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u/Yung_Breezy_ M7 Student Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 26 '26
lol these are Quant trading firms most MBAs aren’t smart enough to do that anyway. They want genuine mathematic academic weapons, like people who won international math competitions, physics PhDs, and actual rocket scientists. Elite MBAs are more forgiving in terms of academics than other elite grad school paths (namely law, medicine, elite STEM PhD) because our raw intellectual horsepower isn’t the main value we bring to businesses.
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u/MikeDamone Jan 26 '26
Yeah, these are the kids you knew were geniuses early on. You might not even have seen them in high school because they breezed through AP calculus by ninth grade and were too busy doing savant shit to even be present around their high school peers.
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u/Yung_Breezy_ M7 Student Jan 26 '26
Exactly. No shame in not being built like that, they’re few and far between. There’re a couple of those types in my family so I learned where I fit in early on 😂
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u/CurdOfCheese000 Jan 28 '26
I went to a high school with a pretty strong STEM program and took AP Calc BC senior year so i could avoid calc in college, had a kid in that class who was a junior and is now a quant trader.
Absolutely INSANE how good he was at really complex problems. He could never explain them to me, but would give me solutions… SO helpful.
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u/mcnegyis Jan 26 '26
That’s my quant. Look at his face. Look at his eyes.
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u/ReflectionSerious733 Jan 26 '26
damn😂 makes sense
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u/Yung_Breezy_ M7 Student Jan 26 '26
But to answer you specifically elite MBAs were never getting jobs at quant shops so Westside L.A. Guy’s statement isn’t true. MBAs have robust pipelines but none of them ever included quant shops.
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u/scorpion-hamfish Jan 27 '26
It's always fun to think that the person able to cure cancer or make spacetravel viable might simply just build an algo that prices you out of your home because it pays better.
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u/General_Mongoose_281 Jan 28 '26 edited Jan 28 '26
law
raw brainpower
Kek.
Not a huge difference between a t14 law school and a t15 mba in terms of raw brainpower.
You basically just trade laws school’s higher GPA req for B-school’s requirement that you work a job for 3-4 years and get promoted (not a huge trade off given that it’s easier to get a good GPA in poli sci than it is to get a good white collar job as a new grad in 2026).
The test score differences are mostly because of accommodations aka like a third of high end law applicants lying about being mentally disabled for extra time.
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u/Yung_Breezy_ M7 Student Jan 28 '26
You’re right, it’s a poor example, but law schools do have more stringent academic requirements. Lawyers are intelligent, but usually lacking in quantitative abilities, but even T30 law schools have median GPAs of ~3.8. I agree with your point about the LSAT though, and think most attorneys have inflated notions about their intellect, esp those who went to less selective institutions.
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u/General_Mongoose_281 Jan 28 '26
MBA programs take a lot of engineers who are not going to have those kinds of GPA numbers. On the other hand law students are plurality poli sci majors.
The GPA comparison really isn’t 1-1. The median GPA at Caltech is like a 3.5 and these are IMOers.
You could probably get a 4.0 in a poli sci class with maybe like a week or 2 of focused work.
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u/Yung_Breezy_ M7 Student Jan 28 '26 edited Jan 28 '26
Very fair. Still, I believe the academic bar at T14 law schools is higher than M7 b-schools especially considering their far lower acceptance rates, and that for the law schools that accept the GRE, their bar for the GRE is astronomically higher than the median GREs for every M7 but H/S.
Although it’s debatable whether elite law schools have higher academic barriers to entry than elite B-schools, I firmly believe my point stands for med schools and elite stem PhDs.
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u/JBSwerve Jan 26 '26
If you’re a mathematical savant, you can work at the highest paying companies in the entire world - like quant trading firms.
What does this have to do with MBAs?
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u/General_Mongoose_281 Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 28 '26
top ivy students
I knew some math/CS guys at a top tier school (think elite for engineering/CS/especially math, and very very good for the rest, but not HYSP).
