<p>Well, Thank you everyone for posting; this is really helpful.</p>
<p>@Arzachel: While it’s true that I do value the Ivy title, the alumni resources and education the college offers I do value equally, if not more. So I was wondering, do many students get interships through Duke’s career center? For me, I have no personal connections that I can take advantage of when getting internships… Do you know anything about internship opportunities Duke offers?</p>
<p>If you’re looking into becoming a quant, don’t expect to get to wall st. with just an undergrad degree… Most quants at top hedge funds are physics and pure-math PhD’s who did some pretty amazing stuff in their undergrad and grad years: a good portion of them did well on the Putnam. Keep in mind that quants are the backbone, and as of recently, the achilles heel of wall st. They do the real math that i-bankers can’t do. The reason economics isn’t really needed, but is useful, is because they assume that if you can get a PhD in something as abstruse as math, or physics, then you can easily learn the stuff requisite to guide the firm to making better investments. Obviously knowledge of how the market works is needed, but a degree in finance or economics isn’t.
With that in mind, i would look at the math departments of each as those are what matter more in terms of quant jobs.
As for the other stuff, like i-banking, consulting, etc., duke has an edge over cornell from what i hear, even though cornell is sometimes referenced–i think inappropriately–as a wall st. machine.</p>
<p>So Chaoticorder, you suggesting that Cornell would be better? If I were to go to Grad School, I think in that case Duke still has a good acceptance rate to top grad schools… is this correct?</p>