I've got that...now all I need to do is get my BS in finance w/ a minor in compsci, and join a derivatives market-making firm at an entry position in their trading dept. Btw, why exactly would I be found interesting to a prop trading/market-making firm due to being a former echocardiographer? Because I can work under pressure, and quickly analyze complicated charts and graphs?
If you come out of a top engineering school or an ivy league school, forward me your resume and I will pass it on to my boss when hiring time comes around. Alternatively, if you have some kind of spectacular achievement we should know about, you can also forward a resume along. Wall St. is really fickle. Everyone in my group is either out of Berkeley, MIT, UIUC, CMU or the Ivy League schools. We have one person from NYU; however, they don't even bother looking through 2nd tier school resumes. Stupid, I know, but what are you gonna do.
Oh, and one more thing: major in CS or math, and minor in finance. Any idiot can learn the finance stuff from reading a book.
What about starting at a small firm, work my way up, and then find a job at a big, well-known firm. Why do people think Ivy League means quality...there's so much grade inflation. CSULB is a fine school. If they want ivy league, maybe I could do my BS at CSULB, and get my Master's in Financial Engineering at Berkeley. http://mfe.haas.berkeley.edu/index.html
learn to program. you cannot develop and implement automated trading algorithms or even research without knowing how to program. you might not realize how automated trading is and what entry people and some people called traders actually do. the more and more I work in this industry the more and more I automate people out of jobs.
I do know how to program; taught myself C++ for two years. And I know how automated a trader's job is. If it's so automated, why do they still hire traders?
There's grade inflation, but it's just a cheap and quick filter to get rid of everyone who might not be smart. HR and resume readers are lazy. They want to type in a few key words and find what they want. They are not going to type in "University of Phoenix Online" or "Cal State Fullerton".
So, basically they're saying an A from CSULB is worth less than an A from Berkeley? As long as you can program, do math, and understand derivatives markets, you should be able to get a job.
Tell you what -- make up two resumes with similar qualifications. In one resume, put Berkeley and in the other, put CSULB. Post them on monster or efinancialcareers or whatever. See what happens.
i agree with lolatency. school name is a filter that I personally use. SAT score is another. we are not created equal