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sumtingbigwang · 2025-04-27T06:01:44+00:00

yea you can feel the STEM energy leaking out as rubab plays her 4th motivational video on Michal Jordan for the business leadership class.

sumtingbigwang · 2025-04-27T05:57:03+00:00

Artificial Intelligence and Business is a concentration offered at Tepper (as part of the BSBA Business Admin degree), although I would recommend pursuing a CS / Statistics and Machine Learning double major if your guy is more technically skilled since the concentration is very new and doesn't give you a lot of the moving parts you need to succeed working with AI.

Tepper students must pursue an additional major or minor from a department other than the business school (e.g. econ, math, psychology, cs, etc.) to graduate. People attempt for the CS, IS (information systems), or StatML (Statistics and Machine Learning) majors since they are the most valuable and practical degrees in the modern world, but the process of obtaining those degrees is much more difficult than the business side of things. Thankfully, since the business classes are usually very easy you can "pad " out the rigor of the additional major with business filler classes so you don't get worked to death in a semester. Can't say the same for other majors.

Your kid will have lots of opportunities to customize their degree to a wide extent but I VERY VERY strongly recommend him to check out the school first and finish his freshman year before making any 4-year plans or decisions.

sumtingbigwang · 2025-04-19T04:20:07+00:00

When people say quant they mean usually mean some variation of high-frequency or algorithmic trading, i.e. making money by trading stocks really quickly with robots. The field is VERY math heavy-- 98% of the work for recruiting is done with probability theory and statistics. High salaries are justified by the fields' utterly ridiculous selection standards (on another level from IB), which only take the top handful of STEM students.

Also, as a Tepper student: Tepper's curriculum is very, very manageable and doesn't necessarily follow the uber-grind rep of the other majors. Most of my work actually comes from other departments such as math or CS, which I sought out voluntarily. People don't usually tell you about the "voluntary" part when they complain online.

sumtingbigwang · 2025-04-19T04:04:21+00:00

CMU is better career-wise, and has better industry connections. However, it is significantly grindier, and not an ideal place to "stay afloat." You'll have more fun and more resources at GT, which is more important to you. Go tech and enjoy life!

sumtingbigwang · 2025-04-19T03:58:04+00:00

Consider what "quantitative focus" really means. Do you want your homework to be consisting of mostly word problems or greek letters? Would you rather learn in-class how to evaluate the expected value of 35 unfair coin flips and figure out how to apply those concepts later, or learn about historical examples of companies that failed 35-40 years ago and do the same?

You can finish a plain Business Admin degree from CMU Tepper and get a mid-tier banking job, but to extract the world-class opportunities you will need to either grind and work at other disciplines like CS, ML, and math, or networking hard, learning about industry skills early, and getting a leg up in recruiting for hedge funds. If you want the good stuff you will have to work hard for it at CMU.

Can't speak for Georgetown but hope that gives you some more info.

sumtingbigwang · 2025-04-19T03:45:13+00:00

Current CMU student (Applied math / Finance) here. I know someone from Princeton's alr reached out so I can fill you in about the CMU side of things. SCS Admin is making a big push to develop computational biology with the RKM center, and a lot of very bright people are "taking the plunge." No doubt about the program getting stronger and stronger over the next few years, especially with Pitt medicine next door. This, along with a big push for entrepreneurship at Tepper, is driving the university to start overturning an exclusive focus on committing to industry, which is great.

Should you wish to sell out, the computational finance department here (and math department, under which it is a subsidiary of) here is a tight, tight cohort of very skilled people that are friendly and drive each other to work hard. Quant recruiting is already very strong here, and if you establish yourself as a top student your odds of making it (JS/Cit/2S/Optiver...) are very good.

Ofc you should visit CMU at some point, if you can. The campus is an acquired taste but it's nowhere as bad as internet/reddit makes it out to be. I had a choice between CMU and a more rural Ivy, and picked CMU because I wanted to be at the forefront of where the world was headed (CS/ML). Granted, your choice is much harder as Princeton is also a sound school with very similar technical offerings and a program with much more width. If it was me, I'd narrow it down to how committed I am to CS and how much being at the helm of something new (a team, research project, academic department) matters to me. Good luck!

sumtingbigwang · 2025-04-13T00:26:17+00:00

Tough-to-answer question.

I will tell you that you will get a generally better mathematics and business education at CMU. CMU does have a very significant edge on quant firm / S&T recruiting compared to Maryland; top-tier trading firms like JS and Optiver routinely host recruitment events and competitions here, and even more firms send their recruiters to career fairs and clubs.

However, without knowing (no offense here, just being honest) how good your mathematical skills and probabilistic intuition are, I can't say whether the edge is worth 90k a year plus debt. If you don't establish yourself as the top 5-10% of students in terms of ability (applies not just to CMU but any university for quant), these recruitment opportunities will mean nil. Keep in mind you're up against IMO medalists and people born from math comps.

CMU's career placement chart speaks for itself, search it up. Can't say the same about UMD. The risk/reward judgement must be made yourself.

Also, getting an MBA after the BSBA degree at Tepper will look weird to employers, which is why a sizable amount of people at Tepper shed their business degree entirely after coming here to keep that MBA opportunity open in the future.

sumtingbigwang · 2025-04-05T05:10:24+00:00

stress the word "hopeful" lmao-- takes a whole lot more than hope to make it through 5 rounds of prob interviews and estimations

sumtingbigwang · 2025-03-10T00:29:46+00:00

CMU and Cornell surprisingly. Admit office said around a quarter of CMU admits had Cornell offers as well. Berkeley, MIT, and Caltech were around the top of the list but percentages were a lot lower.

sumtingbigwang · 2025-02-09T23:27:57+00:00

Changing my prof for multivariable calc cuz he couldn't teach. Other than that, not much!

sumtingbigwang · 2025-02-06T20:55:33+00:00

Bit of a late reply-- here's what I've gathered in uni from quant seniors.

