Importance of Undergrad GPA at Funds?
Hi WSO, currently an undergrad sitting at around a ~3.6 GPA at a semi target. Was wondering if funds care much about GPA as low as mine and if it will truly be a big deal when trying to find a job. Some bad test scores came back and I started to worry. Thanks.
Hi Warren's Buffet, whoops, looks like nobody chimed in here.... maybe one of these discussions below is relevant:
I hope those threads give you a bit more insight.
For the fundamental shops that do structured recruiting, that'll probably be a screen-out, unfortunately. If you're CS/math/stats gunning for quant, shouldn't matter as much (I think). For other funds that recruit on an as-needed basis, I honestly can't say. And if you know someone on the inside, then of course academic credentials/experiences don't matter. Know at least one of these in my undergrad.
I've found that quant firms filter quite hard on GPA (roughly 3.8 seems to be the cut off).
Interesting. You might be right, my experience is very limited. The only anecdotes are that I know one CS person at Two Sigma that's a little lower than 3.8. I do know that Citadel QR and Trading seem pretty tough on GPA. I went in for an interview sophomore year for QR, looking at the list of candidates they had on the wall I'd venture to guess no one had below a 3.9 out of the undergrad candidates at the time. So maybe it varies by firm and role?
Can you provide some more color on knowing someone at a fund? I have two strong connections at a >$10B fund that have been mentoring me (ideally that will continue into banking). I know that this is a significant positive for me, but how important will my GPA be?
Yes, may vary by firm- Citadel, Shaw, and Bridgewater were the ones I had in mind.
Do Shaw and Bwater screen that hard? Have been deep in their processes before, but didn't get a sense of how tight their screening criteria were. In fact, 3+ years back Bwater had flyers around campus saying something like, "Don't have a 4.0? No problem" (as if they were relatively GPA-agnostic). Maybe that was just a marketing ploy.
I interned in a quant role at Shaw, and everyone I knew well in the Shaw class had high GPAs in tough majors at top schools. For people who posted their GPAs on LinkedIn, they were also strong across the board. Not certain if it is a result of a hard screen, but my best guess is having a low GPA would be a considerable disadvantage.
For Bridgewater, I have a friend who works in the quant effort there and he found their selection process to be unnecessarily elitist, where they almost exclusively recruited high GPA students from a small set of target schools.
My Citadel recruiter told me that they roughly have a 3.8 GPA cut off for the QR role. Through the interview process, however, it seems like they cared about the resume/background much less than the other firms I interviewed at.
Bridgewater used to have posters saying they only wanted 4.0 students. They were very obnoxious
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