More top undergrads choosing Chicago over NYC
Over the past few years, more and more top undergrads from elite schools like harvard, MIT, princeton, stanford, etc., are turning down bulge bracket banks in NYC for elite prop trading shops and hedge funds in Chicago, such as Citadel, Getco, jump, drw. Will this trend only accelerate, or is it an anomaly due to the beating banking has been taking since late 2007?
I love it, whenever I see a post from Quantum, I can always expect a hard-on for Chicago, yet with no numbers to back up his claim.
Nothing like consistency.
this is apples to oranges. i have interviewed with prop shops. the people at the prop shops are for people who have a strong quantitative and computer background.
basically be the master of probability and know a few computer languages and you can work through interviews. but to say the people who are going to IBD/S&T are the same as the people applying to prop shops,
that's a load of horse shit. those IBD/S&T guys probably don't have the background to do all that probability and mental math, much less those propshop traders probably could give a shit about earning calls.
Look, if you're an "elite" graduate from a "top" school and want to be totally "baller", DON'T GO TO CHICAGO. YOU WILL HATE IT, AND CHICAGO WILL HATE YOU.
If you spend a few years in NYC and hate it, though, you might be a good fit for Chicago.
Why do you feel this way? There are plenty of graduates from "elite" schools who end up in Chicago, although it's a lot smaller than NYC of course. And the vast majority of those people fit in fine with the city.
empire state of mind - jay z . stop the hate
chicago is for people who got couldn't land offers from NYC
and for those uchicago and northwestern kids who got rejected from the ivy's.
don't people who accept offers at citadel, getco, drw, turn down BB S&T jobs in NYC?
god, you're a freaking idiot. getting a job at citadel, getco, or any of the other elite prop shops makes landing a gig at goldman look like mcdonalds.
do you mind telling which are the elite prop shops which are better than Goldman..i can only think of Jane street,drw..sorry for my ignorance
The last thing Chicago needs is cultural pollution from the "I'm better than you" crowd- especially when everyone gets hurt in the process. If you think you went to an elite school or want to be totally baller, you might be happier on the east coast. If you went to MIT but don't think that makes you smarter than a guy who went to DePaul, you might be happier in Chicago.
If the "I'm better than you" crowd moves to Chicago, I will have to change my plans to moving back to Milwaukee or (gulp- freezing cold) Minneapolis.
I interned at one of those places, and the only one that is better than GS S&T is Citadel, and even then only for people that are certain they want to be in trading.
Prop trading is one of the most stressful careers someone can have. Though some people succeed and make a lot of money quickly, many people fail, and having acquired no transferable skill set, these people have few options.
I think going to Chicago if you have an East Coast education is a smart move. An MBA from Booth will get you a job anywhere and after you're two years in Chicago you will have a great network in the Midwest. As far as Chicago being a place for people who couldn't get into NYC, that is total bullshit. NYC is a great city, but there are plenty of negatives to it.
DISCLAIMER: I'm from NYC and love it.
Spent a year in Chicago, I see why people like it, but it's definitely not for me. Too "Midwestern." The people that complain about elitism in NYC and love how people in the Midwest are nicer might love Chicago, but personally, I like/thrive off of the NYC attitude. I think IlliniProgrammer has it right. While you'll be able to find people like yourself, it won't be nearly as pervasive.
Geez, another Chi vs. NYC thread?
NYC people: it's not a matter of ability, it's a matter of preference.
Chi people: stop trying to validate your existence/interest in Chicago, you are doing fine. It's not very Midwestern of you, anyways.
dreamtheater, jane street and drw vs. goldman prop trading? are u serious? go troll somewhere else.
you have no idea how tough it is to get a job at a top prop shop like getco, jane street, drw, jump, optiver. WAY harder than goldman or any other BB. for example, GETCO is right behind RenTech and DE Shaw when it comes to selectivity.
jhoratio, chicago better than west coast?
As far as I'm concerned:
Low taxes+lockstep biglaw pay+low CoL+less soul-crushing work schedule=win.
Absurd taxes+lockstep biglaw pay+astronomical CoL+the most hours worked of any 1st tier market=lose.
For the rest of you, 3 out of 4 apply.
Anyway, Chicago beats the east coast by a slim margin and Chicago beats the West Coast by a mile.
Chicago beats the west coast? Lol. that's hilarious. this city is a fucking tundra for most of the year. i'll take SF, so cal over chicago any day of the week.
