<p>Last year, the investment banks were hiring out of our school like mad: they were after people with quantitative backgrounds who could “int main” and “public static void main” with the best of `em. We still get recruiting e-mails from investment banks looking for traders and model-builders, but not at the levels the year before. A good programming background seems to be important, though. I have trouble just getting on the internet, so crossing fingers might not be enough ;-)</p>