Advanced Trading Reveals Top Ten Quant Schools Special Report

NEW YORK, Aug. 27, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The editors of Advanced Trading, part of the InformationWeek Business Technology Network, have announced the release of the magazine's special report, "The Top 10 Quant Schools of 2012," a ranking of the top quant schools across the United States — in time for the start of the new school year.

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Advanced Trading first published its ranking of quant schools in 2008. In the four years that have passed since the time of the first report, the industry has undergone drastic changes. Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers imploded, Merrill Lynch is now the wealth management arm of Bank of America, and a raft of new regulations, including Dodd-Frank, has changed the way businesses operate.

Despite all of the changes within the industry, one thing remains steady: the need for quantitative analysts. In fact, if anything, the demand for quants has intensified. While Wall Street has seen wave after wave of layoffs since the financial crisis — some counts point to more than 200,000 lost jobs — quants have remained a hot commodity.

And buy-side firms are willing to pay top dollar for students with these skills — for example, the average first-year salary for the graduates of the University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business M.F.E. program (profiled in this feature) was $158,273 in 2011.

"Quants are the rock stars on the Street," said Phil Albinus, Editor-in-Chief of Advanced Trading. "And the more volatile the markets, the more valuable quantitative analysts become to almost every firm on Wall Street."

Since Advanced Trading first created this ranking four years ago, only one new addition has forced its way onto the list, but it has done so convincingly — MIT was the only favorite among all five of the Wall Street professionals who served as judges.

The Advanced Trading Top 10 Quant Schools of 2012 are, in alphabetical order: Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, Cornell University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), New York University, Princeton University, Rutgers University, Stanford University, the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Chicago.

The new Advanced Trading report includes current information about each school's quantitative finance program. The report can be accessed here: http://www.advancedtrading.com/top-quant-schools-2012/?cid=prn_release

To compile its 2012 rankings, Advanced Trading assembled a group of five top Wall Street professionals with extensive experience on the trading desk, in senior management or in hiring quants to help identify the top quant programs in the U.S. The magazine's panel consisted of Scott R. Burrill, partner and managing director at Rosenblatt Securities; David Leinweber, algorithmic trading pioneer and author of "Nerds on Wall Street"; Michael Levas, principal of Olympian Capital Management; Unson Allen, global head of recruiting at Knight Capital; and Lou Ricci, a quant headhunter for the Hagan-Ricci Group.

Advanced Trading helps traders and technologists navigate the dynamic trading landscape.

About Advanced Trading (http://www.advancedtrading.com)

Advanced Trading, a multimedia outlet with digital media, online, print and live and virtual events that is part of the InformationWeek Business Technology Network, helps buy-side traders and technologists navigate the dynamic electronic trading landscape through its in-depth coverage of algorithmic trading, exchanges, dark pools, quants, high-frequency trading, transaction cost analysis, trading regulations, market data, trading tools and infrastructure. Advanced Trading reaches the most senior and influential trading and business executives, including C-level executives, business line management, and IT executives from buy- and sell-side firms as well as exchanges and other trading venues. Advanced Trading's editorial mission is to arm financial-services executives with the critical information they need to succeed in the quickly changing world of trading. When it comes to the world of electronic trading, there's no media brand that covers it as intelligently as Advanced Trading.

About UBM TechWeb (www.ubmtechweb.com)

UBM TechWeb, the global leader in technology media and professional information, enables people and organizations to harness the transformative power of technology. Through its three core businesses – media solutions, marketing services and paid content – UBM TechWeb produces the most respected and consumed brands and media applications in the technology market. More than 14.5 million business and technology professionals (CIOs and IT managers, Web & Digital professionals, Software Developers, Government decision makers, and Telecom providers) actively engage in UBM TechWeb's communities and information resources monthly. UBM TechWeb brands include: global face-to-face events such as Interop, Web 2.0, Black Hat and Enterprise Connect; award-winning online resources such as InformationWeek, Light Reading, and Network Computing; and market-leading magazines InformationWeek, Wall Street & Technology and Advanced Trading. UBM TechWeb is a UBM plc company, a global provider of news distribution and specialist information services with a market capitalization of more than $2.5 billion.

Contact:
Phil Albinus, Editor-in-Chief, Advanced Trading
(212)-600-3119
palbinus@techweb.com

SOURCE UBM TechWeb