Is it worthwhile to pursue a minor?
Hello everyone,
I am current a student at NYU stern undergrad business. I am considering a double major in finance and International Business or Finance/Management.
I have been thinking about pursuing a minor in a personal interest because of all the opportunities NYU offers, but I realize now that the additional five classes mean a little more than a semester of work which I don't mind since it is for a subject I am passionate about. What concerns me is the additional $20,000 I need to pay to achieve this.
By not pursuing the minor I will be able to graduate early and probably/hopefully work during that time. Do you think it is worthwhile to pursue this job-wise? I know it adds another dimension to me as a student but not sure if it is truly worth the price.
No, minors are pretty much worthless for anything other than personal enjoyment of the related classes.
Such nonsense.
If anything I would highly recommend a minor. In a lot of cases some classes overlap, so you get more bang for your buck as far as tuition goes. Also, you go to college to learn.. why not learn more and still graduate in the same time? Seems like a no-brainer to me.
As far as job opportunities, I'm not going to claim that a minor will land you a job. However when I tell recruiters that I have an Economics degree and an English minor, they are thoroughly impressed. It shows diversity, willingness to learn, and drive.
A double-major is obviously even better if you can graduate in the same or close to the amount of time. In my case I chose a minor so I could graduate sooner.
There is certainly value in education. Is this minor worth $20,000, increased workload that causes a shifted focus from your finance related classes, and a hinderance to possible finanace intern oppurtunities in NYC? If you answered no ( which if your interested and serious about getting a banking job i hope you did) then I seriously doubt its worth the time and money.
Thanks. I really appreciate your responses. I'm thinking more and more its practical to drop the minor.
Out of curiosity, do you have any perspectives on a second major in management vs. international business? Both certainly interest me, but it would be nice to have more outside perspectives.
no
Well I am definitely going to pursue a double major. my school makes it very reasonable to have that option. I was just doubtful about adding a minor on top of that.
No, that's illegal dude
You only go to college once. Ask if this is something you'd really enjoy learning on your own, outside of school, without professors or classmates to learn from. I did a philosophy minor, and, although I am interested in philosophy, trying to teach the texts to myself, without the instruction from a professor and or thought provoking class discussions, would be extremely difficult.
As for your careers goals, a minor could help in a specific area. For example, having a background in chemistry would be helpful if you are going to be working in a chemicals group in IBD (very basic example but it works). Most likely, having a minor won't differentiate you too much from other candidates though.
If you do it, do it for yourself, not for someone else, because it really won't help much if you are doing it for someone else.
Philosophy is fucking stupid. Also, please stop using so many commas, it just makes you look so sophisticated and philosophical like
Just a minor pain in the ass, thats all they really are.
Info Systems Minor - How Valuable? (Originally Posted: 05/04/2014)
How valuable is an Information Systems minor? I'm a senior Finance major and I can probably graduate with a higher GPA if I don't pursue this minor. I'm at my third internship right now in AM.
Does anyone care about an info systems minor?
This is going to sound incredibly douchey, but programmers have a saying: "A degree in CS is a degree in applied logic; A degree in MIS is a degree in applied philosophy, or common sense. Who needs that?"
If your school offers it, go for a CS or EE minor if you can. If not, just take some coding classes, including some of the sophomore level algorithms and data structures classes. As a quant, I find "CS Theory and Algorithms" listed on an Econ major's resume a lot more impressive than a minor in Information Systems.
But to answer your question, no, I don't think a minor in MIS is worth a GPA hit.
Anything but MIS is out of the question as only MIS is in the CBA and I'm trying to graduate on time.
I see where you're coming from. Would the MIS minor be viewed as a negative even by a more technical person who realizes it's a degree in MS Office?
Basically, it's my last semester and I have a 3.9 and 3 internships. I need to take 3 finance classes my last semester and either 3 400-level MIS classes that will probably drop my GPA to 3.7-3.8 or 3 basket weaving courses, spend more time on the CFA and internships, and keep the GPA up.
Your third internship- are you going back in the fall for a last semester? Explain a little bit better for me.
If you got the offer from the AM firm, would you take it immediately or at least shop it? What are your odds of a better offer?
CBA= College of Business Administration? Are you saying that non-business courses (not minors) are also precluded?
If you're unlikely to be recruiting in the year or two after fall grades come out, I'd really like to see you take some math or C.S. courses. If you can't, college of business probably has a Derivatives Pricing course. It won't be easy, you might get a B, but you'll learn a lot and I think it's an important course for a career in AM, S&T, or working at a hedge fund.
