<p>I'm really interested in minoring in Applied Math and Stats, getting the prereqs out of the way, and taking the financial modeling classes. Do people who take that kind of set of courses (meaning the financial side of AM&S) come out satisfied and with decent financial engineering abilities?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>It’s not Columbia’s program, if that’s what you’re hoping for. I imagine most people who do it are pretty satisfied but because JHU has very few connections with big Wall Street banks, it’s pretty hard to get a position as a quant at GS or JPMorgan.</p>
<p>I know that some Applied Math majors get bulge bracket banking jobs, but I have no idea if they were connected beforehand. I also have seen some Jane Street recruiting posters on campus.</p>
<p>I know a bunch of students who work for hedge funds, i-Banking and the financial sector who are recent Hopkins alumni. Their majors were engineering, mathematics, applied math, economics and international studies.</p>
<p>I would bet that most of them had some sort of connection. It’s just an unfortunate fact of life that JHU does not have the Wall Street connections as other schools with well-established business schools. It’s not impossible, but it’s pretty difficult.</p>
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<p>I agree that JHU is weaker on wall street than its peer schools like Brown, Cornell, and Northwestern. But perhaps things have gotten better since the time you went to JHU? A couple of BB posted for resumes on J-connect and at least GS came to campus for front and middle office. Prop shops and a few asset management places were on J-connect. </p>
<p>Most who get positions are probably connected, but I think that some make it without connections.</p>
<p>I just graduated a month and a half ago.</p>
<p>My recommendation would be to study Econ, financial Econ (as a minor) and/or applied math, work for a few years, go to business schools and then go from there. Again, by no means impossible to go from straight from undergrad but this way works also. (Full disclosure: I currently work at Citi, I have friends at Citi and GS, and I know someone at MS but all of us had connections that got us interviews; getting the interview is the hardest part. From there it’s still difficult but getting in the door is the hardest part).</p>
<p>Okay, I’m a current JHU student so you’d know better than me. In any case, do you have any advice on how an unconnected JHU student like myself can get into finance or if I can’t break into finance, where I should start working to have the best shot at an MBA?</p>
<p>Even fuller disclosure: I’ve worked at Citi the last three summers but I’ve never worked with the intention of getting a full-time offer. I also don’t work in investment banking, trading, or anything like that. I will be starting a Ph.D. program in economics at Princeton this fall.</p>
<p>As I said above, industry to business school is a good route. A few firms do come to Hopkins, as I know someone who got a summer offer from Barclays (again, not i-banking, trading, or anything like that). Otherwise, it doesn’t really matter what industry you start in to get into business school, you just need a very strong performance in your job and good letters. It’s very common to see people come from engineering jobs with no financial experience go to business schools and then finance.</p>
<p>So if it’s not IB or trading, is it front office?</p>
<p>Those are front office positions. I do stuff for the consumer bank.</p>