Who we are
The quantitative finance community at Ohio State.
Buckeye Quant Society is a student-run quantitative finance organization at The Ohio State University. We train traders, researchers, and engineers through live competition, original research, and code that has to actually work.
Our story
BQS started with a small group of Ohio State students who wanted to understand markets the way quantitative firms actually do: with data, code, and a scoreboard.
What began as a reading group became a competition team, then a curriculum, then a pipeline. Members now come from mathematics, computer science, statistics, economics, physics, and finance, and the best ideas routinely come from the people who joined knowing the least.
We are deliberately open. There is no application to become a member, no required background, and no expectation that you already know what a bid-ask spread is. What we ask for is curiosity and follow-through.
How we work
Three things we hold ourselves to.
Measured, not asserted
Every claim gets backtested. We would rather be corrected by data early than be confidently wrong in a competition.
Built in the open
Research notes, strategy code, and post-mortems are shared internally. Nobody hoards an edge, because the club learns faster when the work is visible.
Taught, then trusted
New members start in a structured curriculum and finish the year owning a real piece of a competition strategy.
FAQ
Questions we get asked.
Still stuck on something? Send it through the interest form and an officer will get back to you.
No. Our curriculum assumes no prior finance knowledge and starts from probability fundamentals. Members come from math, CS, statistics, economics, physics, engineering, and business. The only real prerequisites are curiosity and a willingness to keep showing up.
Not to join. Comfort with Python helps and will matter more as you move into project teams, but plenty of members learn it here. We run introductory sessions on the Python tooling (pandas, NumPy, and backtesting) as part of onboarding.
General membership is open to any Ohio State student. Fill out the form on our join page and come to a meeting. Competition teams and project teams are selected each semester based on curriculum participation, since those roles carry real responsibility.
You’ll get an invite to our Discord, the meeting calendar, and access to the curriculum material. Come to the next general meeting and introduce yourself. That is genuinely all it takes to get started.
Yes. We run mock interviews, mental math and brainteaser drills, and market-making simulations, and we host sessions with trading and research firms. Members who have already been through these interviews sit in on the mocks and give feedback afterward.
Yes. We work with firms on info sessions, workshops, competition sponsorship, and direct recruiting. Send it through the interest form and an officer will follow up with our sponsorship information.