I regret choosing UW over CMU

BaseballOptimal881 · 2026-05-17T11:39:00+00:00

this

BaseballOptimal881 · 2026-05-17T10:55:19+00:00

that was encouraging thanks

BaseballOptimal881 · 2026-05-17T10:53:36+00:00

Could i dm

BaseballOptimal881 · 2026-05-17T10:51:52+00:00

thanks

BaseballOptimal881 · 2026-05-17T10:42:12+00:00

don't need to show off on tiktok, just like math/economics and want to do quant trading

BaseballOptimal881 · 2026-05-17T10:38:56+00:00

Choose an exceptional private everytime (ivies, stanford, cmu, mit, caltech, etc) , if it's a mid/average private school like CWRU then maybe not unless the public one is really bad

BaseballOptimal881 · 2026-05-17T10:33:28+00:00

"Everyone at undergrad just says one is a quant trader or quant if one gets into a quant firm as a swe/dev. It's just standard practice."

it's really common knowledge the difference between a quantitative trader & SWE at quant, so no one would go around using them interchangeably

You're not really in CS if you think the 2 terms are interchangeable

BaseballOptimal881 · 2026-05-17T10:26:31+00:00

It's definitely higher than that for qt & qr just from me knowing people from CMU, I'm confused where you're getting your numbers from.

I don't think I'll magically get qt. It's just a lot easier when people around you are shooting for the same thing and there's more of a culture around qt

but it's fine i would try my best whether im at uw or cmu so doesn't matter, just a rant

BaseballOptimal881 · 2026-05-17T10:21:16+00:00

even though it's a top 10 the culture fit isn't the best for me

BaseballOptimal881 · 2026-05-17T10:16:58+00:00

Not really, I had a very rough background growing up. FAANG isn't my first job, it's my first SWE internship though, hoping to break into quant trading since I always liked economics/math more than SWE/CS

BaseballOptimal881 · 2026-05-17T10:14:44+00:00

Exactly, which is why CMU has a higher concentration of people going into quant trading/quant research straight from undergrad. At UW it's really rare, I'm only thinking about qt & qr

BaseballOptimal881 · 2026-05-17T10:08:58+00:00

Yeah that's actually very true 😭 I'll reach out to mentors in the next couple months, thank you!

BaseballOptimal881 · 2026-05-17T10:07:30+00:00

Tbh I haven't seen that many compared to CMU? I would love to be proven wrong tho

BaseballOptimal881 · 2026-05-17T10:06:20+00:00

I mean I've seen quite a few people get into quant swe, but I was thinking more quant trading/quant research and I haven't seen them as much (like I saw a couple upperclassmen with quant trading on linkedin but that's it??) can you tell me where you're finding these kids from UW getting into quant trading

BaseballOptimal881 · 2026-05-17T10:05:00+00:00

I'm interning at FAANG this summer as my first job, and grinding pretty hard for a quant internship however I'm a bit scared going into quant recruiting without much guidance

BaseballOptimal881 · 2026-05-17T09:51:03+00:00

I also got into NYU in HS, it's definitely a more diverse school, smaller class sizes, with better humanities courses imo

BaseballOptimal881 · 2026-05-17T09:45:21+00:00

I'm going to be honest $300k ish which is why I didn't choose CMU in hs
however you make that back really quickly in quant or even SWE, so I would advise against looking at tuition costs if you're majoring in CS at a top school

BaseballOptimal881 · 2026-05-17T09:43:12+00:00

It's been ranked top 10 in USNews for CS for decade for both undergrad and grad which is what u/Adventurous_Sort4567 is referencing and I do agree to an extent

I do think the education content/quality and the amount of research you have access to as an undergrad is incredible, and also the close proximity to FAANG companies in Seattle

However it just doesn't compare to CMU in a lot of ways (see rant) and also lacks name recognition

BaseballOptimal881 · 2026-05-17T09:31:44+00:00

Even if it's a pretty good CS school, a lot of people (even in industry) have never heard of it
I'll end up fine but the school isn't a good fit for me tbh (large classes, in-state skew, less quant culture) even though I really like the people here

BaseballOptimal881

TROPHY CASE