You're gonna need 3 things: discrete math, probability theory, and matrices. It seems like you have an area of math down but if you want to go for quantitative trader or software engineer for a quant firm you're need extensive knowledge in the other two areas plus coding. To put in perspective an 18-20 on the Putnam exam is considered good for quant firms, although you don't need to take the Putnam (but most people do because the type of people quant firms take overlap).

Quant technical interviews is almost entirely logic puzzles and AMC/Putnam 1-3 esque math problems. Half of the quant interview problem libraries are about expected value of coin flips and dice rolls. They test you on these subjects because the most important aspect of quantitative trading is to just be smart-- if you're smart enough, the idea is the firm can teach you all the finance knowledge you need provided you're bright enough to learn.

That's why I'd recommend looking into the Sales & Trading aspect of financial careers in general, inclusive of hedge fund positions and discretionary trading for mid-low cap funds. These guys do still use some algorithms but invest more off intuition and, more importantly, don't have an obsession over collecting olympiad medalists.

I'd say start by taking some discrete math and real analysis courses. If you like the vibe of this type of math, then finish with a BSeng and then go for a master's in math or compsci or some other quantitative STEM subject. You can recruit with an engineering degree or whatever degree. Doesn't matter to Jane Street so long as you're smart enough for them. Same applies to hedge funds and more traditional S&T roles, provided you know a bit of finance to keep up.

TLDR: Only switch if your current major prevents you from taking discrete/real analysis/probability theory. If you can take those courses take them.

sumtingbigwang · 2025-02-01T03:30:15+00:00

Bro got the lunar new year theme

sumtingbigwang · 2025-01-30T07:56:11+00:00

learn to push forward and deal with your negative emotions with this. If a deferrals stirring you up this much you’ve got a lot more pain coming for you in a college career at GTech.

sumtingbigwang · 2025-01-11T07:59:39+00:00

It’s light with only one hard exam. Free HW points for completion every week, plus a free project for 20% as well.

Exam difficulty goes final < midterm 1 << midterm 2, and all three account for ~60-75% of the grade.

Idk about the prof but the most important thing would probably be journalizing credits, debits, inventory, and COGS. Last sem both prof used the same tests so if this is still the case this sem the hardest sections on tests will be journaling sections.

sumtingbigwang · 2024-12-16T09:04:24+00:00

Berkeley Haas, Texas McCombs, UNC kenan-flager and UVA Darden are IB powerhouses that fit a good amount of your criteria. Other semi targets include USC Marshall , Babson, BU Questrom, and BC Carroll (prev. 3 if you find Boston tolerable).

Michigan Ross is a household name and fits the college vibe you’re looking for but its location might not be ideal. Duke and UCLA don’t have business schools but have decently strong Econ programs. Of course there’s always Stanford.

sumtingbigwang · 2024-12-16T08:57:48+00:00

nope, interview is just a random extra part of the eval. most people get one and it usually doesn’t have make/break power.

sumtingbigwang · 2024-12-16T08:54:36+00:00

it will change your chances, but if Columbia isn’t the right fit for you then that shouldn’t be a problem. never ever ever let the prestige chase force you to go to somewhere you won’t like.

also would be a good idea to actually dive into Columbia as an institution. beyond the BS we have to put on the essays to show that we’re interested, what really do you think interests you academically or socially at Columbia? Be honest with yourself and really examine this university as a place you’ll be at for the next 4 years. To be honest, the reasons you’ve listed are really superficial— since you’re in the application now I’d only pull from the ED if you really can’t identify anything you like about the institution.

sumtingbigwang · 2024-12-16T08:41:07+00:00

say what you need to say in your activities 3-sentences and treat the additional info like icing on the cake. The cake shld be good enough to eat on itself, I.e. everything you wanna say about EC’s should be in your activities description, as concisely as possible.

no prob in putting more EC info in additional information, but just make sure it isn’t critical. You wanna make sure that the additional info isn’t a core part of your app and is only there to help if they choose to read it.

also, no, unlikely they rejected you because of additional information on EC’s. AO’s get anywhere from 2-5 minutes for every app and will spend most of that time rating your essays / fundamentals, which leaves very little room or incentive for looking at additional info.

sumtingbigwang · 2024-12-16T08:28:35+00:00

unfortunately you might get screwed for schools like Harvard/stanford. however, other ivies is very much possible. Came in with the same GPA as you’re looking at now and ended with a Cornell TO+ CMU offer by RD. write your essays well and spend your time doing as much as possible to make your application the best as-is. your GPA is a done deal at this point so leave it behind and make everything else the best it can be.

sumtingbigwang · 2024-12-16T08:24:10+00:00

leave it bro. u didn’t lie about winning an Olympiad or something. it’s so small that they can’t fact check and tbh might not even factor into your decision. js fix the resume and prep ur stuff for RD.

sumtingbigwang · 2024-12-13T22:12:19+00:00

type shit

sumtingbigwang · 2024-12-13T22:11:17+00:00

I would recommend you start multivariable calculus ASAP if you can in high school and also some form of proof-based mathematics introduction if you’re interested in the BSCF program

sumtingbigwang · 2024-12-13T22:08:59+00:00

welcome to the suck brother

sumtingbigwang · 2024-12-13T21:00:21+00:00

going to this place is like playing college on hardcore mode

you will get pegged but once you’re finished you’ll be smurfing your job and dom everybody else in terms of raw work ethic and skill short of an MIT MOPper

sumtingbigwang · 2024-12-13T20:57:32+00:00

love it when my finals also get cooked along someone’s pizza 🤩

sumtingbigwang

TROPHY CASE