Karthik Kallam got the offer call from Susquehanna International Group. The recruiter said the number. He asked, more than once, whether they'd said it right. "I can't fathom how an intern should be making that much money," he told the Journal. He's a college student at Ohio State. These programs run about 10 weeks.
Callum Borchers writes about this race in his On the Clock column in Monday's Journal. Elite financial firms pay around $50,000 for 10-week summer programs. Citadel, Five Rings and Jane Street Capital have been recruiting for weeks or months. A month into the school year, some students already hold offers for 2027. The top programs accept under 1% of applicants. Harvard lets in a bigger share, Borchers notes. Some firms open next summer's applications while this summer's interns are still at their desks.
The money makes sense from the firm's side. The interns are auditioning for full-time jobs with base salaries around $300,000. The 10 weeks are a paid tryout. In quant trading, Borchers writes, experience arguably matters less than in most fields, and firms scout college chess and poker tournaments for people who read odds well. Kallam plays both. He thinks his play helped his application more than his GPA. Borchers notes the contrast with a personal financial planner, where you'd want decades of judgment and a steady hand. A quant can become exceptional quickly, a Millennium talent executive says. A planner earns it over time.
Always say you're a junior
The pressure produces shenanigans. The unofficial motto is "Always say you're a junior," because third-years are closest to graduation. Freshmen and sophomores fudge the year. Joe Catrino, who runs Dartmouth's Center for Career Design, sees students arrive already anxious about falling behind. Ishaan Shah was rejected by Penn's quant club twice before he got in. The club helped him land a Susquehanna internship last summer. He didn't get a return offer. One big summer paycheck, he says, doesn't mean you've made it. He got a full-time offer elsewhere a couple of weeks ago.
Borchers closes on the one safe prediction in a business built on predictions. Everyone gets humbled eventually.
Our read
This is Career, with a Time Value of Money (M3) point for parents. Two things are true at once. A $50,000 summer is a windfall for a 20-year-old, and it isn't a career. Shah's summer ended with no return offer, and his line is the one to keep. One big paycheck doesn't mean you've made it. Treat the check as a one-time event, because it may be. For parents, the quieter news is the clock. The race for these seats starts in the first month of freshman year, with clubs and tournaments. That's the same month the 529 starts paying tuition. The college fund pays for the seat in the classroom. It doesn't pay for the seat at the firm.
Here's the part of your own plan this touches. Any summer paycheck, $50,000 or $5,000, is earned income, and earned income is the ticket into a Roth IRA. A student's Roth has the longest runway anyone ever gets. This week, if your student worked this summer, check whether a Roth is open in their name and whether any of the check went in before it got spent. If they got the big offer, the check is the same, just with more zeros. You buy the umbrella before the storm, and you open the Roth before the paycheck learns where the mall is.