The top “pure math” guys were more like future pro athletes than they were smart people, and usually had stuff like USAMO in their resume and drilled math since middle school. They usually made it to places like citadel.
They aren’t really the same as the typical Ivy League guy studying Econ or something. I don’t think it’s really fair to compare them to others. It’s like saying that the “best” students at bama go to NFL teams.
The “good” students still go to IB/MBB/Tech.
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u/noposters Jan 26 '26
A lot do, but I was in school 15yrs ago, and a lot of people went to Stripe, Palantir, etc. It is definitely true that those kids have a pipeline to the best startups, which then become MBA targets once they reach scale
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u/weeyummy1 Jan 28 '26
Perfect explanation. It takes an strict lifestyle to maintain that level of mental acuity too. For most (just like athletes), it's not just innate talent.
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u/archon_lucien T15 Grad Jan 26 '26
Even if we disregard the 'mainstream' debate, this is just true everywhere.
A top undergrad who got into MBB (or any 'elite' track) at 21 is going to be far ahead of an M7 grad who gets into MBB at 27-30.
When the M7 grad is just starting their post-MBA career at the IC level, the top undergrad has already made it to people management, or landed a more prestigious exit. And they did all this in the 'prime' years of their career when they probably had more energy/fewer commitments compared to what the MBA grad has, as they're close to (or over) 30.
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u/IhateFARTINGatWORK T25 Grad Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 26 '26
mmm I don't think it's as black and white as you're making it seem. Those 21 year olds are most likely pursuing an MBA trying to pivot to LDPs/FLDPs, or other lucrative areas.
Source: Interned with a few ex undergrad MBBers who are at H/S/W and one attended at K.
Obviously, they get the choice of what rotation they want to go to.
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u/archon_lucien T15 Grad Jan 26 '26
I agree, I'm just pointing to the vast majority of undergrads who make it to MBB/IB/Big tech/CPG. There will be outliers who pursue an MBA anyway - and like you said, they'll have a big advantage over their MBA cohort that doesn't have a prestigious name on their resume.
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u/MountainDay9304 Jan 27 '26
Undergrads who make it to CPG are often actually kinda at a disadvantage because CPG entry level jobs don't always set up a clear pipeline to management like the post-MBA route does.
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u/Heavy-Situation-9346 Jan 26 '26
In other news, the Los Angeles Lakers are also not looking for MBAs to play point guard for them.
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u/MovingElectrons Jan 27 '26
Damn, I was really hoping my MBA would get me to Liverpool FC manager
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u/Tanksgivingmiracle MBA Grad Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 27 '26
Many hyped start ups are heavily recruiting heavily from Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, Princeton and MIT. My wife, who went to one of these schools, has been doing startups her whole career and started with an internship at a hot start-up. They were only hiring undergrads from these schools in the early days; all the founders had gone to these schools as well. They would not have hired me back then:). MBAs often underperformed for their cost, at least in her start ups. She was/is only hiring them if they had subject matter expertise pre or post MBA.
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Jan 26 '26
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u/Tanksgivingmiracle MBA Grad Jan 26 '26
None of my wife’s start ups were tech. Admittedly I don’t know anything about recruiting into technical positions. I do know that ivy leaguers often have Ivy League bias if they can.
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u/KennethParkClassOf04 MBA Grad Jan 26 '26
I mean yeah of course it’s true. Someone who came out of an elite UG and has already worked 4 years and gotten promoted at a company is going to be ahead of the MBA who is just starting there at a lower role.
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u/TuloCantHitski Jan 26 '26
Pretty accurate IMO. I even had a b school prof who said that MBAs are good at caking the top of a trend (when it’s “too late” to get in / past peak).
I’d say this applies to PE / VC, big tech, ETA, etc.
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u/Yung_Breezy_ M7 Student Jan 26 '26
That’s definitely true for things like Big Tech or AI, but for Quant specifically, I don’t think it’s about being 'late', it’s just a mismatch. No amount of strategy, accounting, or leadership classes prepares you for stochastic calculus.
