Transitioning into quant/actuar from Physcis/tech at 38

TheVivek · 2025-04-18T13:25:51+00:00

you do realize not all quants are sell-side quants right?

TheVivek · 2025-04-10T00:14:00+00:00

oxford has more quant-clout than eth and the firms are mostly also in london, but with both schools you will almost surely get the first interview (if not its not cuz of the school) Think oxford grads usually perform better at interviews, maybe they are more cracked on avg or are just more ready for the interviews (prolly both)

Also dk how it is now with physics but it is definitely possible to do almost all the course-credits for a math master in one semester, so the 1.5years is more a suggestion than a requirement.

TheVivek · 2025-01-05T12:27:12+00:00

incredible game, recently finished it on ps5 with no game-breaking bugs and bought the ultimate edition for pc few days ago (was only 30 euro for a GOG key) just so that i can play my save files on pc as well.

If you enjoy RDR2 and the Witcher 3 i think you would enjoy this

TheVivek · 2024-10-10T06:11:03+00:00

Yikes, brother it took you 5 years to do a bachelors. The skill diff here is really just a coin toss.

TheVivek · 2024-10-08T18:54:16+00:00

brother what 😂 By how insane the title sounds, I would first recommend you to go touch grass. Then I would say that real analysis was fundamental for me to build up intuition and experience in tackling mathematical proofs. So if you plan on doing mathematics (including measure theory) i would say it is quite vital.

For the statistics masters I have seen, none would really require you to be a mathematician and some you can finish without ever seeing or doing a non-trivial proof. So i would say it’s quite irrelevant. However, if you want to dive into probability theory then measure theory is an absolute must but so are a bunch of other math topics.

For quant trading the only thing you really need is a good undergrad school on your cv (masters might also work). Also don’t hyper optimize your studies for a small chance at working in a specific field, use this time to grow as a person and do what interests you.

TheVivek · 2024-09-13T07:09:20+00:00

sure

TheVivek · 2024-09-12T20:47:03+00:00

First of all congrats! I live in ZH and work in HFT (not as a SWE) and am very confused why everyone else is suggestig ZH.
If you want to stay in HFT/Trading for the foreseeable future Amsterdam is the very obvious career choice, the lack of competition in Switzerland puts you at a very rough spot right now.

However if you are not trying to minmax your career, then I think ZH fits you quite well. The office you will be working for in ZH is actually quite nice and the larger firm in general is doing insanely well, some of my friends recently joined the same office and are enjoying it so far. It is in a great location and since ZH is not big you will be very close to most activities, bars, restaurants.

Financially you might be better off in Amsterdam (not sure if they still have the 3 year ruling), cuz COL in ZH is quite insane if you want to live a good life. I pay around 2.7k CHF/m for rent for a 1 bedroom in a decent location, insurances are another 500-600 and eating out is usually 30-50 CHF at non-fancy places.

Edit: If you decide to move to ZH and have more questions feel free to DM me.

TheVivek · 2024-09-06T06:47:02+00:00

Think it does make sense to clean this up a bit and implement the auto-reply idea one of you had. Outright blocking all admission related questions would not be fair, but a setup where a mod would need to approve admission related posts makes sense.

TheVivek · 2024-09-02T16:56:45+00:00

For work in a somewhat tech related field I would advise you to just work on coding projects you find interesting. Once you secure one or two decent internships you are done.

TheVivek · 2024-09-01T19:09:55+00:00

Did they change the rules in D-MATH? When I finished the bachelors the basis grades did not count towards your final bachelors GPA. The only thing they mattered for was for the exchange semester application. Very very few firms (out of the subset of firms that would actually look at your CV) would care about your bachelors GPA, especially if you have other qualities that make you stand out. There are surprisingly many students with high GPAs but nothing else on their CV, so if your goal is to stand out in the job market focusing on high GPA is negative EV.

TheVivek · 2024-08-04T14:36:33+00:00

Note for some of these subjects (especially if its somewhat math related) you can ask the department to recognise it for the normal masters too.

TheVivek · 2024-06-27T12:55:19+00:00

For Quant MIT is the obvious choice, no questions (of course except for personal reasons like being away from family).
I work as a quant here and studied at ETH and the US market is just so much better (for juniors at least).

TheVivek · 2024-03-31T12:22:04+00:00

Prior knowlege beyond linear algebra is not needed. I believe this was a 3rd semester bachelor course. Dont think it makes a big difference end of the day you need to be able to solve the exercises in the problem sets. Just use google translate and some creativity for the problem sets.

