Quantitative Researcher at Citadel · Ph.D. Statistics, Stanford
Tariq finished his Berkeley math degree convinced he wanted Wall Street but unsure how to break in. The standard pipeline — IB → MBA → buy-side — felt too slow.
The standard pipeline felt too slow. So we put him on quant research from day one.
Forkaia® routed Tariq to a quantitative research workstream — backtest infrastructure, signal generation, factor decomposition for our internal market analysis. The work was technically rigorous in a way no internship he'd been offered could match.
He shipped 9 quant research tasks in 4 months, every one of them verified by our internal quant lead with a 90+ reviewer score. He started co-authoring internal research memos.
Forkaia® encouraged Tariq toward a Ph.D., not an MBA. We wrote him into recommendation letters as a research collaborator, not a student. Stanford accepted him with full funding.
Two Sigma hired Tariq directly out of his Ph.D. for their quant research team. Two years later, Citadel competitively recruited him. He's now a senior quantitative researcher running multi-asset systematic strategies.
His Stanford recommendation letter described him as a 'research collaborator,' not 'a strong student.' That's the difference.
Every stage of Tariq's Forkaia® journey was tracked — from first signup to placement to where they are today.
Wanted Wall Street. Standard path felt slow.
Routed to internal quant research workstream.
Reviewer score: 92.
Co-authored on memos with senior quant.
Stanford Ph.D. with full funding.
Dissertation on factor modeling.
Direct from Ph.D., bypassing 2-year track.
Multi-asset systematic strategies.
Forkaia® doesn't just claim outcomes — we document them. Tariq's journey produced a complete paper trail of artifacts, each verifiable through our credentialing system.
Tariq's story is one of thousands. Forkaia® alumni are at Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Goldman, SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI, and 600+ other companies.
See all alumni outcomes →Every Forkaia® alumnus started exactly where you are. The platform handled the rest.