Hope of being a quant?

Hi, so my goal is to become a quantitative analyst/researcher at a BB firm and I'm going to LSE this September studying undergrad Maths and Economics.

Problem is I've read that firms primarily recruit from Imperial/Oxford/Cambridge and that LSE's courses don't have the reputation of being mathematically rigorous enough.

I'm having second thoughts about even trying for the role and I'd like to know if I still have a shot at landing a quant role. Thanks in advance.

 

Its mainly prop shops/hedge funds (i.e the types of quants that earn a shit ton out of university) that mainly hire from COWI. BB quants come from all sorts of places since its less competitive.

 
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I wouldn't worry to much about landing quant for a BB. The field of S&T is evolving into a very quantitative field and even if you are in S&T at a BB you could very well be working on items that are considered quant. If you work on enough projects in your free time and show that you take the initiative it will really make a difference when networking. Put a good amount of time trying to find ways to integrate topics of academia into your quant projects so you know the codebase and maths like the back of your hand. If you are actively following markets and can make asset specific trading/analysis tools (or systematic trading strategies) it will go along way.From my experience it's helped me land BB from a non target school.

 

Hi, I know it's been a month but I thought I' share some insight. I just graduated from Imperial in maths and am interning at a BB in S&T. Overall I have a feeling that there are more LSE people in my class than Imperial, so I wouldn't say LSE is disadvantageous with respect to landing an offer in the first place.

When it comes to the desk allocations, it is true that quant business areas tend to attract candidates from more technical backgrounds. However, if you tune your CV appropriately, make clear you want to go into quant and demonstrate the necessary skills and knowledge when interviewing you can have quite some influence on what desks you will land on.

Overall, don't worry too much and try to educate yourself beyond the scope of your uni course.

 

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