What Qualifies as "Relevant" Coursework?
For one aspiring to a career in the financial services (ie IB, S&T, ER, etc.), what courses qualify as relevant?
Here's my take:
Tier 1: Finance Courses (Accounting, Investments, Corp. Fin., etc.)
Tier 2: Economics Courses (Micro/Macro, etc.)
Tier 3: Math Courses (Stats, Calc, etc.)
I know some people that only list Tier 1 on their resume, some Tier 1 & 2, and some all three, while others don't list any at all. What do you think?
It will be somewhat irrelevant to place a large emphasis on tier 3 for buyside/sellside ER jobs imo, as most fundamental analysts rarely utilize deeply quantitative research methods (Google "fundamental analysis"). I've heard of 1 out of 100 weaving monte carlo into his analysis.
If you want to own the logic behind building a resume (in your best interest), try to establish deep connections between a role/position you are applying to and your background.
Incoming FT analyst: How relevant are school courses to real life work? (Originally Posted: 12/26/2014)
Hi
I was wondering how relevant are courses at school (e.g. corporate finance) to real life work in IB.
I'm a college senior with an engineering background who will be joining BB next July. For interviews and internships, I studied basic models and accounting via sources on internet (read: BIWS, WSO) but I'm not sure if that would be enough for real-life work.
Since I have a free semester, I was wondering if there are courses that I can take to help me acclimate for upcoming work.
Thanks!
First of all, congratulations on your offer!
Here's another free resource to learn accounting: http://learnaccountingforfree.com
Go through all the videos and you'll have a better understanding of accounting than most of your peers who took the class at school. There are also some advanced accounting courses that you can take through the same company, but they cost $50-$99/class, if I'm not mistaken.
Damodaran is another good resource, and you can take his MBA-level classes on Valuation, CorpFin and Investment Philosophies online for free: http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/
If you take just an accounting course, you'll be fine. A corp fin class will supplement that knowledge, but frankly, it's not even necessary. You'll learn everything you need to do on the job anyway.
From my experience the most relevant courses out of undergrad have been in accounting as you will be analyzing f/s and building models. Know how the 3 f/s flow (outside of memorizing questions found in interview guides; i mean truly understand it) and pick up as much intermediate accounting as you can. An entry level corporate finance / finance 101 type class will also be helpful. Don't look like you've never seen excel before also.
thank you all for your reply!
practice on your own portfolio as if: understand what pays out in short term vs long term based on your assumptions; determine what will work for you over the long term, you may have less time later to invest for yourself.
College classes most relevant to IBD besides finance/accounting classes (Originally Posted: 08/12/2012)
What courses that you took in college are you using the most now besides finance and accounting classes?
Love 101: The Art of Seduction
It's great with female managers
I m still in college, but I suggest Monetary Theory/Economics, it's very useful for a finance major in order to understand better what affects interest rates, dunno if you can apply this knowledge directly to IBD.
Art 101
Latin, so you can fake like you went to prep school if you didn't
Economics classes, duh.
Also, Japan in the Modern World. That country basically told itself, in the 1860's, "Fuck it, we suck compared to the rest of the world. We may be small and feeble now, but we're going to set our eyes on greatness and damn be the next Western power who dares to pick on us." They did a complete rehaul of their military and state government, owned China and Russia (in 1895 and 1905, respectively), and was considered part of the "Western powers" for some time. That kind of drive and ambition is inspiring.
And then they decided to take a swing at the world's strongest power... OOPS!
Took a sociology of Japan class. Considering in less than 200 years, they went from the one of the least advanced to most advanced civilizations is crazy.
Math classes are good. Inevitably, the more math you do, the more intelligent and better of a critical thinker you become.
The internet. Don't let your schooling get in the way of your education.
Nice, Mark twain?
last 100 years of history, especially the US, Japan, Germany etc.
Good info, I will seek it.
Everyone's been posting about the usual classes that are relevant in IBD (econ and related), but I'm gonna go ahead and suggest a couple that might not seem as directly relevant:
Basic CS classes. I'm sure most of you dicked around with programming on the TI 83/84 calculators back in the day, but knowing a bit of VBA goes a long way in being able to make your own macros and scripts.
