Designing my Bachelors

[quannab]

Hello all,
I am currently at a California Community College, preparing to transfer to UCI, where they have really interesting programs that I am trying to get the most out of. I am aiming to get a double-major in Computer Science and Quantitative Economics, with a minor in stats. My question is, which of these electives for the quantitative econ degree seem to be the most important for a career in quantitative finance?

Department of Economics < University of California Irvine

catalogue.uci.edu

I have been getting most of my information and inspiration from this youtube channel which I think is really informative:
Dimitri Bianco , run by Dimitri Bianco.

Thanks!

 

[IntoDarkness]

As a uci alum who was also a transfer student and currently a fo sell side quant, i highly recommend:

• Try to transfer to berkeley or ucla if its not too late. Their math, stats, and ieor programs r very ez to get accepted and recruiting is far better. I had to spend money and time for an ivy league master to get where i am now. I wouldn’t need that if i had a berkeley stem degree
• If uci it is, I would dump econ and do math instead. Any of the non-teaching math concentration (data science, fin math, computational math) is way superior to econ and more relevant to actual quant work
• Really be good at cs in case you find high level math not your forte, at least you can still excel as a bang sed

 

[quannab]

As a uci alum who was also a transfer student and currently a fo sell side quant, i highly recommend:

• Try to transfer to berkeley or ucla if its not too late. Their math, stats, and ieor programs r very ez to get accepted and recruiting is far better. I had to spend money and time for an ivy league master to get where i am now. I wouldn’t need that if i had a berkeley stem degree
• If uci it is, I would dump econ and do math instead. Any of the non-teaching math concentration (data science, fin math, computational math) is way superior to econ and more relevant to actual quant work
• Really be good at cs in case you find high level math not your forte, at least you can still excel as a bang sed

Thanks for the reply,
what did you study at UCI? I am actually more drawn to math than anything and am working through the honors/proof based curriculum at occ. CS is easy and I devote 100% of my time on math. I am applying to all UCs and cmu as well but they are not as easy to get into for CS which is my staple.
Ill look more closely at the data science and comp math concentrations. I'm not transferring until fall 2021 but I am already through calc2 and stating discreet math,comp arch,and c++ in the fall.
Thank you.

 

[IntoDarkness]

i transferred as quant econ but quickly realized that

• this major is very inflexible of course picking such that the major requires certain sequences of classes which only happened once a year and often conflict in schedule with other more interesting classes
• what i studied was not very practical or job-hunting helpful

i switched to regular econ to remedy the first issue but the second issue still remained. i minored cs and math. i regretted not to finish stats minor

i recommend to major in "mathish" subjects. the reasons are:

• much ezier to get accepted at higher ranking schools
• mathematical maturity requires years of non-stop formal studies and it will be hard to acquire after you leave school
• on the other hand, cs subjects are more diy mooc friendly so a cs minor is usually enough

since you still have time before transfer, a smart move will be to cross-register some uci and ucla classes to get a sense of the campus feel, such as the general motivation level of the student body, campus amenities, recruiting firms at career fairs, relevant campus clubs, etc. talk to the students and professors, you are likely to find uci disappointing at quant finance related stuff

besides the schools you want to apply (don't bother with merced, santa cruz, riverside), i find northwestern weiberg and mccormick, cornell cals, penn cas, and brown are also more willing than others to accept community college transfer students

 

[quannab]

i transferred as quant econ but quickly realized that

• this major is very inflexible of course picking such that the major requires certain sequences of classes which only happened once a year and often conflict in schedule with other more interesting classes
• what i studied was not very practical or job-hunting helpful

i switched to regular econ to remedy the first issue but the second issue still remained. i minored cs and math. i regretted not to finish stats minor

i recommend to major in "mathish" subjects. the reasons are:

• much ezier to get accepted at higher ranking schools
• mathematical maturity requires years of non-stop formal studies and it will be hard to acquire after you leave school
• on the other hand, cs subjects are more diy mooc friendly so a cs minor is usually enough

since you still have time before transfer, a smart move will be to cross-register some uci and ucla classes to get a sense of the campus feel, such as the general motivation level of the student body, campus amenities, recruiting firms at career fairs, relevant campus clubs, etc. talk to the students and professors, you are likely to find uci disappointing at quant finance related stuff

besides the schools you want to apply (don't bother with merced, santa cruz, riverside), i find northwestern weiberg and mccormick, cornell cals, penn cas, and brown are also more willing than others to accept community college transfer students

As of now I am set on the CS undergrad since I want the option in the future to be a systems dev, but I am definitely interested in double majoring. How do I pick between their financial and data science math?

Thank you for the school options, its nice to know who accepts transfers, I will def. be applying there.

Thanks again for the response.