How to earn $250k right out of college.
I’m a high school senior that is about to graduate in a week. I’m an incoming freshman at Stanford.
What exactly should I do between now and the moment I graduate college to have a $250k or greater starting salary.
College is obviously super expensive ($90k a year) and my parents are graciously paying for mine on the condition that I pay for my little brothers college when he graduates high school(he is 4 years younger than me). I want to prepare for the worst so assuming he goes to a private school and the cost is ~$90k/yr then I think I will need around $150k post-tax to cover both him and my own expenses, and in NYC/CA (which is where I will most likely be) $150k post-tax is around $250k pre-tax. Hence the specific question on $250k right out of college.
Thank you for all your help in advance!
Zero chance you survive on 60k in NYC/CA brother — Godspeed
$60k post-tax is like $85k pre-tax. Isn’t that like an above average salary for most college grads? Honestly think that I can make do.
Your looking at Quant Finance, Citadel CAP, maybe CVP (bonus dependent). I don't think P72 gets there, not sure abt Bridgewater.
If you aren't a world class STEM mind you can forget quant finance, Citadel and Bridgewater are probably doable from Stanford, CVP is also doable.
I don't know entry level SWE pay but I'd imagine its pretty good.
Its possible but pretty unlikely - to require you to pay for half your brothers or something might be more fair. You are going to be a young professional who will be working hard, not enjoying the fruits of your labor might make you resentful to your parents for sometime. Would ask them to reconsider the magnitude of this ask.
Why do you need to pay it off right away? Obviously interest isn't ideal but very few jobs relatively are 250k right out of the gate. However, 250k isn't out of the realm of the possiblity for a lot of high finance jobs once you're a few years into your career. Take a few student loans and aggressive pay them down as your income scales. The interest you'll acrue over 4-6 years won't be insignificant but imo it's less risky than hoping to snag one of the few jobs that's 250k out of grad
Why don’t negotiate w/ your parents and instead of starting to pay for his college as soon as you graduate have him take out loans and agree to pay them off for him on a 4-5 year time horizon? 250k out of school is tough, but if you go into SWE, IB, HF, or PE then after 4 years it will be relatively reasonable.
Sorry but you and your parents are stupid.
How can your parents leave your brother's education to you, a future 22 year old, current 18 year old who knows little of money? That is so fucking wild and irresponsible. I half expect that they're only saying that as motivation or something.
Since mods removed my original comment, will leave a toned down version:
It is wildly irresponsible of your parents to effectively gamble on their youngest child's education prospects via their oldest child's success.
I'm sure it's not an ultimatum for OP. His parents just want to incentivize him to be successful and return favor to his family to the extent he can. What do you really think will happen if he doesn't fully pay $90k/year in 4 years for his brother's education?
I did have that caveat in my original comment but paraphrased here because I still think that it's a very weird way to motivate your child.
Deleted it due to other people attacking me.
FYI This is wildly untrue. Actually a bit shocking that you believe this while simultaneously giving others advice on a finance forum.
If you make 250k, it doesn't matter how many jobs you have, you will pay the same income taxes regardless (the only thing that may be different is withholdings, which will be lower for 2+ jobs as they will not withhold enough tax for you, forcing you to pay those taxes back at the end of each year). While you will pay less per paycheck in income taxes with two jobs due to your companies withholding too little income tax, you will also end up having your companies withhold too much in terms of FICA taxes (which cap out around 170k). In reality you will end up owing exactly the same amount of tax at year end, but likely having even more tax withheld than you would with one job.
Alright tax expert … thanks for clarifying. I didn’t know that. My point still holds true tho.
Why are we not talking about how the premise of this makes absolutely zero sense? Is your little brother going to then pay you back when he graduates? Instead of your parents paying for your entire college tuition, they should have split the money they saved for tuition between you and your brother and each of you should have loans to cover the remaining balance. Because otherwise, this whole bizarre structure relies on the moonshot scenario that you make $250k out of the gate, pay for your brothers college, then your brother graduates and also makes $250k out of the gate and pays you back over 4 years.
