideally need to become an excellent programmer in the process. 2.) Keep taking some finance classes. 3.) Graduate and go to a GETCO, Jump or Citadel, like so many other UIUC Engineering alumns.

Best of luck!

^^^ Ditto

I graduated from Baruch College. I received offers from both Jump and Citadel and I'm a trader at Jump now. I'm not going to lie to you, all the other traders on my desk either graduated from harvard, princeton or MIT. But if you are good and take some hardcore math classes as well as programming classes, you have a shot of getting in as well. You probably never even heard of Baruch, yet I made it here, so there is nothing that is impossible.

Thanks for the advice guys! And I'm currently a Fin major (you could have guessed) and I'm picking up a minor in CS. I really don't have the time to double major in anything because I didn't come in with any hours. But would you recommend the same advice if my number one goal was S&T at a BB? And since I brought that up, what are your thoughts on S&T at a BB vs something like GETCO, Jump, Citadel, etc.? Thanks again, I honestly appreciate this a lot.

Yes. I'd especially recommend the engineering advice for BB S&T. In the first place, Wall Street (at least S&T at a major NYC investment bank) has 2-3 times more STEM undergrads than finance undergrads. UIUC Finance is not at all competitive with UPenn Wharton, but UIUC Engineering beats the pants off of the Ivies and gives MIT and Stanford a run for their money.

If you want to work in Treasury for Allstate in Northbrook, IL, study finance. If you want to be a trader at GSAM, study CS. To be fair, GSAM will hire you as a desk strategist rather than a trading assistant, but the best route to wall street from UIUC runs through ECE, CS, or maybe another engineering discipline along with some finance courses. You can double-major in CS/Finance if the college of business will allow it, but a CS minor is not going to cut it.

Finance can get you to Chicago Trading Company or Wolverine or the like, but Chicago prop trading looks a little shakey these days TBH. To be fair, finance/accy gives you a better shot at IBD, especially at one of the Chicago branches or a RW Baird or William Blair. But if you want trading, you need to start from a really firm quantitative base in an industry that's been moving more quantitative over the past thirty years and now seems to be moving further into stats and systematic strategies territory. And the best way to do that from UIUC is an Engineering degree.

I'm not going to be the asshole who says a bright, motivated UIUC Finance grad can't make it to BB S&T. It's definitely possible, but it's hard as hell because the system is rigged against you. You're from a state school; they're (mostly) from Ivies (plus NYU, MIT, Stanford, and the occasional CMU/Amherst alumn). You're a finance major; their school doesn't even teach finance. They think you basically have a degree in CAPM and using financial calculators.

But the engineers will respect a UIUC CS degree. They have to. They went to some fricking liberal arts ivy, took 24 credit hours of programming courses, and call themselves CS majors- UIUC, Berkeley, and UT Austin students take closer to 80. That's part of the reason why UIUC outranks the ivies in Engineering. They know their job didn't require a finance degree to do well, and they're willing to hire you as someone from just as strong a program as theirs'.

Well, you asked for my opinion. I still think all of the students at UIUC are all about as smart as each other and that nobody is really better than anybody else. But at the risk of being a douchey Engineer, I am going to say that there is a clear route to BB S&T from Engineering, but the route is less clear from the College of Business. (Of course, there are a lot of finance majors working at Chicago prop shops.) The clearest route is ECE/CS-> Strats/Quant Analytics-> BB S&T (or trading at a hedge fund). This route also gives you more options for your career. If all the alpha gets squeezed out of the vanilla commodities and equities products, and engineer can handle corporate bonds and some of the less crazy exotics. As an engineer, you have the prereqs for an MFE. As an ECE or CS major, you have the coding background for doing stuff with Big Data or HFT. This is not a Stanford ORFE PhD, but it's as close as it gets in versatility at the undergrad level from UIUC.

Look into the requirements for switching majors to CS or CE, start taking Math 225, CS 173, and the calculus courses. Check out the engineering career fair, count the number of prop shops, hedge funds, and BB S&T groups recruiting, and compare that with the business career fair.

VandelayIndustries:

I'm not oblivious to the fact that UIUC isn't particularly the greatest school to land a trading job or internship from, but any input would be appreciated.

??? If you're a STEM major, UIUC is probably one of the top 5 or 10 options out there, for either undergrad or grad school. I can't imagine that translates poorly for S&T recruiting in Chicago.

And if you're an in-stater...it's a no brainer.

So far I think you've made a lot of good choices. If you're in-state, UIUC was worth turning down anything short of a top ten school for. (Heck, it's a ~top 40). You've started looking into Wall Street early. You chose a major that gives you a good shot at a well-paying middle-class job.

The only tweak I'd make here is having you take a long-hard look at ECE or CS. And I'd recommend an ECE or CS degree over a finance degree if you have to choose, although you can do just fine out of UIUC with a finance major. (I'm just not sure you'll make it to Wall Street.)

Again, if you take two CS courses next semester and get your business Calculus requirements out of the way via Math 221 and Math 231, you preserve your optionality to make a decision next semester.

If you make a decision this semester, you may also be able to get started on the Engineering physics sequence. (Physics 111 IIRC.) Physics may also qualify as an elective or gen ed for a business major, although it will lower your gpa.

I'm not saying this will be easy, but I think you can still graduate in 4 years. If not, my guess is that it will take something more like one more semester, maybe two, although it will be less painful at that rate and you may be able to pull off a double-major.

As a CS major going into finance, knowing what I know now, I'd have been borderline on adding a Finance major to a CS major. It's certainly worth the tuition and cost of living for a year; I'm not sure it's worth a year of work. So I'm not calling the work you've done in finance a sunk/lost cost if you go the five year route and double major.

CS WILL lower your GPA.

Banks do need to see a ~3.3 GPA to hire you.

does it really make sense to suddenly change gears and cram all these cs and math courses, perhaps using extra semesters?

while programming is clearly a useful skill, the probability of him successfully getting straight A's in a ton of math, stats, and cs classes that he is not used to and moreover landing a job in HFT at Getco or Citadel is pretty low

there are a lot of opportunities in business and finance that don't necessarily involve being a technical expert, and they can be just as rewarding.

IlliniProgrammer, I'm wondering why you think that the chicago prop scene is looking 'shakey'. Most of the top prop firms I've had superdays with are drawing kids that have offers at BB S&T (at least from the other candidates I've interviewed with). You make it seem like the prop scene is a fall back plan for those who can't make it to banking, but with most of the top firms paying a base of around 85k while only working 60 hours a week, it seems like a better route.

In regards to UIUC, if you're trying to do trading engineering is the route to take, in final rounds pretty much every kid had a background in engineering, math or CS (or a double major in one of the three with finance added in).

Thanks for the response, and to build off of engineering vs finance for a prop trading role, exit ops should definitely be considered. I can't say too much about going from trading to a MBA program, but I know a lot of traders with quantitative backgrounds who after a few years of trading got their masters in Computer Science, Applied Math, etc. If you do chose to go with the CS/Engineering, you will be much better poised to make your way into other fields than if you have a basic finance background. This way if you find out that you don't like trading, the industry becomes less profitable, or you are just a terrible trader, you will have many more options available.