UPenn has an undergraduate dual-degree program where you get one degree from Wharton and one from the School of Engineering (see: http://www.upenn.edu/fisher ) called Management & Technology. Would this be a good degree program to pursue for someone interested in potentially going into quantitative finance?
UPenn M&T for Quantitative Finance?
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The Penn M&T program is tougher to get into for undergrad than Harvard/Princeton (no joke). Wharton is traditionally more known for banking/consulting than quant finance (many more people ending up at Goldman/McKinsey et al than quant shops), but if you were to start out at M&T already knowing you want to be a quant, study finance at Wharton, CS in penn engineering, take a fair amount of math and get solid grades, you'd land any entry-level quant job in the country.
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Just to add the the previous comment, not everyone from the program wants to into quant finance (or even finance) but I also think it's an excellent program if you do want to. Of the half a dozen guys that I knew from the program, one went to Blackstone P/E, one transitioned into management consulting after not liking S&T from his internship, one got an insane first year analyst offer at a quant fund, and one started a health care related business.
An entry level quant job isn't very specific. If you are aiming for the most competitive of those, then M&T is a very good choice. There are at least two quant funds that solely recruits from Wharton or Wharton+Harvard.
An entry level quant job isn't very specific. If you are aiming for the most competitive of those, then M&T is a very good choice. There are at least two quant funds that solely recruits from Wharton or Wharton+Harvard.
Thank you for the responses.
I feel like UPenn as a whole isn't nearly as good of a fit as some of my other places I've looked, it's just that I have legacy (which I know is huge there), my extracurriculars fit the program perfectly, and I've heard the career opportunities are crazy good (as you both noted), so I sort of feel like it would be stupid to waste my opportunity there considering the advantages I have in admissions. The fact that legacy is only considered there if you apply ED (which is binding) complicates things further.
I feel like UPenn as a whole isn't nearly as good of a fit as some of my other places I've looked, it's just that I have legacy (which I know is huge there), my extracurriculars fit the program perfectly, and I've heard the career opportunities are crazy good (as you both noted), so I sort of feel like it would be stupid to waste my opportunity there considering the advantages I have in admissions. The fact that legacy is only considered there if you apply ED (which is binding) complicates things further.
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I feel that at least from a career perspective, the recruiting opportunities are fairly comparable at target universities. You get your resume looked at which is a huge first step and you can definitely find the resources to help yourself. So for example if you wanted to study math at Stanford because you want to be on the west coast, that's fine. If you wanted to go to somewhere like University of Connecticut to enjoy campus life or college basketball, etc., that's also fine but just know there's a trade-off in your expectancy for a faster career progression in the quant finance world.
Something else to consider on this is that (at least when I was applying to college back in the day) when people applied to a joint degree program at Penn that involved multiple schools, Penn also asked them on their application "what their preference would be for an individual school in the case that they weren't admitted to joint degree" and then if they didn't get into the joint degree program, Penn directed their application to that particular school for a single-degree admissions decision.
I knew a guy in high school who was absolutely brilliant (perfect GPA, perfect SAT score, tons of APs courses, etc), he was a double legacy to Penn, applied early decision to M&T, didn't get in, but they offered him single degree admission to Wharton-- and once at Penn, after freshman year as a single-degree student, people were allowed to apply to other schools for a "dual degree," if they were in Engineering or Arts & Sciences it generally required a pretty astronomical GPA freshman year to be allowed to start dual degree with Wharton, but if Wharton students wanted to do dual degrees with Arts & Sciences or Engineering, pretty much all they had to do was "express interest" and they were in. My friend who got rejected from M&T ended up starting at Penn as a single-degree student at Wharton, started the dual degree in the Engineering school his sophomore year, ended up with the exact same degrees that the M&Ts did, and ended up landing just as good a job as any of them. Another guy I knew had his heart set on Wharton for pretty much his entire life, despite being a pretty smart guy he wasn't completely sure he could get in straight from high school, he applied to Arts & Sciences, got in, took philosophy and basket-weaving courses his freshman year to get a 4.0, did an internal transfer to Wharton his sophomore year, and then ended up at Goldman. Wharton and M&T have plenty of back-doors.
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Another famous one at Penn is if you want to get into Arts & Sciences but don't particularly want to have to deal with the 15% acceptance rate, just get into the School of Nursing (40% acceptance), spend six months or so freshman year learning how to do breast exams on attractive women, suddenly declare that "nursing isn't for you," and then do a relatively easy internal transfer into Arts & Sciences...
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Rofl, you had to have gone to Penn. What year were you?
Interesting, does going to a larger school with more alumni connections tend to have a faster career progression in the quant finance world? I know the prestige of your undergraduate school is very important finance world, but I guess I assumed it was less so in the quant finance world because nearly everyone attends grad school at some point. I've been looking at some smaller tech schools (Caltech, HMC, etc.) with math/cs education equal to if not better than that at top universities. From a career progression standpoint, would you advise against these?
lmao I'll be sure to keep that in mind.
Another dual degree option I've been looking at is Computer and Cognitive Science. Basically it would allow me to get a BAS in CS + a BA in math and allow me to explore AI/machine learning. How do you think this compares to getting a BA is math + CS as a second major (CIS now offers a 'CS as a second major option' for CAS students)?
NETS seems cool too but seems like it doesn't provide a large enough math foundation to pursue graduate school.
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