Hello,I'm a undergrad (3rd year) student at University of Waterloo (Canada) doing a Bachelor's of Mathematics (We've got North America's few Mathematics Faculty!!) majoring Actuarial Science with some BusinessAdmin. I'm registered in the co-operative program where we alternate between school/work every 4 months. There's some trading positions available, but they never seem to pick me!!I am wondering, what are the requirements of working @ trading desks and what's the work like on a daily basis? Actuarial Science seems a tad overwhelming (too many people) and I just think Quant. Finance seems much more interesting. What courses/books should I get in preparation for a role within banks/brokerages etc?Also, everybody here seems to have (at the bare minimum) a MFE or even PhDs. What are some career choices for just a plain ol'mathematics undergrad in the quant fied??? I'm planning to get a MFE, but not sure if my 80% avg is good enough since everybody else seems so damn smart!!! Much thanks to anybody who can enlighten me on my situation.Any thoughts, comments?

80% avg in watalu is good man....mine is worse

All Canadian banks are v.interested in Waterloo students for trading positions. For last few years, more Waterloo grads have joined as traders at Cdn banks than any other school (based on HR report from TD and Scotia)....and many of them are undergrads. Also, there are a lot of wloo grads working as quants though they all have graduate degrees (I haven't seen one straight out of undergrad....which makes sense as well). With 80% and decent co-op experience, you should be able to get into a good MFE program (it may not be Princeton or Stanford though).

Sounds like I'm talking to a Waterloo-alumni if I'm not mistaken. So what's it like working as1) Trader2) Quant @ Big5 banks.And what are some requirements for traders? Because I can never get a dang interview for trading positions. But I'm still in 2B, so got a few more chances ahead of me.All of this sounds so interesting!! Sure makes me enjoy multivariate calculus just that much more!!

try to get a coop placement at a bank in NYC or europe. there just isn't much quant products happening in canadayou shouldn't have a problem with high marks at waterloo. lots of waterloo coops are placed in top jobs around the world (maybe unfairly so)

I'm assuming 2B means you're in 2nd year (you can tell I didn't go to Wloo). In that case, try to get relevant experience until you get to your 3rd/4th year; usually, Cdn banks don't offer trading positions to 2nd year coop students. Akimon is defnitely right: you should try for London or NYC - Canadian markets, though pretty big, are not as fancy i.e. quants in Canada don't get 1/2 as much exposure to different products as those in U.S or Europe.

Looking through our co-op system, there are fairly few international positions in NYC/London as much as I want. Then there's always those crazy engineers that seem to get into all the quant/trading jobs. There's plenty of possible quants lying around on campus with much better marks. low 80s don't get much love around here!!! So what skills should I work up on (i.e. MatLab, C++, Hull?) to even get acknowledged as a junior trader? If my marks hold up, I was planning to get a MFE @ UofToronto and start there. But thats the problem, you can't get into the industry jobs without experience, and you can't get experience without a job.

Quantabe, I'd recommend against "waiting" for the MFE to get your trading job. To be honest, if you can't get in during undergrad with a coop program of waterloo's calibre, chances are you can't get into the front office after the masters. It would be easy, however, to get into say, middle office risk management with a masters, if that is what you want to do.My advice is to do a coop term in one of those banks in the back office of a derivatives desk, preferably in an area such as "derivatives systems", and try to learn as much about the products as possible (at least how the structures work, and how they are managed, not really the hardcore pricing). That shouldn't be too hard, since there should be plenty of these coop jobs, compared to trading floor jobs. You should be well on your way to get interviews for trading assistant jobs in your next coop term with this experience. Good luck.