gel said:
As long as you study a highly numerical subject at university such as maths/physics/etc, then this line of work should be open to you after completing an undergraduate degree.
It's *possible* to get a job at an investment bank with just an undergraduate degree, but highly unlikely. You are more likely to get a job at a consulting firm like McKinsey or Accenture.
Also, one thing to realize is that things change a lot over a few years. By the OP enters the workforce, the world will be very different. This is why I think it's a bad idea to aim for a specific career, but instead it's better to get some general skills that will be useful in different industries. Also take the humanities seriously. Understanding and appreciating history will give you a better idea of how things will go.
A PhD can also help. It's not necessary though, while a lot of people working in financial engineering have a PhD, many others don't. It is very competitive though, as the banks and other financial companies look for and can afford to pay for the top performers.
Depending on the field, it's not really that competitive. If you have a physics Ph.D. or CS masters with work experience right now, you'll probably won't have any problem getting a job at a bank. It may not be one of the glamour jobs, but you'll get something.
Now if it starts being competitive, then maybe you should look elsewhere for jobs. One problem with high academic achievers is that because they are very competitive, when jobs are scarce, there is a desire to compete heavily for a few jobs rather than to step back and look for somewhere else where the jobs do exist. You see this in banking, where everyone seems to want a glamour job in the front office, whereas there are *LOTS* of jobs where you are in some cubicle in the middle of nowhere, babysitting a computer program or data feed.
In any case, if you're not at university yet, then you don't really need to decide now. As long as you do sufficiently rigorous and numerical subjects at university then it's something you can decide later.
Also take the liberal arts seriously. One thing about finance is that there is so much money flowing that you can get yourself into big trouble if you don't have your head screwed on straight. You need to get a good basic understanding of philosophy, communications, and history. To give you an example of why philosophy is important. You can easily be in situations in which someone will promise you vast sums of money to do something. Should you do it? The other thing is that a lot of finance basically consists of convincing someone to do something. Just to be very basic, at an interview, you are trying to convince someone to hire you. This means that writing and communications skills are very important.
