<p>I am very interested in getting into quantitative analysis when I enter the workplace. I am current only in high school. However, I was wondering what I would need to major in (as an undergrad) to be competitive in the placement for most financial engineering graduate programs?</p>
<p>I am given to understand that applied mathematics and physics are popular majors. What about majoring straight up in finance?</p>
<p>From what I have been told, to get into the financial engineering/high-finance/I-Banking industry depends on a lot of other attributes that are “non-curriculum” related. Much of the selection (from what I was told) has to do with your school, GPA, extra-curriculars and other things.</p>
<p>I would look at the various Financial Engineering graduate degree/certificate programs and see what undergrad courses are required for the required graduate courses. Off the top of my head, I would say Operations Research is a good choice for an undergrad major.</p>
<p>There are also some threads outside of the “Engineering Majors” main thread that talks about I-Banking which is very much related to Financial Engineering. Search for them on this site.</p>
<p>You should visit Physics Forums and look up the posts of a member called twofish-quant.</p>
<p>Quants do not do the same work as many others in the IBanking field, such as traders.</p>
<p>At the undergraduate level I tend to think Math/CS/Physics/Electrical or Computer Engineering with maybe a finance minor or double major. That’s strictly for quant, but generally I think most of those positions are usually graduate workers (MFE or PhD).</p>
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Quoted for emphasis.</p>