The city may be a fucking tundra but at least it's a cheap tundra. LA is an overpriced, smog-filled, suburban desert and SF is an overpriced mountain. Have fun living in what will be a failed state, er the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
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I hate going outside to do anything, I've been living "on the coast" of somewhere since I was 2 and I'm sick and tired of it-I'm ready to go inland for good and STAY THERE, Lake Michigan is pretty, I use something called AIR TRAVEL for vacationing, and I'd still rather have low taxes, low CoL, and a public infrastructure that isn't crumbling. And I'd rather not be hot and bothered all year in my studio flat I have to share with 4 other people all year.
I'll take NYC over the west coast (heck, I'd take Texas over the west coast) and Chicago over NYC. Nationwide lockstep payscale ftw
look, if i were at NYU i would be pretty bitter about living in the city too. i hope things work out for you, and you manage to move out to chicago.
Dude, I'm not bitter. Just jaded, cynical, and....oh who am I kidding? Of course I'm bitter.
But anyone that can do basic arithmetic can tell you that same pay+higher CoL=lower QoL.
guys, please also consider the ballerness of the different cities when deciding which one is better.
Everyone knows NYC > SF > LA > Chicago
this holymonkey guy is a bitter middle market banker who is stuck in chicago.
What's up with the assumptions? I'm still in college (for another week)
The Sixth Circle of Hell > NYC
I am perfectly willing to admit that I'm a bitter resident of NYC. Aside from Detroit, I'd be happy in nearly any other big city in the country.
I think Columbus, OH > NYC any day.
How about this, everyone in this thread is a fool? No city is "better" than another one. People like cities for a variety of different reasons. The OP asks a legit question and next thing you this thread goes to shit. Cali is great if you like sun and surf. If you like skiing and the great lakes then Chicago is nice. If you want to live in NYC then NYC is the best. I personally like Philadelphia a lot. Shitting on someone because they like XYZ really indicates to me the level, or lack thereof, of intelligence and maturity.
Majority opinion doesn't make it fact.
500 years ago the majority thought the sun revolved around the earth too. We clearly know this to be untrue.
AnthonyD,
I communicated the "it's a preference thing" argument earlier in this thread. No one listened. These people just want to masturbate.
cities ARE better than others. if you rank culture, entertainment, opportunities, diversity, restaurants, females, intellect...all the things that matter if you live in the real world instead of inside your own head. NYC comes out on top. no question.
common thread of people who think otherwise? those who cant handle the pressure. those who complain about smells. those who lament niceties. if you cant handle city living, by all means GO HOME. oh thats right, your best opportunity was the reason you came. whoops. hope you saved some money!
Every city has its strengths and weaknesses. Being a hillbilly at heart, I find NYC to be the sixth circle of hell. Other people (who I'm convinced must either be crazy or horribly uninformed) love it. :D
Again, if you come to NYC for any other reason than the fact that you have better opportunities here than you could get elsewhere, I think you're crazy. (You probably think I'm crazy for preferring a small town in WI or MI than NYC :D) There are a lot of people who can handle NYC- because they choose to have a job there- but still can't stand it. Not sure how many people enjoy working on a Navy base in Greenland, but folks up there can still handle it, too.Rankings are based on ones preference and opinion. I love art museums and history museums, but others might like sports and waterfront. Some people are single and want plenty of single hot women, others are married and want a short commute to the city. Rankings are based off of you're own opinion.
if you aspire to be an investment banker you think of working on Wall Street in New York City... unless you get hardon on tech.
example. no college kid workign his ass off in college to become an investment banker says I want to be an investment banker in Chicago.
thats like saying a kid playing football all four years in high school working his ass and saying when i graduate out of high school i want to play divison 2 football.
yes, there are some instances where elite kids at top schools do decide chicago over NYC... that's however 1 out of 10 kids. and it's probably cause the kid is from the midwest... not cause the "cost of living"... maybe he gets wet dreams about industrial coverage and wants to work with sick industrial companies or likes getting the fierce winds on his face
Today, I just want to retire when I'm 40 and head back somewhere in the Great Lakes.
blah blah blah. Whatever. I guess cost of living isn't of concern to you. Anyone with half a brain knows your income is only worth as much as what it can get you. We'll see who's ahead when you're drowning in student and credit card debt, and I'm shopping for my fourth vacation condo making half of what you make in Biglaw.
I can't stand people that think they're better than you because they're from or they live in New York. Newsflash guys, you're not that special.
this is more or less correct. i was one of the few people from my ivy undergrad who moved to chicago and was NOT from the midwest originally. A few of my best friends here were working at citadel and mckinsey; none of them were from the midwest either. They eventually all moved out, to nyc, boston, sf. The consensus among them was that chicago is great when you're straight out of college because you're not making that much money, and the cost of living is so much lower. But after a few years, they moved on to pursue better opportunities.
dude your from illinoisssss.
another example... you never hear a kid from the east/west coast saying I want to be an investment banker in the midwest.
