Target schools for elite WS prop trading firm

[Anonymous]

Gretchen, stop trying to make Lower Ivies happen. It's not going to happen.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, Tower Research is super random to pick out. Why not go with the big guns: RenTech, HRT, Jane Street, Citadel, Two Sig, etc.

RenTech is unique in that they mostly hire PhDs, and almost never undergrads. Maybe some geniuses from MIT get a call out of undergrad but that’s it. The rest are pretty standard with hiring: Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Duke, Caltech, and top CS/Math programs like Berkeley, CMU, UIUC, UT, NYU, UMich, Georgia Tech, etc.

Just look at the leadership of these top firms for your answer. RenTech is run by an MIT grad. HRT is potentially the most profitable firm, and they're run by an MIT grad, a Duke grad, and a Harvard grad. Citadel is run by a Harvard grad. Two Sig is run by a Princeton grad and a Stanford grad. Jane Street doesn't have a hierarchal structure so no clear leadership. But it's HPSM and Duke at the top leadership for all these firms, so you can bet they hire a lot out of those schools. And then you'll get other smart kids along the way from similar top schools.

+1 people act like this stuff changes... it's the same top schools for most industries

You're just making stuff up that seems to make sense to you. Look at the bios of employees on almost all websites that offer them and you'll find that it's a wide variety of colleges they hire from.

Top firms want smart, capable people and will take them from wherever they can get them. The only reason there are more from elite colleges is because those colleges get first pick of smart capable high school students, not because those colleges offer something their safety schools don't.

[Anonymous]

UVA actually places pretty well for D.E. Shaw, a famous NYC hedge fund (the one Bezos worked at before Amazon). It leads the pack of non-Tier 1 schools for these firms (roughly non-Brown/Dartmouth Ivies + MIT + Stanford + UC Berkeley + NYU solely due to location, same reason it's also on Tower's list). Per-capita metrics are irrelevant because these hedge funds only select the best of the best. T25 schools ranked by how many they feed into D.E. Shaw (LinkedIn data):

1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Columbia
4. Stanford
5. Princeton
6. Tie between MIT and Cornell
7. UC Berkeley
8. Penn
9. NYU

massive drop-off

11. UVA
12. Tie between UMich, Carnegie Mellon, UChicago
13. Tie between Brown, Notre Dame, Duke
14. UCLA
15. Tie between Dartmouth, USC, Northwestern, Caltech
16. Georgetown
17. Vanderbilt
18. WashU St. Louis
19. Tie between Johns Hopkins and Rice
20. Emory

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:UVA actually places pretty well for D.E. Shaw, a famous NYC hedge fund (the one Bezos worked at before Amazon). It leads the pack of non-Tier 1 schools for these firms (roughly non-Brown/Dartmouth Ivies + MIT + Stanford + UC Berkeley + NYU solely due to location, same reason it's also on Tower's list). Per-capita metrics are irrelevant because these hedge funds only select the best of the best. T25 schools ranked by how many they feed into D.E. Shaw (LinkedIn data):

1. Harvard
2. Yale
3. Columbia
4. Stanford
5. Princeton
6. Tie between MIT and Cornell
7. UC Berkeley
8. Penn
9. NYU

massive drop-off

11. UVA
12. Tie between UMich, Carnegie Mellon, UChicago
13. Tie between Brown, Notre Dame, Duke
14. UCLA
15. Tie between Dartmouth, USC, Northwestern, Caltech
16. Georgetown
17. Vanderbilt
18. WashU St. Louis
19. Tie between Johns Hopkins and Rice
20. Emory

Those are universal targets. For more quant-y HFs (not Bridgewater), Carnegie Mellon is always a target. UChicago, Brown, and Dartmouth are also targets.

[Anonymous]

I didn't go to any of these schools and have had an incredibly lucrative and successful career on WS. If you have worked there you know its not your education.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The form is pretty basic and there is no way they are not looking for representation beyond a few schools. Those schools likely just have on-campus initial interviews arranged by their recruiting team or have in the past (and they just changed the title and a few specifics on an old job post). I've heard quant, fintech, and big tech intern and new grad hiring is going to be down, so good luck to all the applicants!

