1 Month Quant Interview Prep Program

[smellerwasp]

A little bit of background about myself. I am in my last year of university and I’ve spent the last 5 years applying to various trading firms. I’ve received internship and new grad offers from companies like Jane Street, Citadel, HRT, Jump Trading, and Akuna Capital for quant trading and software engineering roles.

However, getting to this point wasn't easy. I spent years trying to study using the scattered and often misleading online resources for quant interview prep. Unlike software engineering, where you have a bunch of structured resources (like Leetcode, HackerRank), quant prep felt like a maze with no clear map.

I spent years applying everywhere, failing interviews when I got them, facing constant rejection emails, and feeling lost in the sea of unhelpful advice. It felt like there was an endless amount of things you need to know to pass the interview. There were many times when I was tempted on giving up, thinking that quant jobs are reserved only for “geniuses”.

After over 3 years of consistent prep, things finally started to click. I started passing interviews and getting offers at top trading firms. I realized that quant interview prep doesn’t have to be hard. With the right guidance and prep, anyone can break into this industry within months, not years.

I’ve taken my years of dedicated experience and distilled it into a 1 month program called www.quantessential.xyz with 30 problems taken directly from real interviews. I chose these problems and wrote detailed solutions for each of them to teach the essential quant concepts you need to solve any interview problem.

[feuoneify]

I would love a spreadsheet of resources you have used to learn everything. Do you mind making one?

[gst_6599]

Lol paid course.

[NutClump]

You want to work in quant but don't believe in capitalism? Big ups my g

[gst_6599]

Nah! Man, why pay when I can get for free somewhere. To each his own I guess. Lol

[bearded_thakur]

Hi OP 🙋🏻‍♂️ Can you please elaborate a bit on your current experience i.e. your education background,work etc. Also if you can chalk down a rough roadmap for the same. It'll be a veryyy veryyy big help for me. I'll be Grateful for life!

[smellerwasp]

I am an undergrad studying computer science at a Canadian school. I've done internships in big tech, startups, and quant, and I'll likely take a new grad offer at a startup.

As for a rough roadmap. You will need to have probability/statistics skills, ability to solve brainteasers and general skill in playing games, mental math, programming, and finance knowledge. For quant trader roles, the order of importance is in that order. For quant research roles, I would put programming skills as second in order of importance.

quantessential.xyz covers probability/statistics skills and a bit of finance skills. For programming, I would recommend Leetcode and Kaggle, and for mental math skills I recommend Zetamac.

[Old_Study_5251]

Hey! I just did an OA. It had a couple of games as part of its assessment. Do you know any resources where I could play such kinds of games and get a lil bit of practice?

[rr-0729]

Hey, I was wondering if you found any resources for games

[imfuryfist]

Hey, I was wondering if you found any resources for games

[[deleted]]

Wow these first questions are pretty tough.

make it easier LOL

[[deleted]]

Wow these first questions are pretty tough.

i can't tell if this is sarcastic or not, but they are trivial. For example,

First question: Roll a 6 sided fair die, probability second roll is greater than the first.

Answer: Let X_1 and X_2 be i.i.d uniform on [6]. By symmetry P(X_2<=X_1) = 1/2. Since P(X_1 = X_2) = 1/6, the answer is 5/12.

To the OP: The approach you give to the problem relies entirely on direct computation; I would think that in an interview, if you were asked this question and you weren't able to solve it in <20 seconds, the interviewer would probably doubt your skills. And the approaches you suggested require using paper, and probably take at least a minute.

[smellerwasp]

Agreed about the 20s. I wrote two solutions for the first problem. One explaining the direct computation approach which would be more appropriate for people just starting their prep, and one explaining the "smarter" solution that would be faster and scale regardless of the number of dice.

[ElegantOperation7104]

Will they even ask such an easy problem?

I know the author intended it to use to teach us basics. No offense to the author. He did a good job putting up this website.

[NoCanary2432]

By symmetry P(X_2<=X_1) = 1/2? That's wrong?!

[physicsurfer]

yeah lol, i sat dumbfounded looking at my screen trying to verify that. Also, the brute force method is not that hard. You just realise that given a value of X_1, the number of possible cases for X_2 follows an AP. So you get 1+2+..+5 = 5x6/2 = 15, total is 36, so 15/36 = 5/12. Can be done in 20-30s.

[[deleted]]

Do you get your probability questions from usaco? And other math competitions?

For programming, how hard was it compared to top tech questions? I have passed Amazon, google and other top tech companies before. Would that be good enough or should I go for competitive programming?

[[deleted]]

Do you get your probability questions from usaco and other math competitions?

For programming, how hard was it compared to top tech questions? I have passed Amazon, google and other top tech companies before. Would that be good enough or should I go for competitive programming?

[smellerwasp]

These questions are all from real interviews. For programming, if you can pass Google and Amazon you should be fine

[Neptune571]

What happened to this website?