This topic is so endlessly fascinating because it encapsulates debates on meritocracy, privilege, wealth, and recruiting that have a ripple effect across a lifetime.
I attended an Ivy and a lot of the stereotypes are true. The varsity athletes are sharper than you would expect. Because the Ivy League agreed to not give scholarships to athletes (unlike Stanford), teams have a gentleman's agreement with admissions to keep a specific average GPA and SAT/ACT score. So for every gifted athlete that's a dull crayon from Groton you also got a high-achieving student-athlete. I was a TA, and the varsity athletes were the only ones who showed up consistently. They had limited time and needed to be efficient with their schoolwork. The club athletes are the rich parents + boarding school crowd. I briefly played club lacrosse - these kids were a caricature of what you would expect. The network effect is real btw.
A running joke at Stanford is that the athletes go to Stanford Community College.
Notes from the ground here. My undergrad was in EE at an "elite" school - I can say definitively that ~50% of the MS/Ph.d. students in EE were from China (with the other 50% largely from India). They TA'd many of the graduate level courses and were the majority of the students taking high level semiconductor design courses that centered on fabrication and nanotechnology.
China's short term goal is clearly to reach parity so these students can enter a mature semiconductor industry. Give these students ~5-15 years to gain expertise from the American academic system and industrial research base and I think we'll start seeing China innovate.
American expertise will naturally decline because we don't have students studying EE. To many good full-stack jobs that pay ~40% more.
From any options theory class you'll learn that you can create any complex position you want with options. If you want to synthetically create a future just buy a put and call at the same strike price, etc.
And all of this is really interesting except this is a terrible idea to open up to recreational traders. I say traders because when the average person thinks of options, they see it as a way to make leveraged bets and get rich quick. Likewise, institutions largely use derivatives (options, swaps, swaptions, etc.) to hedge their positions. The option, for an institution, is a hedging instrument, not a speculative instrument.
Here's the real reason this won't end well for most recreational traders - you're going to get scalped by the desk traders and algos at the prop shops for any illiquid options, and hit by the broader universe of trading algos out of the funds for any liquid options. You won't be able to see the order book and wouldn't know how to trade it even if you could see it. (@SIG @JaneStreet @DRW chime in)
But if you see this as a fun way to gamble knowing that the house (the Street) has a sizable built-in advantage, be my guest.
"even in research"? I agree with everything but this last point. Research is almost exclusively dominated by doctoral graduates - it wouldn't be reasonable to expect to land in a research position without a graduate degree.
This comment cuts to basic point. Positions vaguely labeled "Senior AI researcher" are for research directors, not engineers. Taking a Udacity ML class and "teaching yourself some linear algebra" and Python is similar to achieving basic literacy in foreign language - you may be able to ask for directions, but try writing a novel.
Any job that requires significant expertise will command salaries at the top of the curve. Corporate litigation and IP attorneys command 400k-2m salaries, yet we don't get articles about IP lawyer bubbles, because the competition is vicious.
This is an exaggeration. Total compensation for returning interns at FANG may approach 120k salary, with stock plans and bonus compensation that max out at 20k additional value per year. Even algorithmic trading or strats-quant positions rarely broach 140-150k for recent graduates.