Philosophy/Humanities classes, especially those that emphasize writing. You'll never have to talk about Kant's categorical imperative in the real world, but you will learn to present arguments and information in a very specific way. Granted that writing in IBD isn't the most emphasized of skills (especially since there are often specific ways to present things), but it can't hurt.
Awww how cute you guys are talking about me
Logic courses
My school's business school offers an Investment Banking Essentials class for undergrads. Basically puts you through an M&A, a bond offering, an LBO, among other deals. It's a great way to get hands on experience and I would check to see if your school has any similar classes.
fixed income
Which math class is more relevant to Finance? (Originally Posted: 04/16/2014)
So I'm a sophomore who is a non-business/finance major at a target school. In order to make myself more attractive during IB internship recruiting for next year, I signed up to take significantly more quantitative classes than my major requires. Two of these classes are calculus 2 and an advanced statistics class that focuses on probability models. However, since registration, I have been warned by several people that both of the two above-mentioned courses are incredibly rigorous, and that I should rethink taking both in one semester.
Which class do you guys think is more relevant to Finance ? intermediate calc or advanced probability models?
Relevant for IB? Neither. You're not going to use anything beyond high school math. Actually even the high school math might be an overkill since it covers stuff like trig/logs/basic derivatives etc. So more like middle school.
If you want to do something quant-ish in the future, you're probably going to need both, and way beyond that - at least the multivariable calc and diff. equations, but real analysis is desirable. You need the analysis for serious stuff within the probability/stats anyways.
For consulting, stats can be useful sometimes, econometrics even more so (regressions, cluster analysis, things like that).
Honestly, for IB (if you're dead set on it), dropping both calc and stats and picking up some accounting and maybe some lower-level computer science classes (like algorithms, VBA etc) is going to be much more useful and gives you some technical skills to include on your CV. If you really have to pick one, I'd pick advanced stats cause it sounds superficially more complex/impressive to a layman.
Thank you for the advice! The other classes that I am signed up to take are: financial accounting, intermediate microeconomic theory, and essential desktop applications (teaches proficiency in PowerPoint, Excel, etc.
And I am not dead set on IB long-term. Ultimately, I either want to do PE or Hedge fund, and I don't go to and have a 4.0 at Wharton or Harvard, so I'm probably not getting hired by any good buy-side firms directly out of undergrad. That being said, based on everyone I've spoken to and everything Ive read, IB is the surest way to buy-side.
I'm not sure what you mean by intermediate calculus course, but you probably need at least Calc 2 (better to have Calc 3 since there's multivariate integration) to deal with probability models involving continuous functions. I doubt either is relevant for IB, though most kids have probably completed Calc 2. To be clear I'm considering: 1. Calc 1 (limits, derivatives, perhaps an introduction to basic integration) 2. Calc 2 (single variable integration, series and sequences) 3. Calc 3 (multivariable calculus)
Yeah it would be Calc 2, so that I could eventually take Calc 3.
I'm in the same boat as you big shot hopeful, hoping for the same thing hahah.
Econometrics, Math Stat, Linear Algebra, and Probability are good ones if you want to try and land a trading gig for sophomore year (might be easier than IB)
Take as much stats and probability as possible. Also not math--but any economics courses as well.
Yeah, I think I'm going to go for an Econ Minor
Math major, stats are the only thing that I've ever used. That being said, if you don't know MV cal & lin. algebra you can't really learn stats.
Took calc 2, 3, linear alg / diff eq, and an advanced stats course as a finance major. Have never used any of it outside of the classroom and have probably forgotten most, if not all, of it beyond the high-level concepts. If you're dead-set on taking one I'd say stats.
I should've taken more bullshit courses to inflate my GPA but oh well.
Probability and stats would probably be the best along with econometrics. Only place I've seen them are in CFA material, but it is helpful in those regards.
Also a math major. I take math classes because I like them, the probability of any of them being concretely useful in finance is pretty low.
Heck, most of the time even when their course material is being applied it's more about having an intuition about the math than being able to do it. Although a high level of the former tends to bring the latter with it in my experience.
