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S&T. I'm a pure maths student, not CS or finance, which is where an increasing number of the S&T pool is being drawn from.

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Very cool. What group are you going to be working in? Also curious what your ideal career path would be. Are you planning on going to the buyside eventually? As somebody in a similar place, one concern is that while S&T used to be a feeder into HF pre 2008 it seems with the effective death of prop trading at banks nowadays this is a trickier path to navigate.

Not an irrational concern, although I'd say banks are still sussing out regulatory limits and workarounds. I'd be fine working at GS for many years into the future and see folks with similar backgrounds who have done that.

For me, it's less about money and more about the institutional leverage implicit in bulge bracket firms. I'm content when I can think about big, creative problems and if that translates into less money for me personally that's alright. A large problem, in my opinion, with S&T desks is the relatively recent adoption of the IBD mentality of moving up the invisible hierarchy by working at x for two years, y for one year, getting z graduate degree, etc.

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