Getting into Wall St. firms from Georgia Tech?

InPursuit
Thu, 26 Apr 2018 14:43:04 +0000

The short answer to your question is that if you want to save $60k, Tech will reliably get you to where you want to go. High finance opportunities will not come flooding at you like they would at Dartmouth, but Georgia Tech IS a target school for several bulge bracket banks: https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/comprehensive-list-of-target-schools

Georgia Tech students routinely land full-time investment banking and sales & trading jobs at bulge bracket firms and with SunTrust, Bank of America, and Duff and Phelps. You are not at all likely to land an analyst position in private equity or at a hedge fund, except perhaps at some regional firms, but your chances are not very high for those jobs at any school; there simply are not many analyst positions in PE and at hedge funds. A quant job would likely require a graduate degree, but Tech has a top 10 quantitative & computational finance program with near 100% placement.

To my knowledge, finance firms do not typically recruit at the main career fair; the college of business holds a separate career fair for finance positions. When I was at Tech, there was also an Investment Banking Club and students would travel to NYC meet with the firms. Every student I knew at Tech that both wanted to go into IB or sales & trading and put in the effort to get a respectable GPA and show an interest in finance got a job in the field; about half of them went to bulge bracket firms. Many of these students were not all that impressive outside of having a strong GPA, token leadership and finance experience, and the ability to not make a fool of themselves in interviews. I will say that fewer people got internships in IB. Mostly people interned in bank’s middle office divisions or with valuation firms and then got full time offers in IB, so in that sense it might be harder than at a place like Dartmouth where there will be tons of on-campus interviews for internships in IB/trading. That said, I’m sure lots of Dartmouth students don’t get those internships either but do end up with full-time offers, at least when the economy is decent.

Regarding your major choice, math and CS are a great background for quant roles, but if you just want to get into investment banking, you can major in just about anything. Regardless of your major, I would suggest you take lots of accounting courses and the standard introductory economics and finance courses. Outside of getting a strong accounting background and a basic understanding of finance and economics, it doesn’t really matter what you major in for IB. As an analyst, you’re just going to be an Excel, PowerPoint, and printing/errand running grunt. Besides the stressful timelines and hours, the job itself is not hard and any smart person will pick it up relatively quickly.

Also note that if you are primarily driven by money rather than a love of finance (which is fine) and since you intend to major in CS, you may fair just as well with a CS position at top technology firms. Most of my friends that went to the Amazon’s, Google’s, and Facebook’s of the world started out making more than IB analysts and reached 175-250k in total compensation within just 3-5 years. They also don’t work 90 hour weeks or need to go get an MBA and I’d argue that their jobs are a lot more interesting than being a grunt at an investment bank. They likely won’t be making millions a year some day, but neither will all but the very best of the people who start out in high finance.

Other Things at Tech
Although it’s more related to asset management than to IB or trading, Tech has the country’s largest student run foundation and many students interested in finance get involved on the investment committee: http://www.gtsf.gatech.edu/s/1481/alumni/17/interior-wide.aspx?sid=1481&gid=42&pgid=4836

Gary Jones’s class (MGT 3079 - Management of Financial Institutions) in the college of business is also fantastic. Gary is the former Managing Director of Credit Suisse’s Fixed Income Division and he’s happy to help students pursue careers in finance.

Tech also has a mock trading floor and classes you can take on trading: https://www.scheller.gatech.edu/why-scheller/business-at-tech/tradingfloor.html