Help me choose for CS and math for quant finance

College Search & Selection
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Here are the results I have received:

1.) Pitt: Accepted (Chancellors Full-Ride Scholarship Finalist, 64k merit)

2.) Penn State EA: Accepted (Schreyer Honors College, 25k merit)

3.) Stanford REA: Deferred

4.) Georiga Tech EA: Accepted (Gold Scholar, 84k merit) - basically instate tuition

5.) U Mich Ann-Arbor EA: Accepted

6.) Vanderbilt: Accepted (Crescere Aude scholars, Mosaic)

7.) Northeastern: Accepted (144k merit, honors program)

8.) Case Western: Accepted (162k merit)

9.) Johns Hopkins: Accepted

10.) Rice: Accepted (Trustee Distinguished Scholarship, 100k merit)

11.) Northwestern: Accepted

12.) Carnegie Mellon: Accepted

13.) Duke: Likely Letter → Accepted

14.) Cornell: Likely Letter → Accepted

15.) Columbia: Likely Letter → Accepted (C.P Davis Scholar)

16.) Dartmouth: Waitlist - (Declined my spot)

17.) UPenn: Accepted

18.) Yale: Accepted

19.) Princeton: Waitlist

20.) Harvard: Waitlist

21.) Stanford: Deferred → Rejected :frowning:

Overall, I am very happy with the decisions (the Stanford one did hurt quite a bit), though I obviously got very lucky with the others. However, I am also not sure where to go, mostly because of how expensive college is.

I’ll probably end up studying CS and Math because I am interested in Quant Finance. And even though it’s probably the highest paying career, I am still not sure what the best choice will be since I am not going to get any aid and college is extremely expensive.

On top of that, I may do a master’s degree (probably in stats), and that may also be quite expensive, especially if I can’t somehow get it paid for by the school (TA, or something like that), or by a company. I am honestly quite lost, any guidance would be greatly appreciated!

In terms of locations/fit/etc, I only really care about going to whatever school that will give me the best value for money, ig in terms of best job opportunities for the cost I end up paying.

Georiga Tech kinda stands out since their great for cs, and it will be relatively cheaper, however, during scholars weekend I genuinely did not feel that it was the right place for me. If I end up going there I would need to get a masters degree from an ivy to get into quant finance (from my research thus far, its quite an elitest field, and understandably so, but maybe I’m wrong?).

Equivalent to that option, would be an Ivy with a 4+1 bs/ms program, if I get the masters for free/discounted (from TA’ing), but I’m assuming thats quite hard to do.

As you can probably guess, I am pretty clueless and have absolutely no idea what the right move will be (however, that said, I am eternally grateful for all the choices I have).

My parents are very willing to pay for everything, though I want to pay for as much of it as I can (I already have 15k in scholarships, and will have the rest of those decisions later on). I am also sure internships will also help chip away at the total cost. Or at least I’m hoping :smiley:.

**Thank you for reading

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Well while you only care about whatever school will give you the best value for your money and frankly that’s not good. Why ? You have to be there - four years - day after day after day.

Ga tech - The fact that you genuinely felt it wasn’t right for you - so to me, that comes off the board. It also shows your desire I listed above isn’t true. You need to shorten your list. There is no guarantee any school will get you to your desired career. But there is a guarantee that if your school is truly wrong, that you will regret your college experience. So Ga Tech needs to be out.

You’re obviously a bright person. Yet your decision making seems overly general. Only you, not we, can help you.

Also, any merit at Vandy ? You didn’t list.

You have some tough decisions but it’s a great situation to be in. You can likely do great at each school or any number. So once you decide, no what ifs.

So - besides being big names, why did you apply to this set of schools ? You have in city - Pitt, Ga Texh- and rural (Dartmouth- yes you didn’t get in but you applied). What is your desire ? Size. Weather. Big sports, etc?

WhAt was it about Ga Tech you didn’t like? The campus, the kids, etc.

You might start with picking a school that you think is right and then going school by school and comparing with the goal of shrinking your list. As one easily wins, eliminate the next.

You may also look at outcomes….Pitt is an unreal deal and great school. But are their students getting to where you want to be ?

See if you can visit some schools. Some like Pitt and CWRU are reasonably close to each other.

In the end, I’m sure your folks would appreciate a discount so I might go there…lots of top schools have you $$.

You’re obviously talented. I’m sure you’ll get this figured out too.

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Congratulations on all of your acceptances and the hard work that made them possible!