Assuming you do in fact make $250k out of college and pay for your little brothers tuition, what happens if he decides he wants to major in underwater basket weaving and never makes enough to pay you back? Now he got free college tuition and you are on the hook for his poor decision making.
Also, if your the saved tuition money is split in half and your little brother's half is invested in the stock market, he'll have 4 more years of compound growth to cover even more of his tuition by the time he starts college...
Stanford grad here, I’ll give you the breakdown:
Swe: roughly 200ish at FAANG+ not hard to get at all you got into Stanford and you have the name. I know many not that competent people that go there.
quant swe: think back end engineer at JS or DESCO, 350 all in
QR/QT: will be 500+ if you go top shops. Know people at citadel securities that had 700k first hear. I think in general almost every quant shop will pay 300+ if I’m not wrong. As long as you feel like you’re competent (no need what people think is IMO, like USAMO/regeneron+ you’re good for quant swe with shots for QR/QT)
Finance: no standardised analyst program will pay 250 unless maybe cvp on good bonus year but cmon that bonus is literally taxed so much it’s so sad.
Consulting: MBB has great brand name but shitty pay. 50+ hours each week and you get all in of 140iah. Might as well be a code monkey :)
Lol gotchu thanks. I capped out at AIME sadly, was always good at math but not like the insane kids. I think ima kms if I just do CS. I think most likely I just give up on this specific goal, to IB/PE out of undergrad hopefully like MS/GS/Evercore tmt or PJT rssg or Blackstone/KKR pe and make my like $180k or whatever and then scale as rapidly as possible. Thanks for the help!
Should not bet on PE analyst program. Also most EBs and BBs will probably be fine in terms of salary and exit opps- no need to focus on the specific ones you mention. But BB salary will most likely be lower than all the EBs.
It’s honestly not that sad to just do CS. Stanfords finance interest is pretty minimal. I also swear finance people are just so much more uptight but Bay finance is a bit better. spent some time in tech, an EB and UMM pe and still always think that grass is always greener wherever I’m not at. When I was in finance wished I was in tech and vice versa. Just be happy, enjoy freshman year getting to know the amazing people on campus
CS comp doesn’t grow well tho. It’s a field with extremely high entry level pay but very quick plateau. For example, new grads at FAANG make 200k and 7 YoE senior make 350k so you can see how the salary does not grow much with increase in YoE ( especially after you factor in inflation rate, at 30 Y/o you’ll be making approximately the same as what you were making at 22 Y/o). Even HFT Quant SWEs have somewhat capped growth — 300k TC for new grad, 600k TC for 15 YoE senior and it doesn’t grow materially after reaching 1M, upwards climb is getting harder every year because the positions at the top of pyramid are getting filled quickly by early-40-yo people who aren’t retiring any time soon. The ratio of senior-to-Junior is getting lower every year, most teams have a lot of juniors and very little seniors. And coding is very isolated work because you’re expected to be full IC at the first 6 years of your career so you rarely gain leadership exposure, and climbing to people management is harder every year due to reasons mentioned about — the manager positions are mostly already filled.
In finance/ consulting, things are the opposite. The entry level pay is a bit short but growth is unparalleled. At 10 YoE you may be getting MBB partner promo which net you several millions, or have multiple carry allocations in PE, or MD at a bank who bring in tens of millions $$$. The upwards mobility is really really good and frankly I think it’s not worthwhile to give that up for just 50k - 100k additional pay at entry level.
EB’s pay 200K now and scales to 350+ if you exit to PE — could consider this path as well as Quant/CVP/SWE
if you can do QT do that. if you are set on IB shoot for CVP
Why don’t you split the difference and each pay half of your own college with parent money for the other half. Better yet, encourage the brother to get a full-ride somewhere
Deleted
I’m 18 btw…
Not likely as a undergraduate (or MSc) student you will hit that salary band. It's more common for graduate students that come out of school (i.e., those who finished their MBA, PhD, or JD).
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