Applications for autumn 2026.

Eligibility

Praeclaria admits advanced secondary students with quantitative aptitude and an interest in markets. Foundations is the entry program and is the right starting point for most applicants. Fellowship and Bespoke applicants are typically identified during Foundations, though direct admission is possible for students with demonstrable prior research.

Process

• A five-hundred-word written response to the cycle's published prompt.
• A thirty-minute video conversation with a supervisor at the firm.
• (Optional) A short sample of prior quantitative or analytical work.

Test scores are read but not weighted heavily. Letters of recommendation are not considered. We respond to every application within ten business days of the conversation.

Timeline

• Applications open through 1 August 2026.
• Conversations scheduled on a rolling basis.
• The autumn program begins in September 2026.

Working with the supervisor

The supervisor frames the question and reviews the work; the student does the writing and the modeling. Students use language models the way working analysts do — for code, for editing, for working through methods. The expectation is the same as at the firm: the student understands what they have written and what the model is doing.

The prompts

Choose one of the two prompts below. Five hundred words. We read the writing and ask the student about it during the conversation.

Quantitative

Choose a single financial market, real or imagined, and identify a quantitative regularity in its behaviour that you find puzzling. Describe the regularity precisely enough that a reader could verify it. Propose two competing explanations, and a single observation that would distinguish between them.

Macroeconomic

Pick a single country and a single decade. Describe one structural change in the economy during that decade that, in your view, was not fully priced by markets at the time. State the evidence that supports your view, and the evidence that would undermine it.

Application form

The application below is sent directly to admissions. We confirm receipt by email.