I know this is a selective job to get, but I had no idea it was THIS selective. My cousin is a top econ major at an elite college (harvard/yale/princeton/stanford) with internships at both McKinsey and a top investment banking group. He has easily gotten 2nd round interviews at consulting, PE, and others. However, he did not even get an initial 1st round interview at Citadel.
What type of students get offers at Citadel's investment&trading analyst program? Are they like DE Shaw and only take math/cs geniuses?
that is depressing as fuck, holy fucking shit you ruined my day and probably several more ones
A lot of what they do is HFT, so it makes sense that they'd be looking for math/cs guys over econ, no matter their pedigree. A guy like that can crank out spreadsheets and powerpoints like a champ, look good to clients, do financial statement analysis, etc. But he can't optimize a c++ program to shave a millsecond off the execution time. He can't tweak the linux kernel and customize the tcp/ip stack to minimize the number of packets flying through the network. He can't write assembly code to eek out just a bit more efficiency than the c++ compiler.
So, I wouldn't conclude that it's more hyper-competitive than say, McK or the PE shops your cousin had gigs at; it's just a different skill-set. Amongst the math/cs guys, it's probably as competitive to land this gig as it was for your cousin to land the McK gig with his econ background. They are going to be looking for CS kids from MIT, Stanford, U of I - Champagne, Carnegie, Berkely, etc.
Citadel's ITAP program is roational and not just high-frequency. After you finish your rotation you get assigned to a desk, such as macro, long/short equity, rates, credit, energy, etc. The FTAP program on the other hand, is much more technical and recruits mostly CS/engineering types from MIT/stanford/berkeley/carnegie mellon/illinois
I don't think Citadel give two bits of shit whether your cousin worked at McKinsey or at an IB. As djfiii says, you gotta be very strong quant so maths/CS/engineering. Anyone with a history degree can make .ppt slides for McKinsey.
I know three recent graduates that have worked for/are currently working for Citadel (classes of '10 and '11). Two were math majors that were on the US International Math Olympiad team and one completed a bachelors and masters in 4 years in computer science with a bunch of other technical minors. All three went to HYPS. I'm not saying Citadel doesn't take economics/business majors, but from what I've seen, it's definitely not the norm.
The elite college aspect is less important to CIG.
While finance/market-related, econ is a humanities major and closer to history than to math.
Strongly disagree with this. The econ major still requires college level math courses in multivariable calculus, linear algebra, statistics.
From what my friend said and what I know of him, Citadel want high gpa, computer savy smart quants. I never got an interview with them, but I believe you have to go through some type of test as well. Citadel is hard, but not any harder than what you listed PE, McK, etc. Citadel just looks for a specific skill set. Polish from an IVY is probably not as high on the list as quant ability.
Depends on the school. Either way, it's pretty clear that CIT concluded that math / cs folks are better prepared for the analytical rigor they expect out of their analysts. It's probably easier / quicker to teach a rockstar math / cs student what they need to know about markets, than it is to teach an econ major what they need to know about math / cs.
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