hey guys - i’m a rising senior at tier 1 state school, and i really wanna get a job at a quantitative hedge fund or prop trading firm, places like jane street, hrt, two sigma, do you think getting an MFE will increase my chances significantly?
this is actually a fair question that a lot of undergrads interested in finance think about. On the one hand, and speaking from personal experience, a master in finance or a master in financial engineering can boost your career in markets, and in several banks, you can start directly as an Associate. Think of it as a technical MBA. As far as hedge funds and prop trading firms are concerned, it really depends on the unspoken policy of the firm, Jane Street for instance hires exclusively undergrads and PhDs and Citadel still takes a decent number of master grads. On the other hand, the number of MFE has definitely increased over the past year and the competition is quite stiff: people with similar backgrounds are flooding the trading job market every year. I would say if you didn’t go to a Tier 1 undergrad + plus some major states school, or you want to do another year or 2 of school to expand your knowledge (a lot of these programs have interesting finance, ML & AI courses), maybe it’s worth considering an MFE. However, you can definitely get a great internship at high-paying prop trading firm right out of undergrad.
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feel like unless it’s one of the top (Princeton, CMU, NYU Courant, Berkeley, Columbia etc) it’s not worth it since there are plenty of people I know at hedge funds who just have a bachelors plus these programs are hella expensive