Having on-campus hiring and being a target school makes a huge difference in getting the interview and the job. That's one of the biggest perks of going to top schools.

Anonymous wrote:Definitely not representative of WS as a whole. Notably missing Dartmouth, Northwestern, Penn/Wharton.

Dartmouth and Wharton are particularly known for investment banking, not quantitative trading. Neither having amazing CS programs. Surprised to not see Penn though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid was looking for a business program.

I've heard a lot about IB target or consulting target, but never heard of trading target lol

Trading is more meritocratic. Being a super-smart math wiz from MIT or Duke will only help a little compared to being the same caliber from UMD or UVA

Perhaps for Duke, but MIT makes a big difference just off the bat with interviewers. Of course it's irrelevant if you bomb the interview, but that school holds a great degree of respect among engineers/CS, moreso than even Stanford, Harvard, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I didn't go to any of these schools and have had an incredibly lucrative and successful career on WS. If you have worked there you know its not your education.

For success once you get in, maybe, and even then it can matter when moving firms and even promotions.

To get in though? You better be at a target school because otherwise, you won't even get an interview without amazing connections.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://www.tower-research.com/open-positions/?gh_jid=4360111

CalTech, Carnegie-Mellon, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, MIT, NYU, Princeton, Stanford, University of California (Berkeley), U Chicago, U Illinois, Yale

But where is Northeastern?

[Anonymous]

According to USNWR, UVA CS ranks equal to Rice, Northwestern, and UChicago. It ranks above Northeastern and VTech and .1 peer assessment point below Brown. Considering that there is some confidence interval about these results, there’s probably not much difference between those rated the same or slightly above/below. UVA may not be CMU, but for instate, it’s a solid, economically-efficient choice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:According to USNWR, UVA CS ranks equal to Rice, Northwestern, and UChicago. It ranks above Northeastern and VTech and .1 peer assessment point below Brown. Considering that there is some confidence interval about these results, there’s probably not much difference between those rated the same or slightly above/below. UVA may not be CMU, but for instate, it’s a solid, economically-efficient choice.

Northeastern's 2019 peer assessment undergraduate reputation score was 3.3

Don't have the unlocked 2023 data but no reason to assume it's any different given NEU's ranking has not fluctuated much since then, unlike its ranking from 2009 to 2014 (ranked 96 to 49) and the ranking of Northwestern (NU) over all time

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:According to USNWR, UVA CS ranks equal to Rice, Northwestern, and UChicago. It ranks above Northeastern and VTech and .1 peer assessment point below Brown. Considering that there is some confidence interval about these results, there’s probably not much difference between those rated the same or slightly above/below. UVA may not be CMU, but for instate, it’s a solid, economically-efficient choice.

Northeastern's 2019 peer assessment undergraduate reputation score was 3.3

Don't have the unlocked 2023 data but no reason to assume it's any different given NEU's ranking has not fluctuated much since then, unlike its ranking from 2009 to 2014 (ranked 96 to 49) and the ranking of Northwestern (NU) over all time

Wow. A 3.3! That’s embarrassingly low……

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I didn't go to any of these schools and have had an incredibly lucrative and successful career on WS. If you have worked there you know its not your education.

For success once you get in, maybe, and even then it can matter when moving firms and even promotions.

To get in though? You better be at a target school because otherwise, you won't even get an interview without amazing connections.

I don't understand why people pull statements like this out of thin air and expect us to believe it when it's so easy to refute. Anyone can go on LinkedIn and see that there are many, many people who didn't go to a "target school" but somehow managed to start their career at one of the "elite WS prop trading firms". No, they did not all have "amazing connections".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How is Columbia on there? It’s a fake Ivy.

They won't take your dumb kid. The kids probably a cuck, you just don't know yet.

[Anonymous]

I went to UT Austin and got interviews at a decent number of prop shops in Chicago. I started off in a very quant-heavy major and switched halfway to something a little less quantitative. I had top placements at several national-level trading competitions, though. I know several CS or math majors from my undergrad who had internships and offers from some of the top prop shops as well.