Top 10 Financial Schools for Quants

While Wall Street and most of the financial services sectors remain paralyzed in the hiring department, there are a few categories where jobs appear plentiful such as wealth management, high frequency trading and quantitative analysis or quants. It often seems that quants are always in demand and quant jobs are among the most attractive with starting salaries above $100,000 a year.

Buy-side firms are willing to pay even more. 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, which is on the list, 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."

For those of you looking to enter this competitive yet active environment, here are the top 10 financial programs for quants in alphabetical order, according to Advanced Trading magazine.

• Carnegie Mellon University
• Columbia University
• Cornell University
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• New York University
• Princeton University
• Rutgers University
• Stanford University
• University of California at Berkeley
• University of Chicago

The new Advanced Trading report includes current information about each school's quantitative finance program and can be accessed here.