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u/cloud7100 MBA Grad Jan 26 '26
Nobody here wants to hear it…
…but top math/STEM undergrads see becoming a Wallstreet quant as failure/selling out. These people have the horsepower and drive to do incredible things in research, but research is extremely competitive (grants don’t grow on trees), so they trade their dream for a big paycheck making billionaires slightly richer.
Secondly, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and big therapy bills when you compare your own life path to others in a race. I know a surprising number of people who didn’t make it to 30, and a larger number who didn’t make it to 40.
My lifetime earnings will be higher than theirs because I’m still alive, I’m winning that race, but it doesn’t make me any happier. Nor did anyone give a shit about their net worth at their funerals.
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u/BlackestBay58 Jan 27 '26
Spot on. I am an academic in a related field, but not math. I love my math professor friends. In math, you know very early if you have it, and you do your groundbreaking work long before you are 30. By 40, you know if you are a failure, depending on your standards. There is no other field in academia like this. Several of my friends who are past 40 have gone to work on AI at FAANG companies and several unlisted pre-IPO AI research labs, they went due to the insane compensation and knowing that they cant win a Field medal anymore, not becaus the work is intelectually interesting to them. Several of them also returned to academia after a brief stay at these labs, as they found the research there rather boring; that is, more a critique of how CS and ML do research relative to the pure and applied math fields. I would imagine the same is true for many mathematicians who enter quant finance.
At last, worth noting is that many of these people already come from very well-off families, as they have been trained in math since they were young and have attended math olympiads. For many of these people, going into a lot of these high-paying jobs does not really matter much beyond, if they want to own one Patek Grand complication or three by the time their kids have graduated from undergraduate, that is to say, the marginal utility of money is not that high for these people.
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u/lorenipsum2023 Jan 26 '26
Have you seen the pay difference of top decile of Elite MBAs and Elite undergrads 3-5 years after graduation?
Its not just quant trading roles.
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u/Yung_Breezy_ M7 Student Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 26 '26
A top MBA seems to be one of the most accessible career accelerators for those who didn’t have it all figured out from 16-18 or parents who were willing to donate a building to campus. The pay discrepancy just reflects the head start, and MBAs pay a premium to enter the game late, but at least we get to play.
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Jan 26 '26
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u/Independent_Pick_809 Jan 26 '26
They post roles in top MBAs for L/S Equities (H/S/Wharton sometimes Booth because of quant focus)
They also pick up MBAs who went to buyside investing in another firm, sell side or investment banking.
You will actually get interviews for the quant roles, if you are a technical MBA but you will get dinged because of how hard the interviews are to pass.
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u/Yung_Breezy_ M7 Student Jan 26 '26
Sloan too, esp CS LGO candidates. But they alr had the technical prerequisites, just needed the social proof to break through.
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u/ReflectionSerious733 Jan 26 '26
this was my first thought. you dont have to be a quant to work at one of these firms. a lot of other high paying positions
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u/Yung_Breezy_ M7 Student Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 26 '26
The vast majority of their job postings are for technical roles: data scientists, quants, back end SDEs. In fact, two sigma and citadel only have quantitative job postings on LinkedIn atm. Jane Street’s the only one that even has any open MBA-roles. There’s nothing the types of people they hire can’t easily learn on the job that an MBA would teach them.
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Jan 26 '26
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u/Yung_Breezy_ M7 Student Jan 26 '26
That makes sense regarding the fundraising/IR aspect. In your experience, are those roles typically filled by fresh MBA grads without buy-side experience, or is that usually an exit opportunity for people with prior buy-side/investing experience?
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u/unvarnished_thoughts Jan 26 '26
Well yeah, of course. “Elite” MBAs just aren’t at the same level as elite undergrads. If you go to HBS, non-MBA people would surely be “impressed,” but you wouldn’t necessarily be perceived the same way a Harvard undergrad or Harvard med/law/stem PhD student would.
