A highschool senior here about to make a decision. I want to do quant but want to get a masters in financial mathematics or something related to quant. Which one is the better option considering the cost of attendance for both schools are the same and I have visited both schools and have no preferences on the locations. Thank you guys!
You can’t put this on others. It’s your call. But I’d lean JHU because you may not need a Masters.
Good luck.
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Academically, both are great for CS. The locations are VERY different. Would you feel more comfortable on a smaller urban campus or a very large rural one? Are you interested in big time college sports or no? How about Greek life?
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Thank you very much !
Yeah I feel like I can make out social life anywhere and kinda not into sports
uiuc I think places into the Chicago quant shops.
I am not sure what JHU’s record is for placing into this industry. You should ask the school. The first destination report here (https://imagine.jhu.edu/first-destination-outcomes/) does not show any quant shops, but this is not a surprise as this industry takes very few kids.
You should really focus on the quality/reputation of the math department (really the reputation of kids from the math department, and the reputation about the rigor of the undergrad course work), and the quality of your peer group in math if you want to get into quant.
A masters is not necessary. Whatever fundamentals you miss learning at the undergrad stage cannot be made up at the masters stage in math.
You also need some CS – at least a minor. Preferably a major because that is your fall back if you can’t land a job as a quant.
Also the top firms don’t care about financial math. They just want a strong grounding in pure math. The phrase that is often used is “abstract problem solving skills”.
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Hi, just from the us news ranking those two schools have similar math ranking, but which one do you think would have a better math department? Thank you!
I think you want to talk to students in these departments to gauge what the placement is like into quant. We can’t see the data from the outside because both schools place only a small number of kids into these firms. They don’t make the threshold of what the university reports outside. Also the public schools (eg UIUC) care less about reporting first destinations outcomes. They are not like MIT or Harvard where the numbers into quant are large, and they will be above their reporting threshold. I think Princeton places about 3% of the overall class into quant (counted broadly, including quant SWE – pure quant may be half that number) – that is not a small number. I suspect MIT places about a 100 kids into quant – just a guess, again counted broadly. That is about 9% of the university. Because they are all STEM, and Princeton is only 30-40% physical STEM. I suspect both JHU and UIUC place less than 1%. So we don’t know from the outside.
Here are the numbers for Citadel from their linkedin page, as an example:
I suspect a lot of those UIUC placements may be in quant SWE though …
Optiver:
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It depends on how much debt you’re taking out.
Um no debt, price is the same
Congrats! both are amazing universities. And, both are very different too.
Where do you feel the most you? you visited the school already so which college you like the students vibe better? the academics are a given, where do you think you would thrive the most? academics, making close friends, social life, research opportunities (if you’re into that) ?
Good luck
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