I'm currently enrolled as a 2nd year PhD student at a top but non-ivy school (one of CMU, UIUC, UW Seattle, UMichigan). I'm strongly considering quitting with a Masters after this semester and I'm interviewing with several top HFT firms (including HRT and Cit. Sec.), as well as GE return offer from FB and a verbal offer from Apple. (Though to be honest, so far I'm kinda getting my ass kicked by the HRT/Cit. Sec. interview questions compared to FAANG 😂) I decided I wanted to drop out after the first year in school because I was miserable, but now that I have in-person courses & events again, I'm second-guessing the decision and wondering whether I should try to stay and do a PhD in ML and try to become a quant. researcher instead. I have no long-term interest in academia whatsoever, but I think the math/stats problems are usually cooler than software engineering. The roles I'm currently interviewing/have offers for are more like Core Dev, compiler engineering, etc. So I guess I'm curious: Is a PhD from a target non-ivy school good enough to get interviews for quant roles? Or is it much more competitive than SWE roles at the same firms? Does being a quant pay enough more than SWE that spending 4 years finishing a PhD is worth it? Do you have to be significantly smarter to be a quant than an SWE? If I'm struggling with top SWE interviews, perhaps I'm not good enough to be a successful quant anyway #HRT #jumptrading #citadelsecurities #optiver
Quants are much smarter than SWE usually in.my opinion , more competition , if you want to be filthy stinking rich early then quant If you are ok with being upper middle class for a few years and rising the ladder with time to be very rich ( which you will probably do if you are GE material ) then swe
There are a *lot* more top PhD graduates than entry-level quant positions at these firms. If you manage to snag a SWE offer (especially one on a team with trading impact) you should take it without hesitation.
If you already think about quitting, please quit and go make money and live happily ever after. I dropped out of a PhD program and then somehow joined another program (in one of the schools you mentioned) 😂. Worst decision ever. My hypothetical RSUs 3-4x in value already. Just quit 😂
No idea why you keep mentioning non-ivy phd. Ivys suck ass at grad school for CS. The top ones are Stanford/MIT/CMU/Berkeley
Mentioned it because ime trading firms target good math/stats schools more than good cs schools for quant roles, and my school is pretty meh for math/stats but good for cs. But fair enough, I suppose Stanford/Berkeley/MIT are top math schools and still not Ivies technically
Is a PhD from a target non-ivy school good enough to get interviews for quant roles? Or is it much more competitive than SWE roles at the same firms? Yes and yes. They hire less quants with higher bar. Does being a quant pay enough more than SWE that spending 4 years finishing a PhD is worth it? It depends. You may be able to have your own order book and pnl by being a quant. But SWEs can not. Do you have to be significantly smarter to be a quant than an SWE? If I'm struggling with top SWE interviews, perhaps I'm not good enough to be a successful quant anyway The bar is not quite the same for two different roles. Maybe you are good at one but not good at another. My general suggestion is that you could prepare math/stat/ml stuffs and then just apply for quant intern roles of these companies again.
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What’s GE return offer?
They haven't given numbers yet (because it's FRL not vanilla FB so they actually have to match me to a headcount for next year, according to my recruiter). Should get the formal offer within a week or 2
Good luck! I was asking what the acronym GE stands for