Did your family apply for financial aid? A number of the schools that accepted you meet 100% of need, without loans. Or is your family’s Expected Family Contribution higher than the cost of attendance at all of these? What can your family afford without taking out loans, or at least not more than the approximately $27k that a student can take out in federal loans?

Instead of focusing on how large your scholarship is at each institution, figure out the cost of tuition, fees, room, and board after all non-loan aid. After all, not all of these schools have the same sticker price.

Next, eliminate the schools that your family cannot afford without taking out more than the federal loans ($27k-ish total, about $6-7k per year).

What schools are left, with the prices your family would need to pay?

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I’m a bit confused. It might be better if you listed only the schools to which you have been accepted, and how much they will actually cost you. Another consideration is whether you need to maintain a certain GPA in order to keep the merit scholarship - the transition to college can be very tough for some students. At this point, the schools from which you were rejected are, frankly, irrelevant. As for the wait list schools, separate those out, too. They’re not under consideration now. They’re only relevant AFTER they accept you, which is a long shot this year.

You say that your parents can and will pay for anything, but I agree, you don’t need to pay a lot for your undergrad, especially with all the wonderful choices you have. If you do very well in undergrad, you can get into a prestigious masters degree program from any of the institutions that you list.

From what I can deduce, you were a finalist for a full ride scholarship at Pitt, but if you didn’t get it, that’s totally irrelevant information - they’re giving you a total of 64K in merit over 4 years? In-state, maybe a total of 100K for 4 yrs? (Do you see what I mean, about how confusing the way that you’ve listed the schools is?)

Penn State - in state, maybe a total of 120K over 4 yrs?

Georgia Tech - you say it would be essentially the same as in-state, so I’m assuming a total of about 140K for the 4 yrs. But you didn’t like it when you visited.

Northeastern - about 200K for 4 yrs?

Case Western - about 100 K for 4 yrs?

Rice - about 260K for 4 yrs?

Carnegie Mellon, Duke, Columbia, Penn, Hopkins, U Mich, Vanderbilt, all at full pay, about 360K for 4 yrs?

I think that if you do very well as an undergrad at any of these institutions, you’d be able to get into a prestigious, pipeline-to-Wall Street masters program for quantitative financial analysis. If you don’t do well, it won’t matter which one you went to. So I’d be inclined for you to choose on the basis of cost, and where you’d be happiest. If your family can afford rack-rate Ivy, they can afford to send you to look at as many of the schools as possible over the next month. Call up any people you know who are at those schools now, contact any organizations you identify with (church, special interest) that would have representation at those schools, and go visit them. Sit in on a relevant class, if at all possible. You’ve got a month to shop - make the most of it.

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Can you list all of the colleges that you were admitted to with their net prices after applying scholarships and financial aid, and can you specify what you and your parents can pay with at most the direct loans (up to $5.5k, $6.5k, $7.5k, $7.5k = $27k for 4 years)?

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You don’t need a masters from an Ivy to do quant finance. Friend’s son interning at top hedge fund. Double major in engineering and quant finance. Attends a T20 but not Ivy. If hired full time the salary is phenomenal.

It sounds like you won’t receive aid so full pay at most on your list. Correct?

On paper, GT would be your best option but if you don’t like it move on. S20 is there for ISyE. Top firms recruit there.

All are great options but for the money I’d look at Northeastern or Rice. Boston is a great college town and everyone seems happy at Rice.

If your parents have the means with no debt then Penn or Yale or a few others actually might be worth the cost.

Whatever you choose congratulations are in-order. That’s one of the best acceptance lists I’ve seen on CC. Good luck.

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It’s a no-brainer. Take the full ride…are you nuts? :slight_smile: Graduating debt free is worth more than name brand recognition by far. It opens options you otherwise wouldn’t have, like a good graduate school, or buying a house sooner. Also, your parents can retire sooner.

Even if you have an in-state tuition waiver or even a tuition scholarship, room and board is going to be your biggest expense. That can add up to $100,000 easily, unless your parents are paying for that.

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You are getting way ahead of yourself.

You say you want to do quant finance, but it’s a tiny industry hiring only a few hundred people a year. Even at colleges that are targets for hiring, it’s at most a few dozen students that get hired into this industry.

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My son is a quant trader in London after completing his four year Maths/CS program at Oxford. Two options that he looked at here in the US were the computational finance program at CMU/Tepper and the ORFE program at Princeton. Are you admitted to Wharton at Penn or CAS?

