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Hi all,
I’m a first-year PhD student at one of the HYPSM schools and will be choosing my advisor next semester. I have a Math/CS background and am currently most interested in probability and stochastic calculus. After graduation, I’d like to work on in a hedge fund or market-making firm.
That said, I’m starting to worry that my current interests, mainly stochastic calculus, are becoming less relevant for the buy side, since most firms nowadays focus more on statistics and ML.
On one hand, I’ve been told that your PhD topic doesn’t matter that much when applying for quant research roles, since firms mainly care about your quantitative and problem-solving skills. But on the other hand, in my department, most people who end up in hedge funds are doing PhDs in stats or ML, while the probabilists usually go to investment banks, which isn’t what I’m aiming for.
The probability group here mostly works on stochastic control theory, BSDEs, and mean field games. From what I understand, these topics are quite theoretical and not really used in buy-side research. Similarly, more “classical” financial math areas like asset pricing seem to align more with investment banking than with hedge funds.
I know I should choose a topic that I’ll enjoy working on for the next few years, but I’m worried that focusing on stochastic control or mean field games might make my work too theoretical and less transferable to buy-side roles. I really enjoy doing math, and these areas are the most mathematically heavy compared to stats/ML, so I’m trying to find a balance between theory and practical relevance.
To make up for this, I was thinking of taking ML courses from the CS department and studying statistics more seriously on my own alongside my research. Would that be enough to offset the fact that my PhD wouldn’t be in stats? I’m worried about competing with candidates who have stats PhDs.
Also, could this be a case of survivorship bias? Maybe students working on SDEs just choose to go to investment banks because they prefer the environment, not because they couldn’t get buy-side roles. But it’s hard for me to believe someone would willingly take a job that pays 2–3x less unless they really enjoy it or prefer the structure, why not just stay in academia if that's the case.
Thanks for your time and any advice you can share.
I’m a first-year PhD student at one of the HYPSM schools and will be choosing my advisor next semester. I have a Math/CS background and am currently most interested in probability and stochastic calculus. After graduation, I’d like to work on in a hedge fund or market-making firm.
That said, I’m starting to worry that my current interests, mainly stochastic calculus, are becoming less relevant for the buy side, since most firms nowadays focus more on statistics and ML.
On one hand, I’ve been told that your PhD topic doesn’t matter that much when applying for quant research roles, since firms mainly care about your quantitative and problem-solving skills. But on the other hand, in my department, most people who end up in hedge funds are doing PhDs in stats or ML, while the probabilists usually go to investment banks, which isn’t what I’m aiming for.
The probability group here mostly works on stochastic control theory, BSDEs, and mean field games. From what I understand, these topics are quite theoretical and not really used in buy-side research. Similarly, more “classical” financial math areas like asset pricing seem to align more with investment banking than with hedge funds.
I know I should choose a topic that I’ll enjoy working on for the next few years, but I’m worried that focusing on stochastic control or mean field games might make my work too theoretical and less transferable to buy-side roles. I really enjoy doing math, and these areas are the most mathematically heavy compared to stats/ML, so I’m trying to find a balance between theory and practical relevance.
To make up for this, I was thinking of taking ML courses from the CS department and studying statistics more seriously on my own alongside my research. Would that be enough to offset the fact that my PhD wouldn’t be in stats? I’m worried about competing with candidates who have stats PhDs.
Also, could this be a case of survivorship bias? Maybe students working on SDEs just choose to go to investment banks because they prefer the environment, not because they couldn’t get buy-side roles. But it’s hard for me to believe someone would willingly take a job that pays 2–3x less unless they really enjoy it or prefer the structure, why not just stay in academia if that's the case.
Thanks for your time and any advice you can share.
I agree with you that stochastic calculus is less used in hedge funds. With that being said, I was not from a PhD background and knows very little about PhDs. In my experience with doing buyside quant research, I don't think we ever use stochastic calculus anywhere(it could also be that we do equity research and not vol products). We do use statistics a lot! But more on linear models.