Thanks for all the input guys! In truth, it's sort of less about the skill set learned in the class and more about what would look good in the relevant courses section of a not-so quantitative resume haha
Most relevant university courses for VC/PE field (Originally Posted: 08/30/2013)
I wonder what are the most useful/relevant business school courses for VC/PE field? Next semester I am starting to take my electives so it will be good to know.
Entrepreneurship and courses on valuation. Sometimes there are ones specifically for VC/PE.
Google Damodaran's valuation courses. They may be on iTunes University..
Relevant coursework for ER? (Originally Posted: 09/16/2012)
Hello all,
Been browsing this site for a little while and I must say, thanks for all the info/work you have put into it. It's really helpful for us guys looking for basics and learning from experts. But alas, I have a question that I can't seem to find in previous posts, unless I missed in which case I apologize and feel free to attack/direct me to it. So...
I'm currently a junior doubling in Finance/Econ. Now I don't care to bore you with another post asking for help deciding on majors. Rather, my question pertains to relevant coursework. I'm considering switching my econ major to a minor, reason being a lack of courses that seem interesting/useful in ER. Aside from one course, the only other Econ course I see being promising is an independent study course on business forecasting, which can be accomplished even if I pick econ as minor.
Switching to a minor gives me the benefit of replacing econ electives with multiple finance electives. Three that seem relevant to me are portfolio management, Derivatives pricing and applications (Hedge Fund is a dream one day possibly), and IPO's and Venture Capital. Keeping econ as a double major forces me to pick just one as opposed to all.
So my question is, does the switch make sense? Of course, there are MANY other factors that play into being successful in getting into ER, but to keep it simple, lets hold everything else constant and dependent upon this change. I have a feeling most employers couldn't care less about whether they see major or minor and care more about what was done with it, which I feel the independent study course will give me. Just by writing this post am I placing to much emphasis on courses that won't even matter in comparison to other factors? Any help/insights are greatly appreciated. Even if this post is completely ignored, I love the site and hope to be able to contribute in time.
Take as many accounting and finance classes as you can. It will make the day to day a lot easier. You will want to focus your first year learning your sector as most people automatically assume you're up to speed on the finance part. Economics is nice to know but its not really pertinent to your job as your not going to do any econometric modeling or forecasting things like CPI. On the other hand the portfolio management class will help you with your CFA level 3 and understanding the thought process of asset managers. Also that IPO class would help a lot if you end up doing an IPO yourself on the job.
Does your school offer securities valuation?
@Kings, Thanks, I was feeling the same way. I forgot to mention I'm on the path for the honors program where two additional financial accounting courses are required on top of the basic financial and managerial ones. It would be interesting to look at the other acc electives and see if its worth tacking another one on.
@future, unfortunately no.
I'd take whatever has the best professor to be honest.
Most Important "Quant/Math" Classes for Business? (Originally Posted: 10/10/2010)
So basically, I'm just curious what are the most important math classes for the following areas:
Investment Banking
Non-Quant Trading
Consulting
I am a finance major, but I think I need to boost my quant skills. Unfortunately, I'll have little room to add them into my schedule unless I want to delay my graduation, so I was wondering, for the following fields (I know I basically listed everything, but I'm keeping my options open now and will narrow it down later), what are some math skills that I should study in my spare time, and what are the good textbooks that I should buy to study them?
Math classes for investment banking ?
Algebra I... wait no scratch that, maybe pre-algebra.
econometrics
If kids from Ivy's are getting in with liberal arts degrees you probably don't need to know that much math to do the job.
For trading, whether quantitative or not, you need to know about pricing vanilla products, especially options. If they ask you what the Black Scholes formula is, you have to know what the normal distribution is, why you can use the risk-free world, what is the relation between the BS formula and the discounted payoff discounted... I got these kind of questions for a front office role in derivatives trading (not quant).
And as said above, you need to know what correlation is, what covariance is, what a distribution is, what a linear regression is, how to calculate basic derivatives, integrals, etc.
Point-Set Topology is a must for IB.
Not much more than arithmetic for consulting. For non quant trading, you might need to know some basic probability.
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