CMU
MFS High Yield Municipal Trust
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Hello! I’m a freshman at a top 20 LAC and I really really wanna try to break into quant.
For context, I do plan on trying to transfer to a better school for quant (Chicago, nyu, Michigan, CMU, northwestern, etc)
How should I go about preparing? At the moment I have little Java knowledge, 5 in Calc BC, 5 in both AP Econs and 5 in AP stats and im doing really good in Calc III rn
Mainly focused on preparing for the interview

If next summer goes well and you get a return offer, I'd seriously question whether you need the masters at all. For trading at those shops the internship basically is the pipeline, and a US MFin on top of a return offer is a lot of money for not much.

Profile's strong for the whole list though, CMU and Berkeley especially. Princeton and MIT MFin are small classes so they're reaches for pretty much everyone. If you're actually leaning toward research over trading then Yale stats or ICME make more sense than the MFins.

Ah, yes! Gifting $3B to a school in the top 25 of total endowments (nearly doubling CMU's total endowment fund).

CMU is a feeder into quant lol. Also citadel ceo ken griffin just donated 3 billion dollars with a B btw, to CMU, so clearly he thinks so.

Even with an undergrad degree (math) only from CMU? I see that you have a Masters from CMU.
Also - if I can graduate in four years on the Honors Math Track (so getting that Masters in four years along with the BSc), will it help me stand out in quant recruiting, or does that not make any difference?

isnt comp fin cash cow? The curriculum seems pretty basic, CMU sells

Whether you’d “feel regretful” is really up to you. You might find that you really enjoy being there and that it opens up a very different set of doors than CMU.
If your question is “how do I maximise my likelihood of getting a quant role”, the answer is go to CMU. If your question is “what school will I regret choosing less”, that’s a much more personal question that I’m not suited to answering.

I know these posts are annoying but any feedback is helpful as I don't have too many mentors who are able to help me with this.
Academics:
* Undergrad: 3rd year at top UK uni (think Oxbridge/Imperial/LSE)
* Major: econ + data science
* Year 1: 67%, Year 2: 77% (top 10% of cohort and First Class in all Y2 courses)
* Relevant coursework includes probability & statistics, multivariable calculus, linear algebra, stochastic processes, algorithms & data structures, econometrics 1 & 2, machine learning 1 & 2, optimisation, databases, micro 1 & 2, macro 1 & 2
* GRE: 170Q / 160V / 4.5 AW
Internships:
* Did Quantitative Trading internship this summer and incoming intern next summer (think CitSec, Optiver, Jump, SIG, DRW, IMC)
* Springweeks at 4 quant firms
Other:
* Undergraduate research assistant, completed a supervised project with econometrics / ML focus
* Completed MITx MicroMaster's in Finance with 90%+ final grade
* Society leadership roles at my uni
* References should be pretty decent i.e. mainly lecturers saying I ranked very high in in their courses and 1 from professor I did research with
Current school list:
* Princeton MFin
* MIT MFin
* Stanford ICME Mathematical & Computational Finance
* Yale MS Statistics & Data Science
* Harvard MS Data Science
* Berkeley MFE
* CMU MSCF
Any thoughts on which schools are realistic/reaches, or anything significant I could add would be really appreciated, thank you.

The thing that's hard to recreate is the timing more than the brand. Big shop internship recruiting for the summer that matters mostly opens in late summer or early fall, so as a Fall 2027 transfer you'd be applying in your first weeks at the new school, with no UC GPA yet and nobody on campus who knows you. At CMU you'd already be in the pipeline. Berkeley closes a lot of that gap. UCLA/UCSD can get there, but it's mostly a cold-apply grind. I'd go back to CMU, and SML is fine, nobody cares that it isn't comp fi.

Any math + CS program at CMU would probably get you interviews. One more year of school is a double edged sword - you graduate later but you get another year to study.

CMU vs CC ---> UCs for quant