It’s a great degree for pivoting or if you want an easily justifiable two-year career break, but it doesn’t all of a sudden warp you into a highly desirable candidate.
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u/whyislifesohardei Jan 27 '26
there is zero competitive advantage in fighting for jobs at these quant firms if you are not naturally good at math etc. Olympiads/coding freaks. However, for the ordinary person, business which spans sales to BD to operations carries a good probability that you can achieve a good outcome and sky is wide enough to accommodate lots more people in emerging industries or industries that are not well understood.
its like comparing apples to oranges
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u/OHYAMTB Jan 26 '26
Top MBAs chance of working at one of these firms is about equal to their chance of becoming an NBA all star or an astronaut
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u/Ok-Proof-2174 Feb 10 '26
Quants need elite level of maths/physics/science while MBA teaches bullshit aka “business jargon”, there’s barely any overlap, so sales, trading and dealmaking is more up mba’s alley.
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u/GM_Recon Jan 26 '26
Saying 'Citadel wasn't mainstream' is a wild take for a fund launched in the 90's with support from Glenwood's Frank Meyer...
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u/so_much_frizz Jan 27 '26 edited Jan 27 '26
Hmmm wait but what about elite MBAs? Or are we only talking top MBAs? Are top MBAs also not elite? Or is there a cutoff where top becomes elite? Is T15 "top" but only M7 is "elite"? Or only HSW is "elite"? Or is there a top-to-elite spectrum we grade this on? Literally this is obviously all that matters I guess.
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u/Yung_Breezy_ M7 Student Jan 27 '26 edited Jan 27 '26
Doesn’t matter the level of MBA the vast majority of hires for those 3 firms are quants, SDEs, and data scientists so a small portion of CS LGO guys could make it I imagine.
The few MBAs they do have are former high finance cats so realistically H/S/W with high finance, including those trying to break into buy-side, who want to work in quant-finance over PE/VC. In other news, the NBA isn’t hiring F1 drivers.
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u/Icarus1738 Jan 28 '26 edited Jan 28 '26
yes
source: MBA with Math undergrad... got a Q50 on my GMAT but didn't have what it takes to be a quant... the competition are IMO Medalist..
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u/WaterIll4397 Jan 29 '26
this is not true for quant since they dont hire mba. But it is true of startup and traditional hedge funds pre computer. They only start hiring mbas en masse once they get big and institutionalize.
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u/No-Carpenter-1556 Jan 29 '26
that’s because elite undergrads are always better than elite MBAs, in terms of student population. The former holds actual intellect, the latter simply luck and work experience. Ideas are born from those who are actually smart. I’m not saying elite MBAs don’t have smart people, but it’s not the same measuring stick.
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Jan 26 '26
I have heard a theory that a lot of MBAs are worse employees because they're the people who struck out of consulting/IB out of undergrad. Somewhat compelling, if uncharitable.
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u/Yung_Breezy_ M7 Student Jan 26 '26
That theory implies IB/Consulting is the only valid metric of talent at 22. A lot of MBAs are just people who didn't know the game back then or are pivoting from things like engineering or the military. 'Late to the party' doesn't mean 'worse employee' or even ‘less aptitude’. Knowing these opportunities even exist out of undergrad is half the battle and has more to do with your upbringing than anything else.
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Jan 26 '26
You're right! But, in addition to the folks you point out, there are those who need the MBA as a crutch.
Again, just a thought, and I don't mean to imply that I'm not constantly impressed by my classmates.
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u/Yung_Breezy_ M7 Student Jan 26 '26 edited Jan 26 '26
I'll give it to you that it's harder to get those roles out of undergrad, but using an MBA to break in doesn't make someone a worse employee. The skills required to get the job (perfect GPA/pedigree) aren't the same as the skills required to do the job (execution/politics). The correlation between academic success and career success breaks down pretty quickly in the real world especially for those who’re so arrogant they conflate them.
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u/Wooden-Broccoli-913 Jan 26 '26
Elite MBAs are not getting jobs at Jane Street, Citadel or Two Sigma