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- 6/12/24
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I'm looking to break into quant(trading preferred) but I'm not sure what the best path forward would be for me.
My background is that I graduated from Berkeley as CS/Econ double a year ago and have been working as a software engineer since , but I don't think software engineering is right for me and I've always been a fan of trading. I'm a US citizen if that matters. I had a decent(~3.9) GPA in school, but most my classes were focused on CS and econ so I didn't really have that many math/stats classes. I'm good with programming(C++ is work in progress lol) and my resume can show that but that's about it.
I'm wondering what I should do to try to break into quant. Some options I've weighed are
1. Get a MFE
2. Get a CS masters
3. Just and study a lot for quant programs
Also I did take the GRE already, got 170 quant(if that even helps nowadays) and ok english sections.
The cons I see for these are:
1. I've heard that MFE isn't exactly super highly regarded(even for some of the top schools like Baruch, Princeton, CMU) at quant firms. Also if I do this and don't get a quant internship, I'm pretty much screwed and it'll be like I wasted my time and money
2. I don't know which fields would be most relevant, I liked Algorithms and also Machine Learning as an undergrad but those are also the hardest to get into
3. Hard to list stuff on the resume, I don't know if I'd even get interview opportunities
What do you think makes the most sense? End goal is a trading role at a HFT firm, willing to take a detour in the meanwhile if it would help. I appreciate any tips/advice, thanks in advance
My background is that I graduated from Berkeley as CS/Econ double a year ago and have been working as a software engineer since , but I don't think software engineering is right for me and I've always been a fan of trading. I'm a US citizen if that matters. I had a decent(~3.9) GPA in school, but most my classes were focused on CS and econ so I didn't really have that many math/stats classes. I'm good with programming(C++ is work in progress lol) and my resume can show that but that's about it.
I'm wondering what I should do to try to break into quant. Some options I've weighed are
1. Get a MFE
2. Get a CS masters
3. Just and study a lot for quant programs
Also I did take the GRE already, got 170 quant(if that even helps nowadays) and ok english sections.
The cons I see for these are:
1. I've heard that MFE isn't exactly super highly regarded(even for some of the top schools like Baruch, Princeton, CMU) at quant firms. Also if I do this and don't get a quant internship, I'm pretty much screwed and it'll be like I wasted my time and money
2. I don't know which fields would be most relevant, I liked Algorithms and also Machine Learning as an undergrad but those are also the hardest to get into
3. Hard to list stuff on the resume, I don't know if I'd even get interview opportunities
What do you think makes the most sense? End goal is a trading role at a HFT firm, willing to take a detour in the meanwhile if it would help. I appreciate any tips/advice, thanks in advance
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