Genuinely asking for advice for applying to Quant Trader roles as a PhD

[fyzhong]

Hello everyone,

I'm a PhD student in the UK at Oxbridge, approaching my third year, with aspirations to venture into quant trading post-graduation. My undergraduate degree is in electronic engineering at the same uni, and my PhD focuses on robotics. While my studies are quantitative and involve a bit of coding, they lean more towards the hardware side.

Given that PhD programs in the UK typically span 3-4 years, I've started my application process for summer internships in 2024. My experience with machine learning is limited to using basic libraries in a handful of projects.

My main targets are buyside funds/prop shops. After receiving a CV rejection from a US proprietary trading firm today, I'm feeling a bit lost and have several questions:

1. What are firms generally expecting from a PhD candidate? I've heard that some trading firms lean towards hiring those with master's or bachelor's degrees for trading roles, while preferring PhDs for research positions. Is this accurate?
2. Do summer internships tend to favor undergraduate students? When applying for graduate roles, how much emphasis do employers place on internship experience?
3. I am thinking of doing more personal projects. In terms of personal projects, what would align with current industry trends? I've observed a growing emphasis on machine learning within many firms. However, stock prediction projects using ML seem very common among applicants. Any suggestions on unique projects?

Any insights or advice would be immensely appreciated. Thank you for your time and help.

 

[MRoss]

General comment: I haven't seen it but it sounds like your CV has very little "finance" on it. If you aren't passionate about finance, why should firms take an interest in you?

It could be skills, certifications, projects, etc. But you should definitely have a good amount of finance sprinkled around your CV.

 

[fyzhong]

General comment: I haven't seen it but it sounds like your CV has very little "finance" on it. If you aren't passionate about finance, why should firms take an interest in you?

It could be skills, certifications, projects, etc. But you should definitely have a good amount of finance sprinkled around your CV.

Thank you so much MRoss for the advice. At the time of writing this post, I had just "independent trading study" on my CV. Recently I have done some more research with backtesting codes and included them in the CV, but that's about the only finance-related project I have right now. I do plan to write a trading bot in the near future. Also, I figured the CV was way too general and did not look quantitative enough. I have modified it, and hopefully this time round I can get a few interviews.

 

[Paul Lopez]

Since it sounds like you won't have much of a history of finance on the resume, definitely try and get some solid projects complete and visible on your github.
They will most certainly be looked at!

 

[fyzhong]

Since it sounds like you won't have much of a history of finance on the resume, definitely try and get some solid projects complete and visible on your github.
They will most certainly be looked at!

Thank you very much Paul! Do you have any suggestions on what projects would be really impressive? I am currently thinking of applying a few ML algos to search for Alpha and develop a trading bot.

 

[Paul Lopez]

Thank you very much Paul! Do you have any suggestions on what projects would be really impressive? I am currently thinking of applying a few ML algos to search for Alpha and develop a trading bot.

Depends on what you want to do. An implementation of a popular algorithm used in ML would be excellent!

 

[dgpo]

Hello guys,

Sorry if this is long!

I currently studying Electrical and Electronic Engineering at a semi-target UK Uni (think Warwick, Manchester, Durham), entering 3rd year, predicted a first class with first class grades in classes like Linear Algebra, Vector Calculus, Differential Equations, Signal Processing and C/C++, and will be taking classes in PDEs and Numerical Analysis. I will also have a ML based 3rd year project (proposed project is on using time series analysis to develop a means reverting strategy for pairs trading so will get more experience). Furthermore I just finished a SWE internship at a top tier investment bank (think GS, JP or MS), with a return offer for another internship.

I am interested in quant finance, as I believe I have the ability and desire to further my maths skills, as well as develop my programming skills and learn more about the markets. I had some exposure to the markets during my internship and I found it absolutely thrilling. The problem is, the best of the best master's courses (i.e. Maths and Finance @ Imperial or MCF at Oxford and basically all the Maths x Finance Masters) only explicitly take maths students, and I'm not sure I'd want to waste my time applying to them as I am almost certain I'll get rejected. I am therefore looking at the following courses that I think have the right blend of math, finance and CS/ML classes (I'll list them in order of my preference):

1. MSc Computational Finance @ UCL
2. MSc Financial Technology/MSc Risk Management and Financial Engineering @ imperial
3. MSc Financial Technology @ UCL (bear in mind the FT and CF courses share almost entirely different core modules, but have more or less the same optional ones)
4. MSc Advanced Computing @ Imperial (I like this because I can choose all my modules, and they are good if I decide to go down the more Quant dev/Algo dev route which is something I am considering, given my background)
5. MSc Computational Finance @ KCL
I am also considering MSc Computational Mathematical Finance at Edinburgh and (if all else fails), perhaps MSc Quantitative Finance from Manchester.

What courses would you recommend I add/remove from there? I'm quite keen on the first 2 and the 4th one, first choice being the UCL CompFin due to the compulsory placement.
Imperial is where the indecision is, my slight preference is FinTech because (in terms of core modules) they still have a good number of maths/stats classes, but perhaps more application and more general skills that would serve me well if I decide to go start my own company for example. I also really like the Financial Econometrics in R/Python module, which isn't on the RMFE course. My only concern is whether Imperial FinTech won’t look as good for quant on my CV/LinkedIn as RMFE, as the mathematical rigour is definitely there, but not as much as RMFE. Then again, my concern with RMFE is that it seems pretty specialist and I might narrow myself down to more middle office quant/risk management positions. I'm stuck here!

Would love to get some feedback!

Thanks a lot!