The OP was making a comment about people going to Booth over NYC schools and then it boils down to NYC is king. Shut the hell up. God, reminds me of little children on the playground fighting over which dinosaur is better. A lot of people want to go into AM, trading, sales, PWM, PE, whatever. NYC is great for all these, but there are a lot of other areas. Arguing which city is better makes you sound like a freshman.
Oh, I would respect Illini, he actually works in the business and I would imagine is monumentally smarter and more mature than the majority of members on this site.
kdv
i have a bb job i'm starting in nyc this summer as a ft and i CANNOT WAIT to move to chicago. it's all personal preference. i can't stand nyc...
yea, i can see where your coming from.
I feel most of the girls I know prefer NYC, and the guys lean towards Chicago. I think NYC is more exciting but I probably can save up more money working in Chicago.
West coast has media, debt, restructuring, sponsors, pe, venture capital, and of course tech and healthcare.
midwest has ugly and cold cow pushers and generalist + middle market firms.
West coast 1 midwest 0
From a quality of life viewpoint, almost no one who goes to the west coast from the east comes back. They love California that much. Meanwhile, everyone in the midwest is desperate to move out. Chicago is great for prop trading but in IBD it is horrible as a city and its horrible as a city in general compared to anything in California.
California is awesome. One of my good friends was a trader here in chicago and he moved out to L.A. back in 2008. Absolutely loves it. He's actually gonna move to NYC in a few months for a BB prop trading gig.
Unless all your family and friends are in the midwest, or you just have a total hard-on for chubby midwestern girls and big lakes, no reason to take chicago over norcal or socal.
Actually, the Midwest has a large pharma/life sciences market. Sounds like you're just talking about of your ass (and this is coming from someone who would rather live in SF than anywhere else--beach+mountains yes please).
But yeah, the only reason why I am working in Chicago is b/c I grew up in the Midwest, and all of my family and friends are here. I worked in NYC one summer, and it was fun, but I do not have the urge to go live there at all. It's 3rd on my list. Just proves THIS IS ALL SUBJECTIVE, there is no argument.
Academically University of Chicago is a superior school compared to New York University!
Columbia, Cornell > Univ of Chicago
Not when it comes to math/economics
That said, every school has its strengths and weaknesses, there's a lot of ways to rank schools, and comparing schools is almost as futile as comparing cities.
Sure, Cornell and Columbia beat U Chicago. I love how you bash Chicago for being in the middle of nowhere and a bunch of cow pushers, but Cornell, which is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by cows beats a metropolitan city.
All this talk about chubby chicks, more good looking chicks, etc in NYC is lame as shit. If you have game you can pull good looking chicks anywhere. I imagine all this talk about good looking girls in NYC tells me you all hang out in the corner jerking off to the fact that you are analysts while some bank teller with the same business card you have is taking home tail.
Why would someone dislike NYC apart from cost of living issues ?
BTW, Quantum, what is your deal with NYC man ? I went through some of your previous posts and it seems like you have a genuine hatred for the city, why ? I can't understand why someone would hate on a city so vehemently. Are you on a mission to single-handedly elevate Chicago above NYC in terms of prestige ?
I don't know about quantum, but I'm not trying to elevate Chicago. In fact, the last thing I want is for people to think Chicago is "baller" and start spreading NYC's problems back home. I like Chicago a heckuvalot more and enjoy trying to defuse some of the NYC-centric attitudes on the forum, but I don't think Chicagoans would want to encourage "elite" people who are totally "baller" to come to Chicago over NYC. It is best if the cultural arrogance, odd behavior towards strangers, and decrepit infrastructure stays where it belongs in New York. :D
Again, if you graduated from an "elite" school and are "better" than all of the peons out there, please go to NYC or maybe Boston, where you will enjoy being "elite" more. If you graduated from MIT but don't think you're necessarily better than the kid who graduated from SUNY, then by all means, please come to Chicago.
Your generalization is such a hyperbole that I can't tell if you're being facetious or not. Graduates from elite schools tend to have a high opinion of their abilities and potential. This is true whether they live in NYC, Chicago, or any other city. The yuppie professional crowd in lincoln park/lakeview/gold coast/west loop is just as pretentious and image conscious as their counterparts in Manhattan.
he's stuck in chicago so he feels inferior to the NYC and SF urban kids.
Also why are we arguing about colleges. This is about cities. Just look at property values, there is a reason that NYC and Sf have about equal costs. Its popular and people want to live there unlike chicago the barren wasteland.
pharma life science is not an IBD group. this is ibd forum. retard.
