I am interested in pursuing Applied Math in college but how easy is it for someone with a major in Applied Mathematics to get a job? Is it a high risk major where if you succeed you become really successful but if you’re not at the top you fail?
What do you plan to do with that math major?
I am interested in going into a company on Wall Street(finance world), so I wanted to know what the odds are to land a job.
Isn’t “Wall Street” extremely vague?
There’s all kinds of majors working in Wall Street. It’s like saying you want to work in “Silicon Valley”. Even in Silicon Valley, if you were to talk about the tech world, there’s so many different types of jobs out there from software engineer to data scientist.
So in that sense, yes, applied math can get you into Wall Street. The odds of landing a job depends on the type of job you want to pursue in Wall Street and whether you want to chase prestige or not.
If you want to chase prestige, then you probably have to prioritize getting a graduate degree at a top school to score an interview with your degree.
If you want to just work in Wall Street, then doing well in a good school is more than enough to obtain a job at Wall Street.
Anyways, if you imagine Wall Street to be a place of day trading, I hate to break it to you but fields like traditional day trading, traditional hedge funds are dying industries.
A lot of the trading is now automated and many of those types of firms now prioritize lower latency and data scraping above all else. In that aspect, I would expect applied math to fare well in the industry given the student is proficient in stochastic and programming. Other than that, I would assume applied math majors should assume getting at least a master’s/doctor’s at a top school to be seriously considered for those roles. (Something that is not easy to do)
Also, much of coveted jobs in Wall Street is very prestige hoggy. So if you really want to chance at those firms, you really have to graduate from the top of the top schools in the country and do extraordinarily well in undergrad at those schools (just note it’s rare for undergrads to be recruited at those ‘prestigious’ firms in the first place).
But again, if your goal is to just get into a company on Wall Street, then yes, an applied math major is more than enough. But that “company on Wall Street” ranges from just a company in Wall Street to firms like D.E. Shaw/Ren Tech/Jane Street/HRT. The former can be done with being a great student in undergrad in a good school while the latters really need you to not only be a top student but also be the top student at the very top schools.
Please don’t think like this for degrees. Please.
As Conan put it,
There’s nothing wrong with failing. What your degree says does not define your success. And other than that, Applied Math is considered one of the most employable degrees out there. Not that that means much since it’s up to the student at end of day to seize the opportunities.
The kind of elective choices an applied math major would choose to aim for a quantitative finance job seem like they would overlap considerably with those for aiming for the actuarial exams and actuarial work.
Honestly, you are probably in the wrong major if you’re looking to get a job in Wall-Street. I had similar thoughts before graduating and it’s such a boys club to even get in since it seems like you have to have X score, come from X school, etc. to get to work in reputable places.
You’re more likely to do well for yourself if you look at computer science, but I’d take what I just said with a grain of salt. If you don’t like programming, do some more googling. Research, research, research to see what you can do to make a living and then work in what will make you happy doing it.
How is getting an X grade, coming from X school, etc. a “boys club”. Students attending to prestigious schools will have more opportunities. It doesn’t change the fact that the students in such schools are girls or boys.
I know plenty of female friends of mine working in Wall Street. In fact, more of my female friends work in that industry over my male counterpart (in my limited social group).
Heck, some software firms then are even more of a “boys club”. Facebook seems completely “boys club” to me. Working at Facebook right out of college is shown to correlate heavily with attending a top school in undergrad. 55+% of Facebook hires are from the top 10 schools in the US.
Compare that with JP Morgan. Less than 3% come from top 10 schools in the US and over 60+% from schools outside top 200 (or unranked schools).
I understand all the hate with Wall Street and all but if that’s your criteria for “boys club”, then you have to also acknowledge the top firms in software are generally more of a “boys club”. Movies and stereotypes != reality. The simple truth is, the chance of working in a top tech company is now much lower than working in a reputable firm in Wall Street. So in that aspect, top tech companies are more “boys club”.
Unless you regard working in Wall Street to be working at firms like Janes Street or Citadel. Then yes. But then again, those firms are simply far more selective than Facebook/Google since those firms are willing to pay far more.
Supply and demand.
This I strongly agree. It is your future. Make sure to do some proper researches first.
Analyst positions at “Wall Street” firms, including the most prestigious investment banks, trading houses, money management firms, are filled by undergrads. Traditionally, analyst positions, especially at investment banks (my former world) were 2 year contracts, with an MBA or other graduate degree (less so for those in trading) required to get on the long term career path, but that has changed with time as more analysts are being offered associate positions either by their current employer or by competing firms without an MBA or other graduate degree. My experience was with a major investment bank, and for me personally and for the colleagues I worked with, applicants with a quantitative background (math, physics, engineering) were frankly more desirable than business majors. In fact, I and many of my friends and colleagues, also preferred liberal arts majors who did very well over business majors. We felt candidates with those skills and achievements had proven problem solving skills, an ability to tie data points, especially those that are not immediately obvious. Accounting knowledge (for what we did), finance and management theory were things that the firm was going to teach them or they would pick up on the job.
If you’re interested in Wall Street you’ll find far more useful information on WSO (Wall St Oasis). All kinds of content relevant to your question(s) answered by people with varying levels of experience working on Wall Street in many capacities.
Perhaps saying “boy’s club” was the wrong thing, but I was definitely meaning that there was a certain criteria in which you were likely to be accepted into the industry. At least, there was five years ago. I’m going off what I knew when I was a student and heavily into finance as an applied math and statistics major in 2014. The barrier to entry was high for someone who didn’t come from a top school directly out of college. I remember there being a huge stigma for not coming from a HYPSM school when I used to do investments as an intern. Same thing when I looked into getting into a top lawyer firm…you need to come from XYZ school, even if you could go toe-to-toe with any of their people.
It’s still difficult at any point to get into tech companies due to high standards for recruiting its technical talent, but you don’t really need to come from a prestigious school. I sure as heck didn’t go to somewhere people know when I talk about it and I’m going through the rounds of interviews with top tech companies in SV. Experience >> Education. As far as females go, 80% of the people I work with are female. Whether you are good enough for a company is an easy determination in tech.