Home · Where I work
Hong Kong
Quant interview preparation, MBA admissions, and Oxford and Cambridge STEM entry for candidates and families in Hong Kong. Sessions in your evening, my morning.
What is different about applying from Hong Kong
Candidates here come through the HKDSE or an international curriculum, and the DSE in particular is a demanding, fast, heavily-drilled examination. The students it produces are often stronger technically than their UK counterparts and markedly less comfortable thinking out loud, because nothing in the system has ever asked them to.
That matters more than any content gap, because an Oxford or Cambridge interview is essentially a test of thinking out loud. It is trainable, and it takes months rather than weeks. It is the single thing I would start earliest for a Hong Kong candidate.
Hong Kong is also a real quant market rather than a satellite one, with trading and research desks hiring on the same screens used elsewhere. Candidates targeting them are competing globally from the outset, which is worth knowing before rather than after the first assessment.
Time zone and format
Hong Kong is six hours ahead of me in summer and seven in winter, so my mornings fall in your afternoon and evening. Everything is online.
Quant careers
Hong Kong hosts Asian offices of many banks and trading firms. The interviews are the same wherever the desk sits: probability under pressure, market making, mental arithmetic, and how you behave when you do not know the answer. I work as a high-frequency trading quant. See quant interview preparation.
Oxford and Cambridge in STEM
Many Hong Kong students apply to Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial in mathematics, computer science and engineering. I teach the MAT, STEP and TMUA myself and prepare students for the December interview. See Oxbridge & US STEM admissions.
MBA applications
For professionals applying to LBS, INSEAD or the M7, from someone who interviews MBA and Executive MBA applicants for London Business School. See MBA admissions and why I chose LBS.
Who you work with
One person, from the first call to the last session: a working high-frequency trading quant with an Oxford MSc in computer science, a master's in financial engineering and an LBS MBA, who interviews MBA and Executive MBA applicants for London Business School.
The first conversation is twenty minutes and free. Or write to alex@geodesicpartners.co.uk.