Quant Rush opens October 13 and submissions close November 22, 2026.

Quant RushRegister
HomeWorkshopsRules & FAQStake your claim

qfec.smc@gmail.com · @qfecsmc · Tuesdays 11:15–12:15 · MSB 207

Santa Monica College · QFE Club presents

Quant Rush

Strike signal in the noise.

SMC's first online quant competition · open to all SMC students

  • OPENS OCT 13
  • THE ASSAY · NOV 22
  • 100% ONLINE
Claim staking opens inOpens Tuesday, October 13, 2026. Submissions close Sunday, November 22, 2026.
Stake your claim How it works
▼ DIG IN

Engraving: H. Sandham, “The Sluice,” The Century, 1883 · Public domain

Vol. I · No. 1The Quant Rush DispatchSanta Monica · Fall 2026

Gold in the Data: Every SMC Student Invited to Dig

Six weeks, one leaderboard, no experience required. Tools taught every Tuesday.

Lithograph of gold diggers working a river bank, about 1850

Mining operations on the Sacramento. Kellogg & Comstock, c. 1850 · Public domain

Santa Monica, Oct. 13 —

Quant Rush is a six-week online competition where SMC students build models on a disguised, historical financial dataset. Every submission updates a public leaderboard; a private one, revealed at the end, decides the winners.

No finance background and no Kaggle experience needed. Bring curiosity, a laptop, and a willingness to be wrong a few hundred times before you're right. The Quantitative Finance & Entrepreneurship Club runs the show and teaches the tools every Tuesday.

Full rules & FAQ →

Admit all · no travel required

100% Online

Compete from anywhere. Submissions and the leaderboard live on Kaggle.

VALID OCT 13 – NOV 22 · ANY DEVICE WITH A BROWSER
Tool issue

Picks & Shovels

TUESDAYS 11:15–12:15 · MSB 207

Every Tuesday: a workshop, then office hours. We teach the tools; you dig.

Assay Office · Santa Monica

Certificate of Reward

Real prizes for the top of the private leaderboard, the best beginner, and a few surprises.

To be announced

Six weeks · Oct 13 → Nov 22

The Claim Trail

Every Tuesday is a workshop. One Sunday is the Assay — the submission deadline.

Skill →
Tue Oct 13
Stake Your Claim

Kickoff · Rules, Kaggle setup, team formation. The competition opens.

Next up
Tue Oct 20
Picks & Shovels I

Workshop 1 · Python, pandas, your first Kaggle notebook. Leave with a baseline submitted.

Tue Oct 27
Reading the Vein

Workshop 2 · Exploring the data and understanding the metric.

Tue Nov 3
Refining the Ore

Workshop 3 · Feature engineering and baseline models.

Tue Nov 10
What Glitters

Workshop 4 · Validation and overfitting: why the public leaderboard lies.

Tue Nov 17
The Last Dig

Final sprint · Office hours, ensembling, final submissions.

Sun Nov 22
The Assay

Deadline · Submissions close. The private leaderboard decides.

Deadline
Tue Dec 1
Paydirt

Wrap-up · Winners announced. Top teams walk through their solutions.

  1. Tue Oct 13
    Stake Your Claim — KickoffNext up

    Rules, Kaggle setup, team formation. The competition opens.

  2. Tue Oct 20
    Picks & Shovels I — Workshop 1

    Python, pandas, your first Kaggle notebook. Leave with a baseline submitted.

  3. Tue Oct 27
    Reading the Vein — Workshop 2

    Exploring the data and understanding the metric.

  4. Tue Nov 3
    Refining the Ore — Workshop 3

    Feature engineering and baseline models.

  5. Tue Nov 10
    What Glitters — Workshop 4

    Validation and overfitting: why the public leaderboard lies.

  6. Tue Nov 17
    The Last Dig — Final sprint

    Office hours, ensembling, final submissions.

  7. Sun Nov 22
    The Assay — DeadlineDeadline

    Submissions close. The private leaderboard decides.

  8. Tue Dec 1
    Paydirt — Wrap-up

    Winners announced. Top teams walk through their solutions.

How it works

From greenhorn to prospector, four levels down

  1. Level 01 · Surface

    Stake your claim

    Fill in the form below. Two minutes.

  2. Level 02 · 50 ft

    Get your gear

    Make a free Kaggle account and join the Quant Rush competition page.

  3. Level 03 · 120 ft

    Dig

    Download the data, train models, submit predictions. Come Tuesdays for workshops and office hours.

  4. Level 04 · Bedrock

    The Assay

    Sunday, Nov 22: submissions close. The private leaderboard shows who struck real gold.

Awards

The Claims

One leaderboard, several ways to win. Names below are placeholders until the board settles them.

  • Overall · Private leaderboard

    Mother Lode

    1st, 2nd and 3rd place on the private leaderboard.

  • Best beginner

    Greenhorn's Luck

    Top finisher among self-declared first-timers.

  • Best write-up

    Assayer's Choice

    The clearest explanation of a method, judged by the board.

  • Joke award
    Public → private drop

    Fool's Gold

    Biggest fall from the public to the private leaderboard. A joke award with written rules.

On the recordPrizes are real. We'll announce what they are at Kickoff.

Registration

Stake Your Claim

Free, open to all SMC students, two minutes.

Wanted
Prospectors
Lithograph of a prospector loaded with gear, about 1849

Reward: prizes, bragging rights, and a project for your résumé.

Form not loading? Open it in a new tab →

N. Currier, “The Independent Gold Hunter on His Way to California,” c. 1849 · Missouri History Museum · Public domain

Prospector's handbook

Questions from the camp

Do I need experience?
No. The first two workshops take you from zero to a submitted baseline. Experienced folks can skip ahead; beginners have their own award.
Is it free?
Yes. Registration, Kaggle, and the workshops are all free.
Can I team up?
Yes, in teams of up to N. Solo is fine too. Need teammates? Say so on the form and we'll match you at Kickoff.To be finalized
Do I need to be a finance major?
No. If you can run a Python notebook, or want to learn, you're in.
What is Kaggle?
A free platform for data-science competitions. You upload predictions, it scores them and ranks everyone on a leaderboard. We walk you through it at Kickoff.
What do I win?
Prizes for the top of the private leaderboard, the best beginner, the best write-up, and one joke award. The actual prizes are announced at Kickoff.

Read the full rules & FAQ →