As someone who is middling through college, I am wondering what the more experienced members of this site did in order to decide what to study. If you could, describe what you were interested in and how it related to your major(s) of choice. Also, what do you recommend to a student who is interested in everything. Basically if you could go back to your freshman year and tell yourself something, what would it be?
| +182 | Ideal College/Recruiting Timeline | 38 | 19h | |
| +72 | Lied on CV? | 54 | 2s | |
| +59 | Military Officer vs. IB analyst | 19 | 41m | |
| +26 | Amazing offer but I’m drowning in debt | 13 | 22h | |
| Got fired after 1.5 years as an Analyst, want to stay in Banking but I am confused | 9 | 4h | ||
| +25 | Is there a point to networking if you have (nepo)? | 7 | 52m | |
| +23 | Are Single Managers Just Not Hiring? | 10 | 3d | |
| +21 | Job Switch Advice | 5 | 1h | |
| +19 | NYC Consumer PE/Growth Funds with decent comp but amazing WLB? | 6 | 5d | |
| +19 | Trying to break into IB | 7 | 4d |
Career Resources
Get instant access to lessons taught by experienced private equity pros and bulge bracket investment bankers including financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, Comps and Excel Modeling.
If you're at a target, study what you're interested in. Seriously, it'll make you more interesting of a person if you can talk about comparative literature at a banking interview as opposed to just spitting out a bunch of finance formulas.
I started out as an English major and added Economics right around sophomore year since it's a very lax major at my school and is kind of interesting. Just join one of the investment clubs at your school and you'll learn everything you need.
However if you're not at a target, you may have to major in something quantitative to prove yourself.
This is all assuming you're interested in banking.
ok you still need some sort of business so thats not entirely true
I actually am inclined to disagree.
I've never taken a business related class in my college career and landed a sophomore BB internship purely through experience gained through my clubs. We do stock pitches in my club backed by DCFs and Comps so I picked up those skills entirely without any business background.
You can major in studio art and learn how to calculate DCFs from a book or the internet, but you may not get an interview because of your major. I don't know your situation, but a lot of students at the top few schools never have to learn the hard lesson that prestige (or lack thereof) and preconceptions about majors can affect what opportunities one sees. My experience has been that this is increasingly true, as employers rely more heavily on college admissions departments to serve as pre-screeners for their own recruiting efforts.
If you're at a top 10 school. Pretty much any major will be okay. Seriously. If you're at a non-target stick with Econ/Finance or Quantitative (leaning towards Quant).
Do what you're really going to love, because you'll get good at it. But also choose something related to what you want to do.
I vote Economics because it can be quant, it can be very lax, it will teach you about the general foundational knowledge of business and market, and makes learning the specifics so much easier.
I'm a freshman just like you, and unless you have the freedom offered by being at a top program, choose a major that you're interested in and will best prepare you for whatever you want to do after college.
I wish I could tell you to study whatever really captures your interest, but as others have already pointed out, that is a luxury, not a right.
If you happen to genuinely be drawn to computer science or some other quantitative/informatics course of study, God bless you, go for it. Otherwise, you need to make an educated guess about which major is the best compromise between what you can handle, what you will stick with, and what employers want. You need to get good grades, too.
All three components of the guess are just that--guesses. When I was in your position (a long time ago) the prevailing wisdom was to study the liberal arts and learn technical skills either on the job or during an MBA years down the road. I was specifically discouraged from taking classes--let alone majoring in--something 'vocational' like engineering, accounting, or finance. The guys who gave me that advice (who were doing very well for themselves) were telling me what they had been told, and if that information wasn't stale when I got it, it was in a year or two.
Things change quickly. A few years ago, backgrounds in the hard sciences were en vogue. In a year or two, a background in iPhone app development might be the hot ticket. Hiring preferences can be trendy, and the trend may not last as long as the lead time required to finish your major (generally 4+ years). Which major you choose is important as a signal as much as it is for what you learn. If most of the smart guys a few years older than you gravitated towards certain majors, you can bet that recruiters will look for students who chose the same.
As others have already mentioned, if you go to one of the most selective schools in the country, you have more freedom. However, this really only pertains to the most prestigious schools. If you're at Harvard, you can concentrate in History and still get a job. If you go just a few spots down the list, that's not true. If you go to a small/lesser know school that doesn't get the on-campus recruiting attention of an Ivy, know that majoring in something that doesn't scream "I was born for finance" will seriously hurt your chances.
I know that at the school I attended, students from certain majors were barred from applying for finance jobs and internships through the school's career center. The job postings were greyed out, and students who majored in the humanities, arts...etc saw a message saying that they were ineligible to apply for those jobs. It didn't mean that those students couldn't apply through the employer's careers site, but it wasn't a helping hand up, either.
Choosing what to study is a big decision. Please don't take it lightly, or try to mimic what you saw people doing five years ago simply because you think what was popular then is the right choice today. You can go to graduate school later, but it's unlikely you'll get another chance at undergrad, so put some thought into your choice.
There are a lot of durable myths floating around about certain courses of study. If you look for them, you can find surveys of technical employers saying that what they really want are English majors who know how to communicate, their dishonest reasoning being that they can teach those English majors ever-evolving technical and business skills on the job, but that they can't teach a math major how to think critically about qualitative problems. What these employers really mean when they say things like this is that they want quants, but they prefer quants who can communicate well in English. Too many students and parents read surveys like that and take the propaganda at face value.
Another false data point that some people inadvertently use in their decisions is the major of students who are already going to get a good job. You may not know who these people are yet, especially on today's increasingly international campuses. The daughter of a billionaire the bank wants as a client or the son of a foreign government minister can indulge his or her passion in amphibian biology and get a spot at the most desirable group at a bank or the right hand of a HF manager when they graduate, and it has nothing to do with what they studied--they were getting that job anyway. You need to weed out these these red herrings, not read them as signs to study frogs.
Autem quidem et nostrum. Voluptatem laborum consequatur dolorem veritatis ipsa impedit expedita provident. Quae qui ut eos qui. Officia sed et dolorem architecto explicabo sunt quas veritatis.
Repudiandae voluptatem autem vel autem qui et libero. Cum ex soluta sint vero iure odio fugiat. Veritatis et occaecati ut cupiditate minus.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...