IB internship to Quant FT

[monfey]

Hello! I'm an undergrad student studying math from a top uni. Originally, I wanted to be a mathematician. But, in combination with being first-gen / non-traditional student, wanting to make money, wanting to use my past leadership experience, and having an interest in the markets, I decided to go into finance.

I'll be going into my junior fall semester this August and have already accepted an investment banking internship at a very solid bank for summer of 2023. Anyways -- I thought I wanted to go the more "traditional" finance route and during my private equity internship this past summer I realized I missed math too much. Math is a big passion in my life, so I've been trying to figure out paths that use this -- hence quant.

Grad school for me is not out of the question, but I am also feeling that I should go straight into industry. From researching the path, it seems like for the quant research path you need a PhD and for the quant trading path you can make do with a bachelors. I should mention that I'm advanced within pure math, have taken no statistics (which I will take this semester), and coded minimally through my math research (taking first coding class this semester as well).

My concerns are two-fold:
1) Will I hurt my chances of getting a quant full-time offer if I do my IB internship for my junior summer instead of a quant internship?
2) If I did back out of the IB internship, will I have missed the boat with recruiting for junior summer quant internships anyways? Given the fact that I am missing key skillsets and must spend some time learning them.

If anyone could provide some wisdom to a confused college student, I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[jarryds]

Hello! I'm an undergrad student studying math from a top uni. Originally, I wanted to be a mathematician. But, in combination with being first-gen / non-traditional student, wanting to make money, wanting to use my past leadership experience, and having an interest in the markets, I decided to go into finance.

I'll be going into my junior fall semester this August and have already accepted an investment banking internship at a very solid bank for summer of 2023. Anyways -- I thought I wanted to go the more "traditional" finance route and during my private equity internship this past summer I realized I missed math too much. Math is a big passion in my life, so I've been trying to figure out paths that use this -- hence quant.

Grad school for me is not out of the question, but I am also feeling that I should go straight into industry. From researching the path, it seems like for the quant research path you need a PhD and for the quant trading path you can make do with a bachelors. I should mention that I'm advanced within pure math, have taken no statistics (which I will take this semester), and coded minimally through my math research (taking first coding class this semester as well).

My concerns are two-fold:
1) Will I hurt my chances of getting a quant full-time offer if I do my IB internship for my junior summer instead of a quant internship?
2) If I did back out of the IB internship, will I have missed the boat with recruiting for junior summer quant internships anyways? Given the fact that I am missing key skillsets and must spend some time learning them.

If anyone could provide some wisdom to a confused college student, I would greatly appreciate it.

Getting a banking internship won't hurt your chances of getting into quant - it probably also won't help. You can apply for quant internships next summer, see what you get, and then make a decision. No need to preemptively make a decision when there is only one offer on the table. Stick with your current offer and make a decision if you get a better one. There is still plenty of time to apply for internships for summer 2023. With that in mind, you may want to seriously grind some hackerrank/leetcode - the interviews typically have programming questions.

If you are really interested in quant right out the gate, be prepared to look at grad schools. That is most likely where you will end up (a lot of jobs require it).

 

[monfey]

Getting a banking internship won't hurt your chances of getting into quant - it probably also won't help. You can apply for quant internships next summer, see what you get, and then make a decision. No need to preemptively make a decision when there is only one offer on the table. Stick with your current offer and make a decision if you get a better one. There is still plenty of time to apply for internships for summer 2023. With that in mind, you may want to seriously grind some hackerrank/leetcode - the interviews typically have programming questions.

If you are really interested in quant right out the gate, be prepared to look at grad schools. That is most likely where you will end up (a lot of jobs require it).

Hi jarryds -- thanks for the great advice. I appreciate it a ton. I'll start really grinding some leetcode and hackerrank. That's a good point about the grad school. I have been seeing that in a lot of job postings, especially for the research positions. I'm leaning quite strongly towards grad school as well, as I don't think I've scratched that math itch enough yet haha