You said the West Coast has healthcare. I was just pointing out that some of the world's biggest players in that space are in fact in Indiana and Illinois. And you're kind of wrong with your statement "pharma/life sciences is not an IBD group." Some banks have groups within the overall healthcare group (split up Life Sciences/Pharma, and HC Services & IT). Again, you talk out of your ass, which is probably why you resort to calling people "retard."
H.E, I wouldn't worry about him, his user name is off of a video game that is well known among the virgin crowd.
I'm in Chicago also cause all my friends/family are here. I think the vibrancy + how busy it is in NY would make it a lot of fun, especially for someone w/out a 9-5 who could find things to do at 3am.
However I think it'd be pretty tough to go there only semi knowing a few guys from college who would be working 70 hours/week at other jobs. Will probably try to get out there eventually once I start looking for jobs, but want to start w/ trading, so good chance of staying in Chicago for even longer.
Will just settle for trying to visit there for a week or so every year I guess.
If I'm working 70 hours a week (pretty normal biglaw hours), the LAST THING I want to do is go out. Get me a decent bottle of white wine, some cheese, and some ice cream, and I'm going home, where I'll proceed to drink in peace in my pajamas.
If people want to leave, that's great. Fewer people=cheaper real estate=cheaper rent=more disposable income=win. Heck, I'll take Houston before I move back out to the west coast.
Going back to the OP's post, I'm pretty sure that the applicant pool between top prop shops like getco, drw, jump, and bulge bracket banks/hedge funds are different. college seniors who interview for goldman banking, blackstone, bain capital, etc., are not even looking at prop firms. the latter will attract those with a strong programming background and draws heavily from schools like MIT, carnegie mellon, stanford, berkeley. So it's not accurate to make the claim that Chicago is drawing a lot of top talent away from NYC.
I work at a boutique in SF and I can guarantee you people from BB's everywhere in NYC try to interview just to get to the city. Its up to preference but a LOT OF PEOPLE tend to want to go to cali and for obvious reasons. I dont' think midwest is even close in comparison. NY vs CALI is more of a close call.
Illini, you points are fair but Quantum has been saying crap like this for over a year:
http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/just-moved-to-nyc-from-la
[quote=SAC]Illini, you points are fair but Quantum has been saying crap like this for over a year:
//www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/just-moved-to-nyc-from-la[/quote] Ok. But lots of people who don't live in NYC find the NYC-centric attitudes a little absurd. Quantum isn't anything new or strange or uncommon. In fact, he's probably like most people in the country to be saying that lots of smart people (not everyone) go other places than New York.
NYC has its strengths; Chicago has its strengths. Both cities can attract the best and brightest; NYC probably attracts more, but Quantum's point is that Chicago might be doing better today than it was doing 10 years ago in attracting smart people. I mean, the city has three major exchanges and more derivatives are getting standardized, so it's natural for a city like Chicago to be doing better right now than it was before those derivatives started getting standardized.
Most of you guys are out of your mind. All I know is after my IBD stint in NYC is over, I'm definitely going to try to get a PE job in SF or LA. I need the sun, beach and mountains for my long-term health. LA is definitely a dirty ass city, but so is NYC. SF has nice weather, cool people and great ski/snowboarding close by. To those of you who think Chicago or midwest has skiing, haha, that's a funny joke. That being said, it's definitely just personal preference and this is a retarded argument. For me, I like the idea of being at the financial center of the world to get that competitive career experience, followed by a more enjoyable lifestyle in norcal or socal. I'd rather enjoy my money on the west coast rather than the east coast. And this is coming from someone who grew up in the midwest.
I'm with you on this one. I would like to live in NYC for about 5 years to make money and enjoy the city and then move to so cal to enjoy the weather and lifestyle. And close proximity to vegas is a huge plus for me.
People are free to have preferences, but I personally cannot fathom living in Chicago long-term.
everyone agrees CA rules. the only midwest trolls here are the illinois and chicago guys who are stuck there and can't go to either nyc or sf.
they'll probably end up at piper jaffray in minneapolis and talk about how great midwest is hahahahah
NYC has many people who are best in class; so does Chicago; so do the CA cities. In any case, Illinois's budget crisis means they may have to raise taxes to 4.5%; CA and NYC both have double-digit taxes.
+1. Low taxes and Skadden Chicago ftw. Less work than Skadden NY, same pay.
I lived in Cali before. It's overrated.
I lived in the midwest for 7 years, it's probably fairly rated. Half of my family live in Manhattan and I will be living here for a couple years working, and I think it's probably somewhere between fairly and over rated. I also lived in southern california for 6 years, and sorry, it's underrated as far as I'm concerned. What up now trick.
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According to your profile, you're not even born yet, rendering your opinion useless.
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