Hello guys i am new to the forum and i find it exceptionally informative. I have seen in job postings firms asking for quants from top schools. Does that mean that Ivy League or Oxbridge people can get the job?I am at the Vienna Graduate School of Finance PhD in Finance with quite a good mathematics curriculum such as stochastics, stochastic finance with Tomas Bjork, numerical, at the second year we have a special course on Levy processes etc,i have a master in Finance from University of Lausanne and undergraduate degree in Statistics and Actuarial mathematics. Do i have chances for a quant job in Wall Street?Thank you all in advance

You're not the first to ask about Vienna, but no one has any answers.It sounds good, some decent staff, however no reputation (good or bad) that I can spot.I have to make a confession...I'm a quant pimp and I have no fucking idea what people mean by "top school".Certainly there are some places that pretty much everyone will put in that set, but I've seen people hired from places that barely appear on google, let alone some list of the global elite.Go to the place you think that you will learn the most. Work your arse off and work the recruitment system.

Hello and thanks for the reply so far my impressions from Vienna as a student is that the first two years coursework easily ranks at top Masters programs at least in Europe (i would rank it well above Lausanne where i graduated from, at the level of MAS Zurich which i consider the best Finance Masters in Europe) and they have impressive guest faculty.

Don't get too hung up on these definitions. The employer may not know himself what this means. It just makes the job sound suitably selective and exclusive in the advert.

QuoteOriginally posted by: DCFCI'm a quant pimp and I have no fucking idea ... Work your arse off. You have no issue with using the F* word, so why do you try to disguise the little A* word?

Err...KackToodles I take it you're not familiar with British English?

Kacktoodles I'm a Brit, and so spell arse correctly. I rather suspect the US spelling is a confusion with donkeys.

QuoteOriginally posted by: EzraErr...KackToodles I take it you're not familiar with British English? Horray! I learned something new today on the World Wide Web! The world is getting smaller indeed.

Working your ass off?Poor ass.

QuoteOriginally posted by: DCFCYou're not the first to ask about Vienna, but no one has any answers.It sounds good, some decent staff, however no reputation (good or bad) that I can spot.that (the lack of reputatio) is probably not a good sign for job hunters.

I agree, Vienna will open few doors by reputation, so he has to judge it by quality of teaching, which is very hard before you start.

From my experience of looking for quants to hire, I tend not to give too much weight to the name of the school, but more to the topic of study (i.e. actual skills). For example, someone with a PhD in Finance from a so called "top school" is not more likely to get an interview than someone who studied something real (engineering, physics, comp sci etc) at a lesser known school.Also, there are very few "top schools" in Europe. The term "top school" comes from the US where the more liberal educational system has allowed some institutions to become amazingly good. In Europe, except for some of the French and UK unis, there are no real "top schools" (but many who want to be ranked up there).

Anybody who hires a PhD grad on the basis of school reputation alone really has no clue about what a PhD is. Don't get me wrong; just because you get a PhD doesn't mean that people actually care about what you studied. But after all, it is a research degree. The quality of the diploma really depends on what you did, not where you did it.

Both gmike and kilimanjaro are right, but there are people in the process who simply aren't qualified to make decisions about quality by anything other than buzzwords.

I wouldn't be so sceptic about Vienna, some ppl from there get pretty good jobs.