<p>Columbia is no where near HYPSW. I have been in interviews where the interviewer asked me something along the lines of " Tell me why we should hire you over someone at Wharton or Harvard who also has a 3.8" In my head i was like "ARE YOU KIDDING ME" not b/c it wasnt a legitimate question but i go to U of Chicago...which is a very good school imo and in the eyes of many..and its a target school ...just goes to show you how strong/prestigous the Wharton/Harvard name is </p>
<p>"most people don't go on to business schools after completing an undergrad degree in business. but if you go to columbia on the other hand, you may have to. but don't sweat it, firms that recruit from columbia will probably pay for your graduate education once you score a job"</p>
<p>^^no idea what he is talking about...PLenty of people do..not many people seek a graduate business program to learn more about business..many use it for the networking opp, career advancement, career shift.</p>
<p>^^^ Maybe I missed something since I did not attend HYPSC etc (joking here), but how can you speak for how Columbia is received on Wall Street? I understand you point about Chicago (although great) vs. the aforementioned schools, but where does your basis for Columbia come from? "Columbia is NOOOO where near HYPSW" are you kidding? BTW, what is W?</p>
<p>Dude there really is no arguing this...Columbia cant touch HYPSW, not b/c its not as good as those schools imo, but the perception of Columbia on Wall street relative to the others is just not as strong. Anyways, you will have great oppurtunities on wall street coming from any top 15-20 school.</p>
<p>What bulge-bracket firm or investment partnership do you work for again?</p>
<p>Oh, that's right, you're an</a> undergrad student at Chicago. So basically, you have no idea how wall street or business schools view Columbia, or what respect it's accorded relative to Harvard or other benchmarks. You have a few questions one interviewer asked you, and a bunch of idle speculation based on rankings and hype.</p>
<p>Before you start telling us "X can't touch Y", maybe you'd better get a job, and be in a position where you're conducting interviews or evaluating top candidates from top schools.</p>
<p>Speaking personally, I was in a position right out of college in a high-demand field where I had to evaluate undergrad resumes from Brown, Wesleyan, Pomona/Claremont, Caltech, and Columbia (220 of them from Columbia, like 15% of the class). And the firm devoted more resources to Columbia and made more offers (narrowly edging out Caltech) than to any other school than I was exposed to.</p>
<p>On the MBA side, we had relatively few people apply from HBS (about 25), and more from Wharton (about 45), and the offers-per-applicant rate was predictibly much higher than the undergrad rates, though not much higher than Columbia business school.</p>
<p>So it's specific albeit anecdotal evidence that I have, that plus talking to many dozens of finance professionals over my (thus far brief) career. That's at least something. Would you please stop pretending you know better?</p>
<p>"Dude there really is no arguing this...Columbia cant touch HYPSW, not b/c its not as good as those schools imo, but the perception of Columbia on Wall street relative to the others is just not as strong. Anyways, you will have great oppurtunities on wall street coming from any top 15-20 school."</p>
<p>Thanks for making yourself ridiculous. Of course UChicago can't touch Harvard or Wharton, but that doesn't mean that Columbia can't touch HYPSW. If you interview with BB firms, you'll actually notice that only Harvard and Wharton have a better representation than Columbia. This is something that the Harvard and Wharton interviewees noticed too, so it's not just my opinion. Columbia rocks for finance jobs, everyone I know who wanted to work on Wall Street got a job there too... UChicago is a different story...</p>
<p>PlanPlusDebater: I find it very insane that you pointed out the same grammar mistake twice from my first post. You should start putting in your nouns in your sentences before you start telling people your incomplete thoughts; that way, you won't have to tell anyone what was implied. =D</p>
<p>I like how you keep going off topic, although this is your thread.</p>
<p>Your nuts if you believe Columbia is much better than U of Chicago. Chicago has one of the best Econ program in the country....all the Big banks recruit here and even top tier boutiques (greenhill, lazard, rothschild), PE firms ( Cerebus, Bain Cap, carlyle, KKR) and top hedge funds/ fund of funds. It is not uncommon for U of C undergrads to land analyst positions at these firms.</p>
<p>FYI, I am a freshman at U of Chicago and i have interned/shadowed desks at Goldman Sachs . I was a GS scholar...an outreach program to recruit more minorities into finance. While the interview was not very technical/rigorous as a SA interview...i did have to show an interest in finance (follow the markets, have an understanding of the 3 financial statements, company's products/strategies, etc)</p>
<p>Plus, i could have got into Columbia with my eyes closed lol....j/k...but still... im not taking anything away from Columbia (great school) just not HYPSW.</p>
<p>Columbia's financial engineering degree will surely open a lotta doors for u to wall street....i think that its gonna be valued even more than wharton cuz financial eng is more math heavy, which is what hedge funds, I-banks are looking for..they want math and analytical skills</p>
<p>^^^ grossly misinformed. Ibanks want people with analytical skills..yes.. but they are certainly not looking for quant heavy people. A large percentage of bankers come from very liberal arts background (esp from top schools). MIT and Caltech are actually not as heavily recruited as many top schools/LACs for ibanking. S & T ? yes, quant abillity is strongly encouraged. Ibanking? Not so much. </p>