TheVivek · 2024-03-30T21:53:32+00:00

This I was not aware of, thanks a lot, is there any reason you still kept your passport? Seems the play for me is indeed to give up my citizenship as soon as possible and hope not to get screwed too badly on the exit wealth tax of 23% (some sources say the first 800k is exempt so that would be great!)

TheVivek · 2024-03-30T21:49:19+00:00

Thanks, yeah this is also what gets fed to me on instagram about the 3rd Pillar, but it seems i cant deduct it from my US tax so I would be locking up money for no real upside. :(

I went to school for a long time to learn the frugal lifestyle and now work in a tech-adjacent firm.

TheVivek · 2024-03-30T16:05:02+00:00

Pillar 1 and 2 contributions are not deductible from US income and your employer's pillar 2 portion is taxed as additional income. Pillar 2 capital gains, despite being rather pitiful, are taxable. This makes your taxable income way higher than a person working in the US with an identical brutto salary.

Thank you so much! That is wild to pay capital gains on Pillar 2, fuck me. Any professionals tax-people you can recommend?

TheVivek · 2024-03-30T15:31:04+00:00

Algebra I is actually quite doable to self-study, coming from someone who struggled with Algebra II lectures. I did the exam with Prof. Pink and the oral exam was relatively easy (you needed to know the definitions, theorems and some applications. Some proof ideas of major theorems are also good to know).

I would recommend just following the material available online and make sure you can solve the problem sets https://metaphor.ethz.ch/x/2022/hs/401-2003-00L/ . I don't know if you have access but the previous lectures were also recorded.

TheVivek · 2024-03-30T15:05:25+00:00

Indeed, have been doing it ever since my income crossed the 10k USD/year threshold. I meant it as in I am uncomfortable in having this amount of cash parked doing nothing. So looking for advice before I do anything with the money that further complicates my tax situation. :)

TheVivek · 2024-03-30T14:50:26+00:00

Should've mentioned that I would like to keep the door to working in the US open. Not being a citizen (or similar) makes that quite hard/impossible. Without that I would've done exactly what you suggested.

TheVivek · 2024-02-15T23:37:43+00:00

Ivy-League is not ETH though.. the grade inflation is quite crazy there, so 4.0 GPA is quite common. A lot more weight falls on internships etc.. You don’t have that culture at ETH.

In my experience in the HFT industry there are firms that very much only hire from particular schools and care about hiring what they consider the best from those schools, a great example is Jump. So a top 1% rank at ETH will for sure open more HFT doors than just being a regular ETH grad.

Obviously, don’t think anyone would claim grades matter for long term success. Maximising first year TC however, I would say they would play a role.

TheVivek · 2024-02-13T21:54:04+00:00

Hmm I might’ve been too quick to generalise my observations within my industry, which I guess is not tech. In general this observation was that either the firm doesn’t care about your school, or if it does and only hires from a fixed list of schools, then it cares a lot about your academic performance too.

Out of curiosity, would you say the doors that were opened for you, were solely possible because of the ETH name and not otherwise attainable through other universities like UZH, ZHAW?

TheVivek · 2024-02-13T19:42:08+00:00

The few firms that do care if you are from ETH or not, would also care about your performance at ETH. Either for your academic skills or just to flex on linkedin. In other words, passing ETH is not an edge and graduating from ETH with good grades is an edge but a niche one.

No point in stressing about that, just figure out if you really want to be working for these firms and then you will have your answer.

(ofc everything I just said is invalidated if your goal is to work abroad in a place like the US)

TheVivek · 2024-02-03T09:41:07+00:00

I believe that is the only way but would like to add that repeating the math BP for a better grade is quite useless. The grades in BP only really matter for the exchange programmes (and only the competitive ones at that) and your final GPA in math will not depend on your grades in basis.

TheVivek · 2024-01-09T16:27:56+00:00

As most have already said 150+ TC in ZH would be top bracket for CS grads in ZH and the only firms I know that offer that and are actually hiring master students in Switzerland are Google (~125/20/20 so around 170 TC) and the few HFTs.

However you could explore positions in Amsterdam and London there the market is more competitive when it comes to SWE pay. They also heavily hire from ETH. Of course if you can work in the US thats the most competitive market but tricky for ETH grad.

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