Yes, top-tier Ph.D. is better. For one, it allows people in borderline cases to toss their hats in, and then the recuriter or hr person can make the call. But really, the ignorance of the statement says more about the quality of who’s making the decisions than about a candidate’s qualification for the position. Top people like to work with other top people.
Money is a motivator, for sure, but people who go for Ph.D.s are not generally “money-first” kinds of people (else they would never have gone that route); rather, they are interested in the quality of work and the quality of work partners. (Once they have families, however, money becomes more important.)
I suspect that most Ivy League Ph.D.s on seeing this ad will think: first, “great, I have an ‘in’ that others don’t have,” and, second, “These guys probably don’t know that much about my field if they think that only Ivy League people can do this work.”
HR stupidity for sure. When I worked in strategy consulting, one of our HR chicks told me “We’re going to recruit at this and this school for the very first time. I don’t know what to expect.” I wanted to tell her ‘ohhhh, that sounds intense …. almost like a Marco Polo expedition to face the limits of nature; are you sure you want to go that way?!?’. But messing with HR didn’t sound like a good idea, so I didn’t express my thoughts.
Also, quality of PhD graduates is strongly influenced by their thesis advisor. Even within the same PhD program, if you have this monster professor who is one of the top guys in the field, if he takes you to direct your thesis, you’re just money.
Not sure why it’s surprising a top quant shop would look for top quant talent. As others have already said, the use of “Ivy League” was probably just a filter so they don’t get applicants from Arizona State.
There’s also a marketing aspect to hiring PhD’s from top schools. When a hedge fund Investor Relations rep talks about their strategy they sell their talent along with their track record. Saying you have a quant from Harvard creates the perception that person knows how to write algos that can generate returns.
The reason why it’s ridiculous is as mentioned above that there are plenty of schools outside the Ivy League where they have good PhDs.
Also, I’ve looked at hedge fund presentations from places with scores of PhDs and they promote their number of PhDs but rarely what schools they came from.
In general my problem is with HR people. I should probably qualify that, but not sure it’s needed.
In my company, the people who do recruiting are super cute girls, but the people who do internal HR are quite ugly. It’s like a metaphor for how the company might treat people they want to hire compared to people that already work here…