<p>Hedgefunds, is such a broad term, and invest in a vast amount of strategies that you really cant say hedge funds are looking for people with above avg quant abillity. Quantitative hedge funds (ex RenTech, Citadel, DE Shaw) who typically use esoteric trading strategies, like derivatives, options, and futures to achieve returns will prefer someone with above avg quat ability (MIT, Caltech, Carnegie Mellon types). Equity-based/value oriented hedgefunds that employ strategies like PE, PIPES, Distressed, Arbitrage... tend to be less quantitative.</p>
<p>Columbia financial engeneering might be a great program (dont know) but the only thing a program like that will do is lower your gpa lol, not make you more competitive for an ibanking gig...against someone with simillar stats who is say an econ major</p>
<p>just had to point out that Arbitrage IS an esoteric trading strategy... its actually designed to take advantage of small inefficiencies in the market. A hedge-fund manager might use an arbitrage play to take advantage of a temporary difference in price between a stock index and underlying security....long story short... arbitrage=quant heavy strategy</p>
<p>arbitrage isn't esoteric, dude. You don't need computers and algorithms to notice that you can buy options at price $X and sell them at 1.25*$X.</p>
<p>Every interview I had with a trading firm or fund (DE shaw, Bridgewater, Jane St Capital, Bluefin trading, etc) focused heavily on quant questions in the interview. Risk tolerance, doing numbers in your head, options, brain teasers, etc.</p>
<p>Denzera: Since you seem to have a lot of experience in the i-banking world, I have to ask this: Is i-banking restricted (for the most part) to financial engineering majors? I ask because I am very interested in CS, specifically how it can be applied to finance(with machine learning). Is that the sort of thing an i-banking job entails? If not, does Columbia's career office have connections to these jobs? What sort of paycheck do these types of jobs entail? I'm not interested in these types of job for the money - but my attitude is, I enjoy CS, and if I can make money doing it, why not?</p>
<p>DUDE, what theeeeeee....many of the market imperfections can only be revealed by comps and quantitative methods, arb. Once some of those imperfections are taken out of the market, you need more quantmethods and more automated tools to get at arbitrage opps. Were not talking about individual investors that play on merger arb, lol. Im talking about statistical, risk, High-Frequency, SSNR type Arb.</p>
<p>mikes - jmoney was indeed correct when he says many i-bankers come from liberal arts backgrounds. but i think you don't quite understand what an investment banker does. In the investment banking division of a bank, ibankers at particular desks help companies find funding, place debt or equity, launch public offerings, and the like. they are dealmakers. they work on presentations to executives and investors and grease the wheels of capitalism. and ibankers are taken from all backgrounds because they pretty much have 3 requirements: be very smart, be so hardworking you're willing to sacrifice having any sort of life, and have great social skills so you're presentable to clients and won't say the wrong thing (And will entertain your bosses when they take you out for drinks). It's an old boys club and you need to fit in with that.</p>
<p>trading in the financial markets, with things like machine learnings - that is more the province of the sales&trading division of a bank and they hire plenty of "Quants". Go read the book "My life as a Quant", it's a good overview and a good story. Hedge funds that are more algorithmically based share similar needs. but a CS major would probably be more at home as a quant than as a banker.</p>
<p>Columbia does very well at placing both types of job-seekers.</p>
<p>Denzera:
Do quants get paid in similar ways to i-bankers(~$60k salary to start, plus 50%-100% bonus at the end of the year, with both numbers rising as you continue to be employed), or is the pay structure/salary significantly different? I hate to sound so obsessed with money, but that's what attracts me to finance(compared to, say a programming job at Google).</p>
<p>dang jmoney u totally destroyed me lol....i was just making a generalization....but u have to admit, quant skills come first before anything else....like a lotta hedge funds, even hedge fund managers have Ph.Ds in comp sci, physics etc....again im generalizing..</p>
<p>
[quote]
Do quants get paid in similar ways to i-bankers(~$60k salary to start, plus 50%-100% bonus at the end of the year, with both numbers rising as you continue to be employed), or is the pay structure/salary significantly different? I hate to sound so obsessed with money, but that's what attracts me to finance(compared to, say a programming job at Google).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>mikesown,</p>
<p>At BB firms, at the analyst level, when you first enter from college, the bonuses for IBD and S&T are banded; so S&T -- whether structures, traders, or sales -- analysts will get similar bonuses to IBD analysts in similar buckets (top, mid, below).</p>
<p>And yes the base (60k) for analysts in S&T and IBD is the same.</p>
<p>In S&T, once you move up (i.e. associate and beyond), your bonus is tied more to the performance of your desk/product and your P&L.</p>
<p>In general, the earning potential CAN be higher in S&T than IBD depending on your desk's performance (e.g. commodities was ridiculous in 2007)</p>
<p>I think JMoney is bitter that he didn't get into Columbia.
Does CHicago have a great econ program? Sure.
Is Chicago better than Columbia or any other top school when it comes to IB recruiting? Absolutely not.</p>