Is an operations internship at a quant fund or bank a good starting point for a college sophomore?

[bensimsjyg]

I'm studying electrical engineering (plan to focus on signal processing and machine learning), and hope to land a FT job at a quant fund or a front office job at a bank after college (or a tech/FinTech company if that doesn't work out).

I've read a lot of places that taking a position in the back/middle-office will hurt your chances of eventually getting into the front office. Does that apply to internships as well? Should I aim for a DSP/machine learning internship at a top tech company for this year's internship instead?

Thanks

 

[BeepImaJeep]

Your experiences during sophomore summer usually isn't held against you for junior summer internship searches or full time job searches. Very few people land a front office role in their sophomore summer.

If you take a back/middle office role on the street, I suppose you'll be more familiar with the company and the industry and might meet a few people who you can network with and leverage that to get front office position for your next role (but realistically this is rarely all that useful). I personally think that a tech internship is much more interesting and will lead to marginally better career prospects.

Good luck.

 

[Philip_Mitterrand]

You 're deluding yourself and you have zero skills for a legit quant job unless you come from the Caltech/MIT type brand and acing in courses like Info Theory/MIMO/Radar systems ...real upper graduate level signal processing stuff then you can directly parachute to a front office level.

Take the tech intership..at this stage you should be flexing your mental muscles not shuffling papers (middle/back office) at a bank to gain credibility.

I'm studying electrical engineering (plan to focus on signal processing and machine learning), and hope to land a FT job at a quant fund or a front office job at a bank after college (or a tech/FinTech company if that doesn't work out).

I've read a lot of places that taking a position in the back/middle-office will hurt your chances of eventually getting into the front office. Does that apply to internships as well? Should I aim for a DSP/machine learning internship at a top tech company for this year's internship instead?

Thanks

 

[quantquanta]

I'm studying electrical engineering (plan to focus on signal processing and machine learning), and hope to land a FT job at a quant fund or a front office job at a bank after college (or a tech/FinTech company if that doesn't work out).

I've read a lot of places that taking a position in the back/middle-office will hurt your chances of eventually getting into the front office. Does that apply to internships as well? Should I aim for a DSP/machine learning internship at a top tech company for this year's internship instead?

Thanks

Hey bensimsjyg. I think I can help. Based on my peers' success, I say absolutely, take that back office hedge fund role. I went to a non target school, think non-Colgate Patriot League schools. A lot of the kids with connections got back office roles at hedge funds their freshman/sophomore year, and leveraged that to go into investment banking. I go to columbia now and I'm pretty sure my undergrad placed more kids into goldman and JP Morgan than Columbia does. Also, it doesn't hurt to read some finance books. Wolf of Wall Street (not sure how helpful it will be) is really fun. There's also David Einhorn's "Fooling some of the people all of the time", and etc.

 

[bensimsjyg]

Hey bensimsjyg. I think I can help. Based on my peers' success, I say absolutely, take that back office hedge fund role. I went to a non target school, think non-Colgate Patriot League schools. A lot of the kids with connections got back office roles at hedge funds their freshman/sophomore year, and leveraged that to go into investment banking. I go to columbia now and I'm pretty sure my undergrad placed more kids into goldman and JP Morgan than Columbia does. Also, it doesn't hurt to read some finance books. Wolf of Wall Street (not sure how helpful it will be) is really fun. There's also David Einhorn's "Fooling some of the people all of the time", and etc.

Hm. I met with one of my school advisors recently and she gave me some suggestions for other jobs to apply for. She thinks I'll have a great shot at landing a Quant Research position at a fixed income mutual fund, and a decent shot at landing a technical modeling or asset management position at a BB. I'm applying for a couple trading research/data analysis at AM firms as backups.

While these firms aren't huge names like the ones for the operations internships (Goldman was the bank I was mentioning in the original post), I think I'd learn a lot more and they would set me up for a good junior internship. I don't have any finance on my resume right now (aside from a couple MOOCs), so I think this would be a better entry point.

And yeah I've watched Wolf of Wall Street a few times already hahaha.