I can't tell you how many traders and businesspeople I've met who say they wish they had done more math and CS in undergrad. And it gets harder to learn this stuff as you get older. So while I don't think MIS helps you, there is no penalty for pushing yourself and risking some Bs at this point, assuming like most schools they determine honors prior to final semester grades, and you have an FT offer.
What is your school's add/drop policy? What is the deadline to drop/replace a course?
CBA = College of Business Administration, correct, and I would need a bunch of prereqs for anything but MIS.
I'm actually leaving school next semester for 6 months to a year, but I'll be back to finish my last semester. My current internship is very legit and I would seriously consider staying here. They've more or less told me they want me to go FT, but they don't know I'm leaving yet. I'll tell my boss soon and see how they take it. I'm leaving for a military thing and he was an Army officer, so hopefully, he's sympathetic.
If I don't come back to this AM shop for my last semester, I'll find another internship. No idea where that would be.
Got it. Help me understand this:
What requirement are you filling? Are you required to get a minor? To take 300-level courses?I was envisioning Calculus I (generally no prereqs), Linear Algebra (generally no prereqs), and Basic Imperative programming (generally no prereqs). If you had Calc 1, I'd suggest Calculus-based probability instead.
These classes can be a challenge, but to take them you don't need any previous classes. It's not a minor, it might not be something you can list on your resume, but it allows you to go back to school for a master's degree in anything from Finance to Econ to Comp Sci to Engineering. If you don't meet the requirements for the MS program, you'll probably be 2-3 classes away at the most. It also allows you to have an intelligible conversation with a desk strategist, a quant, a programmer, a risk manager, or a financial engineer. These three basic classes will give you a lot of options, especially if you can get a couple of As.
I just want to make sure that if you need to become more quantitative to advance your career, or if you decide to switch professions, you've kept doors open for yourself.
A 3.8 + a job + grad school options beats a 3.9 + a job IMHO.
So you're saying to take those classes just for personal development, not for a minor? I have 9 elective credits missing, so I could do that over basket weaving. It's probably the right thing to do. It's just hard to force myself into hard classes when I don't need them.
How do you feel about STEM classes versus classes like Market Microstructure & Electronic Trading (still a lot of math)?
Hmmm. It might be just as hard for a quant to force himself to exercise when he doesn't need to. But I've started running and lifting this semester. It was slow and painful at first- 9 minute miles and lifting half my weight- but I'm now averaging about 30 miles per week, I can run the mile in 6 and a quarter, and I can bench my own weight ~5 reps. I'm sure a lot of folks are doing a lot better, and it's tough to pull this off at 28, but I'm pretty darned happy with the improvement.
It may be as painful for you as it was for me to start exercising. But it will probably get easier, just like it did for me. You can just repeat this to yourself when you are working on homework problems:
"I am making myself a better, smarter, stronger person." "I am making myself a better, smarter, stronger person." "This is difficult, but it makes me stronger."
If you have time during your leave, you can prepare yourself for these classes by signing up for Khan Academy and getting on when you have the chance. UIUC also has an online math program that can let you crank out a lot of these classes. If your school is reasonable about accepting transfer credit or at least accepting it for prereqs, they'll accept it from UIUC.
https://netmath.illinois.edu/
Tell me about the math. Are you doing behavioral models? Looking at papers in the Journal of Finance? Or is everything boiled down a little bit more?Use the class that teaches the Black-Scholes Algebraic formula (these classes are often called "Derivatives" or "Derivatives Pricing") as a baseline. As a quant, when someone tells me they took this course, I give them credit for a moderate STEM course. If students complain the math is harder, well, now you're pushing yourself on the math front.
Conundrum: Take easy classes because level of caring is at an all-time low or take challenging classes that will benefit me in the long run.
I hope when I get back and it's time to register for my final semester, the break will elevate my level of caring and I'll take the latter route. I kind of wish I had studied a STEM major... Everything beyond introductory finance and accounting has been bullshit so far and I could easily teach myself this stuff.
I'm taking a class this semester called Finance, Capitalism, and American culture. I have like a 98 and I've come to 4 classes and read a couple of Wiki articles.
I really should take some derivative classes, but the guy who teaches them is kind of this central bank conspiracy theorist and apparently a difficult grader. He's my honors college fellow and I enjoy bullshitting with him about politics though.
