This Senior in College Needs Your Advice
I've known that this site exists, and that it would be a valuable resource for me, but was just too lazy to get in and start accumulating knowledge. I think my main hesitation was that I have no chance of going into investment banking given my school (rank ~50 state school). That being said, I have a few things going for me:
-Math and Econ student with a 3.8 gpa. I've taken a lot of econometrics and statistics courses (with one graduate level stat course)
-I Did a quantitative competition last summer conducted by WorldQuant, and I placed in the top 20 of 500 with several strategies that generated 2.0+ sharpe ratio. They offered me a part time job where I develop strategies for them whenever I have time, and get paid a small stipend. They offered it to 50 people so it's not that exclusive.
-I borrowed $50k from my parents' retirement to invest in biotech companies starting around last September. I bought a combination of options and equities (but not at all diversified). I mostly did a lot of research and came to conclusions using whatever information I could get (like using Google Trends for ex.) Anyway, my portfolio has gone from $60k (10k of my own money) to $190k at the moment. I am not sure if that even sends a positive signal. The only way to generate those kinds of returns is to take on stupid levels of risk.
-Some research experience, and I won a few other competitive activities (like mathematical modeling competition at my school which is decent in quantitative subjects). Nothing here is totally relevant to the kinds of things hedge funds look for. I did not have an internship this summer so that might hurt me.
I am absolutely addicted to doing the research, listening to the bearish case and bullish case and placing bets on this. I like to prove that the bulls are wrong or the bears are wrong by making money off of them. I can't really see myself doing any other job. If I don't break in, I'm considering just living off of my portfolio and continuing the investments.
If anybody has any ideas on how to talk about my experiences and how to get started in breaking into this field, I'd appreciate it. Should I take the GMAT and report that score? (I took the BAT and got 99th percentile, but I hear it's not important). Should I just aim to get into a good business school?
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