<p>I really don’t know a lot about the PAM program. I am merely suggesting it to you as an option for a self-described “weak” math student who is determined to go into the financial sector. </p>
<p>However, I cannot stress this enough - if you go into a quantitative field - you must have challenged yourself in math. There is one frequent poster here, who graduated ILR - he chose to challenge himself with upper level econ courses. That’s the type of thing we look for – he didn’t just take the minimum ILR requirements and then fill the rest with easy classes. You can do that type of thing in PAM if you choose, but at least it’s not a requirement, so if you aren’t doing well in it, you can drop the class during the add/drop period and it won’t show up on your transcript. </p>
<p>I own a “boutique” investment firm with a partner I met in b-school. We both started our careers at one of the huge IB firms. We don’t hire too many recent undergrads at our firm. We generally recruit from the IB firms, because we think they offer great training and background, but we do hire some “newbies” and Cornell students are valued here. I can only speak for my firm; we look for the whole package - creative thinkers, great analytic skills, strong interpersonal skills and strong quantitative skills. We have a tremendous fiduciary responsibility towards our clients and strength in conceptual and practical mathematics is extremely important to us and many others in our industry. We just cannot afford mistakes in that area.</p>