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Yale (maybe you want to be a banker not a quant) or CMU.

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As someone interested in being a quant I would suggest you apply quant technique to your question. You have the data on the cost of each school, you know how much they are offering in merit (will you get financial aid too or not?). With some effort you probably can research some data on outcomes and which are more recruited by the major quant hedge funds. Create a model and see what it spits out.

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Quant finance is a narrow goal to aim for. This year Princeton may have placed about 3% of their class into quant – this includes traders and SWEs. And this spans the gamut of firms from the most prestigious to the least – salary varies accordingly. Call it 50/50 for trading roles. You don’t need a master’s degree. It doesn’t give you any extra advantages. The process tests your IQ as much as it tests your knowledge. It also tests your risk temperment. Of the three things being tested, a masters program only addresses only of them. ORFE is often not the correct track for the kind of quant that I think you are thinking about. You need to do a pure math undergrad – proofs etc, or CS with a heavy math lean. And you are not competing with other people. You need to meet whatever bar the company has. It is absolute grading. Not relative grading. The very top places hire heavily from MIT, Harvard and Princeton for quant roles. They also hire from a wider variety of places like Yale, Stanford, Columbia, this year WashU and also UMD etc – but much smaller numbers, and only sporadically.
Some places want pure math, while others want Math+CS. It varies.

If you want to be a quant SWE, then CMU is the correct place to go from your list.

If you broaden your interests and think that you want to be do finance more generally, but with a quant bias, that is a goal that has a greater chance of happening. This is the ORFE path that someone mentioned above.

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For my generation and the one below it, the “best” quants were not those that set out to be quants. My 2 cents.

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This is true even now. The best quants are the kids that are deeply into math, and the firms try very hard to pry them away from academia. They make offers in September and are often willing to wait until may for the kid to decide between a phd admission and the quant job.

I was given an example of a kid who was coming back from a summer internship at a top quant place with a full time offer, and he had a choice of a probability course that is designed with the financial industry in mind, and another course that is just a grad math course. He asked his future boss for advice on what he should take. The obvious answer is the grad course.

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Or physics or engineering. There is a young engineer - young to me, of my acquaintance who’d spent his college years focused on some niche engineering field. T10. No experience in finance. Not math or cs.

For various reasons (not related to pay) chose a junior quant offer over FAANG offer. Is now happily launched in quant career at v well known place with multiple offers 4-5 years in.

My spouse has interviewed many Olympiad winners, etc and strangely sometimes it’s not the winners who do well in quant interviews. And yes, the questions for interviews are all over internet.

Pursue something that makes you happy. You have the 1st part locked down - either Yale or CMU.

You are 100% right, @neela1 about the course selection.

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Being a Wall Street “quant” means different things to different people, even on Wall Street. Moreover, Wall Street constantly adapts and what it looks for in a “quant” isn’t static. What’s true in the past (or even today) may not be true in a few years.

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Well, certainly true that lots of people call themselves “quants” - more than ever since this article appeared in 1996.

I would disagree that things have changed that much in 25 years. Strong math skills, ability to respond quickly with solutions and programming ability.

Scientific American - Refugees from physics find joy as derivatives geek - by Madhusree Mukerjee.

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Showing my age here - in the mid-80s, the term was “rocket scientist” not “quant” and they were almost exclusively involved in the fixed income markets, particularly mortgages. As more complex structures and markets (especially derivatives and structured credit) have developed over time, there are many more places where one can deploy those strong math & programming skills. Being a mortgage guy I tried to get my son interested in that world. Got nowhere with him. Programming trading bots is his thing.

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There has always been a need for strong math skills and/or “programming” skills. However, how “strong” is strong in each of these areas and their relative importance is changing. “Quants” use to be hired to work on some of the more complex financial products @HazeGrey mentioned, but these days the emphasis is more much on data than complexity.

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I agree with all of you- in that preparing for a career as a “quant” seems like a non-optimal way to spend your college years. The definition of what it is changes, the hot sectors in finance change, the revolution that fintech is going to unleash has just begun. If any of us were smart enough to predict what the labor market for quants is going to look like in four years, we’d have a different (more lucrative) hobby than posting on CC!

There are companies now that require a $500K brain- that likely will end up getting reduced to an algorithm, managed by a few people making 95K per year working in an office park in Salt Lake City. So maybe hiring will compress- fewer brains. Or maybe Fintech will unlock value in unpredictable parts of the capital markets- and hiring will increase- more brains?