I signed up for that Market Microstructure and Electronic Trading class. Professor was a quant at LTCM, Morgan, and Goldman and kind of a cunt. I feel like he got bulled a lot as a kid and wanted to take it out on the world now. His lectures were amusing though. I dropped that class. I actually dropped all of my classes that semester and went to South America. I wasn't feeling school at all and was stealth drinking in class just to get through it. Could have been graduating in a week.. yolo right?
I disagree with Illinprogrammer.
I think its good idea if it doesn't hurt your GPA too much. (i.e. 0.10 lower at most unless that entails going below a 3.5).
Illinprogrammer's advice about computer science theory, algorithms, advanced math classes- not useful to you. As a Finance major- you're going to be doing fundamental analysis. The extent that computational skills would be useful to you is descriptive statistics and applied computing. Info Systems- in the case that it sharpens skills like VBA and SQL is immediately useful. Studying algorithms is great. As is advanced calculus. But there is roughly a
You have some points.
Finance is a huge industry and it has been a great industry to work in for the past 35 years, but as we've seen from 2009, it's always good to have options.
These three classes will leave a lot of graduate degree doors open for OP. Doors open in CS, Machine Learning, Statistics, Economics, perhaps even Engineering. And they have a lot of synergies on the quant front when you tie all three of them together.
At 22, I never thought that a CS undergrad would have gotten me into an MFE program. But the five math classes I took as part of the College of Engineering were enough. They would have been enough for many engineering and econ programs, too.
I do think a programming class and a stats class are pretty darned helpful in finance.
I can also see how classes in information systems might help OP in finance.
The second you step out of a mostly Finance or Accounting role, even within an investment bank, I'm really not sure how much a minor in MIS helps. You're going to have a 45 year career- you'll be eligible for grad school during the first ~20 years of it- and finance touches a lot of other fields. I don't think it hurts to just make sure you have some options to switch to one of those fields later.
At some point you get too old to learn how to pronounce words in new spoken languages or to learn new quantitative skill sets. Learning stochastic calculus at 28 makes differential equations at 20 look pretty darned easy. But if we can teach you how to pronounce some words now, we can keep the door open and preserve that option longer.
We can either give your career a short-term boost right now- at least until the next version of Office comes out- or we can give you a long-term put option that also may give you a few tools to attack finance problems with in the meantime.
If you are going to work in the Finance industry then CS = MIS/CIS. Most people don't know the difference or care to notice the difference. I have a Info Systems major and everyone just ends up saying computer science anyway, so basically I get credit for a harder major in interviews without suggesting it and having it.
The others in this thread are really overthinking it.... I actually have the major, graduated two years ago, and have interviewed for over 25 firms (BB, MM, PE, HF, etc.), get the minor if it's easy enough and you stay above 3.5
I was a double major in MIS and finance and the MIS helped stand out for a few positions that I have interviewed for, seeing as they like the extra technical knowledge that you get (SQL, VBA, financial systems). I agree with ReadLine and yeahright that it's all how you portray the experience you gained. Just keep your GPA up, I struggled at times in that regard.
OP probably already has a job. By the time OP's GPA and MIS minor make it into a resume, he'll probably be a couple years out of school. So the marketing value here is kind of moot.
I argue that those three math classes buy OP a 10-15 year put option on a different career if he decides to later get a graduate degree. However, I can also see how MIS might help.
That said, there's no marketing value in either option. Since it is OP's last semester, I suggest that he push his boundaries a little bit and try new things.
OP basically already has a job. It will be his last semester on campus. The game theoretic here is that unless OP plans on graduating without a job (which won't happen since he already has a job), the minor and the GPA won't hit his resume for 2-3 years anyways.
My suggestion is that since no events in his last semester influence his job outcome immediately after graduation, we instead try to optimize other outcomes. Either at his first job (where MIS may help) or his options if he decides to change careers (where the math classes help.)
A lot to think about here, thanks @IlliniProgrammer for your suggestions. I don't have to make this decision for a while, so I'll see what's going on in the universe when I do.
I really doubt I'll go a more technical route then I'm in now. I'm much more suited for front office finance or entrepreneurship, I think. My mom, grandmother, and great grandmother were all math professors, grandpa was an engineer at Baikonur, and I suck at math haha. I've admittedly never put much effort into it (or school in general if we're being honest), but I know it's not what my brain is wired for.
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