Engineering to Investment Banking-- Worth transferring?
I'm a freshman at UT Austin studying electrical and computer engineering, looking to recruit for investment banking. I was wondering if it'd be worth it to try to transfer to more of a target school(t15 hopefully). If not, how would I approach recruiting for IB from a software/engineering background. Would I have to work in tech for a few years and get an MBA, or is there a quicker path?
My first question would be: why are you studying engineering if you want to do IB? Are you passionate about engineering or similar careers? If so, I would target those careers as they will also be lucrative. It would seem backwards to me if you are studying something you enjoy and then try to recruit for a completely different job. I realize that at this point in your life you don’t know what you really like, but you should be figuring that out and gravitating toward the things that excite you. Why do you want to do IB? The money? Or something else?
Is this an American thing? In the UK people get into IB from all sorts of degrees... History, Engineering, Music - all degrees I've seen in banking. Engineering in particular for Project Finance.
I sort of disagree with this. I was a CS major but quickly lost any interest in coding as a career—I loved building cool stuff on my own but hated SWE jobs where you (in a best case scenario) are building like the 846th google maps widget. Took me one internship to realize this, but I still loved the CS degree path’s courses, so I didn’t switch my major.
As long as you network and prep for technicals/interviews, you should be just fine. It’s not like you’re studying lesbian dance theory. CS is a hard degree and gets a lot of respect—if you can do discrete math i’m confident that you can walk someone through a dcf lol. I opted for consulting instead of banking because it was a better fit, but similar situation: you might have to work harder to get an interview as a non-business major, but it’s largely sink or swim once you get one.
This site overblows how easy it is to get these ultra-lucrative SWE jobs and downplays elements of it that suck (less social colleagues, risk of outsourcing, do-nothing tik tok PM’s, etc.). It’s not for everyone and, while netflix might be a great gig for some, writing enterprise saas in the f500 blows. A faang job is simply not the norm. Are you really a better coder than that CMU kid who dreams about C++?
Also, as our world continues to shift towards tech, I am really bullish on having a CS degree. There are tons of ways you can harness your skillset (task automation, webscraping, etc.) in the near term, and, in the long term, I think tech fluency at that level (in addition to the credential) will pay dividends throughout your career. Just my two cents.
All I’m saying is that you should study what you enjoy and that most likely your career will be related to what you are passionate about. If it’s not, your career might feel like a grind. I didn’t study finance but work in finance, but I still use a lot of what I studied (hard science/math).
If you love CS but go work in M&A, you probably won’t find the same fulfillment. That doesn’t mean you’ll love working at google, but you may love working at a smaller firm or startup, it’s just a completely different path.
If you want money, and are willing to sacrifice for that, then sure, study what you are passionate about and go into IB, a CS major won’t stop you. I just find it odd, as if someone told me to go be an SWE when I work in finance because it will pay well there is no way I’d do it. You can be financially successful in almost any industry if you are good.
Those are good points. I guess my advice is also predicated on OP 100% wanting to do IB. College is a good time to check out different careers and major choice might shed some light on that. Keeping a high GPA in CS is also significantly harder and could pose challenges during resume screens.
Although, I would say, CS is somewhat unique in that I think it’s very possible to love learning it (theory, creative problem solving, satisfaction of getting correct output, etc.) but dislike the most obvious career path (SWE).
I love having my CS knowledge but SWE just wasn’t the best fit for me. With that said, I don’t think it at all inhibited my ability to seek opportunities in other industries and I don’t think OP would have any issues coming out of UT with a CS/ECE degree.
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