r/quantfinance

What's the chance of getting an R1 QT interview at top firms if I go to MIT, have 5 GPA and pass the OA but have limited other experience

Context about myself: BS in Comp Sci from a US Service Academy. Grades were good and conducted some interesting, albeit undergraduate-level cryptography research. Profession unrelated to finance/software engineering (ground combat MOS).

Beginning to wrap up my obligated service commitment (5 years from graduation). I have my tuition covered for grad school. Looking at some of the different MSCS and MFE programs however I'm unsure on how they are for this field. Many of my peers are going the standard MBA to IB route, but I really would like to break into something technical.

I have maintained technical proficiency working on a few side projects and will be taking a Stanford NDO course to further math/cs proficiency.

Any advice for someone looking to break into this field? It seems fascinating from an outsiders perspective, however I feel as if I may have missed the opportune timeline and am a little out of my depth on this.

I am doing bachelors im mathematics I would like to be a quant researcher many jobs asked for PhD in their description yet when I read online on Reddit they say don’t do a PhD for the sake of become a quant . Which confuses me if it’s a requirement why are people saying dont do it for quant does this mean all QR are people who did PhD for research sake and felt academic research wasn’t for them so moved into quant ?

Hey everyone, I'm trying to get into quant and I feel like I'm missing the bridge between learning and actually building things.

I like math a lot, and I already know Python and C++, but I don't come from a finance background. Whenever I look for beginner quant projects, people say things like "build a backtester," "implement Black-Scholes," or "make a limit order book." My problem is that I have no idea where those ideas even come from. I don't know what they are, why they're useful, or what I should learn before trying to build them.

Even if I learn the finance concepts, I still don't think I'd naturally know what to build or how to turn those concepts into actual projects. It feels like there's a huge gap between understanding the theory and saying, "Okay, now go implement this." I can code if I know what I'm building, but I don't know how people go from learning about markets or options to deciding, "I'm going to build this model," or "I'm going to calculate that metric." Is there some roadmap that teaches both the finance and the engineering side together, where you learn a concept and then build something meaningful with it?

I'd really appreciate hearing what and how u guys started, because right now it feels like I'm missing an entire step that everyone else somehow already knows.

Hi, I got a JS SP interview invite and am very nervous and don’t know what to expect. They said the interviews don’t require any prep but the OA was astronomically difficult for me. What can I expect to tackle on this interview?

I study cs and math at ut austin and i have a background in math olympiads. i interviewed with jane street, imc, virtu, sig and optiver but couldnt make it last year. i'm very serious about getting a qt intern for summer '27. DM ME WITH YOUR BACKGROUND (SCHOOL, MAJOR, PAST RECRUITING CYCLE EXPERIENCE)

For context I’m ranked around the top 350 out of 3.8k ish overall globally. Is this resume worthy? I’m an underclassman too, so I’m gonna try to apply to early quant programs and not the internships right now.

if I had similar goals to this person:

https://www.reddit.com/r/quantfinance/comments/1iu983z/if_my_eventual_endgoal_is_entrepreneurship_which/

is it the correct choice to pursue this field?If not what options are better?

Currently placed about Top 50 out of like 3.5k ppl. Idk if this has any recruitment value at Jump or other firms. I am first at my university which is kinda cool ig but nothing crazy.

With it wrapping up I’m wondering if I just full send so I could maybe get a prize but risk falling off or should I play consistent and get a Top 50/40ish placement if it means anything.

Hey everyone, I am in data science and I am trying to get into quant. I made a few projects about equity analysis and doing PCA etc on stocks but I didn't make significant progress as I instead ending up getting a DE role.

So, what exactly does my quant portfolio lack? lack of depth in financial concepts? or maybe I made the projects with a data centric lens? I know it's hard to judge without seeing the projects but what type of projects are common in a good portfolio or any project ideas given my DS background would be appreciated.

Thanks

pecifically, I have three core questions regarding the R&D cycle at HFT firms:

1. Idea Generation (Micro-Alpha): Retail trading relies heavily on basic indicators (moving averages, simple chart patterns). For HFTs operating at the nanosecond/microsecond scale, what does the ideation process actually look like? Are quants primarily mining Level 3 tick data for order book imbalances, latency arbitrage loops, or localized volatility anomalies, or is it more heavily driven by machine learning feature exploration?
2. High-Fidelity Backtesting: How do firms build simulators that don't suffer from look-ahead bias or unrealistic fills? How do you accurately model your exact mathematical position in the order queue, exchange network jitter, and wire-time latency when backtesting a strategy?
3. Sim-to-Live Validation: How do teams determine that a backtest is robust enough for a live market? What metrics or validation frameworks do you use to prove that your simulation perfectly mirrors production performance before scaling up risk, especially when accounting for your own strategy's market impact?

I would love to get any high-level insights, reading recommendations, or advice on what specific sub-fields of statistics/microstructure I should focus on during my Master's to prepare for this.

Thanks!

Hello, I am currently a high school student. My dream is to become a professional soccer player, I am doing my best to achieve that however, I need to also focus on other stuff. I heard about quants not too long ago and it interested me for many reason (the money is great and while I don’t truly care about it, it is very nice). How can I prepare for this for my next few years in high school and what would I do in terms of degree and other stuff if I wanted to become a quant?

Hi everyone,
I’ve recently just completed my first year at Warwick Maths and I have a long 3 month summer, I have plans to go on holidays for a few weeks but other than that nothing so was wondering what the best thing to do would be so I can be prepared to apply to quant springs or summers next year. I have recently started zetamac and broke 30s, probably not enough at all currently but will try to get better.
I want to apply to quant trading but have no real experience on the applied side of it, I just know that I like problem solving and playing poker 😭.
Generally just looking for advice since I don’t want to waste this summer and regret it when it comes to applications. I don’t have any olympiads though, ig my only feat is getting into WW maths lol.
I’ve heard about the green book and looked at the couple chapters, should I be starting with the Braintree sections then just doing probability stuff?
Is it worth getting good at leetcode aswell, I’m a massive rookie at programming as well so was thinking of doing one leetcode per day or smth.
Any advice on how I can prepare would be appreciated. Thanks ❤️

How is Brown seen for quant trading? Are people hired from Brown?

WallstreetQuants Bootcamp is a scam. Once they get your email ID, they spam your inbox with messages like "How our students got into Tier 1 firms." However, if you contact the people they claim are from their bootcamp, they deny ever having heard of it. It is a ploy to get money from unsuspecting students.