Starting college soon, is banking still the way to go?
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If your goal is to be filthy rich, why would you want to become a doctor?
Computer science is the way to go. It'll get you into the "emerging Silicon Valley."
Don't do finance because you want to be rich, do finance because you can get yourself up every day and be excited to go build a model or look for more investments for a portfolio. Obviously some days you won't be excited to do anything, but money is not a reason to try and get on Wall Street.
My first comment was tongue in cheek but I would definitely recommend doing computer science. You will have no problem getting a job just about anywhere and it's a very useful skill that few still have.
If you choose something because you want to be "filthy rich" and that's your only motivation, you will burn out quickly or you'll sacrifice your integrity trying to make money. It's okay to want to be rich, though money WILL NOT buy you happiness no matter how hard you try, but I would encourage you to do something that you genuinely enjoy at least a little bit.
Banking will always be the way to go
You act like landing an IB position is just a matter of you saying yes. Good luck.
Nobody gets truly rich by working for other people. Many guys in finance make very good money, very few are extremely rich, but if wealth is your goal, you need to to find your niche, apply it towards a problem you think is worth solving, and profit.
Create a product or service that the world needs, market it extremely well, and profit.
Obviously it's easier said than done.
Finance for sure, but consider hedge funds or private equity before IB.
These are always the weirdest questions on WSO. If you think you would enjoy business/finance/banking the most, do that. If you think you would enjoy tech/Silicon Valley the most, do that. If you think you would enjoy medicine the most, do that. Pick one based on your best current guess as to what you would enjoy most, and if it turns out you don't like that then pivot in a different direction. This isn't janitorial services vs. computer science - you're going to make money in any of these paths if you're good at it.
Thanks everyone for the input. I think the problem is that I don't really find a certain career interesting over another at the moment . Hopefully college will help me find the one I love. I guess my wording with money made me seem pretty shallow haha.
What I would want to know now is: What would you do? Imagine you're an 18 year old kid starting college in 2015, would you still pursue finance?
Speaking as someone who's just getting into the industry, I'd pick finance.
That said, I wish I had double majored in computer science or at least learned to code. I still could pick it up but there's no way Id ever be able to do it for a living without quitting everything or going back to school, and still quitting everything.
It's much easier to do a year of CS and then do finance but it would be much more difficult to do the opposite. I'd recommend doing CS and studying economics/finance on the side. If you like one more than the other, then choose the one you like. If you like both, then do both and you're set.
If you're good at math and can code, you can be a quant and make serious money right out of school. I've got a friend of a friend who is expecting to make over half a million in his first year out of school at a top fund doing financial engineering. I think that number is on the high side but not out of the realm of possibility.
Absolutely. Finance 100%. Once in college you will learn what your interest within Finance are.
I'd do physics. Most versatile major there is. You want to do finance? We have a spot for you. You want to do engineering? Come on. You want to do medicine? You're prepared. I went to plebian state university so idk how target schools work. We can have minors and such. I'd do physics major CS minor, and I'd try and talk my department into letting me take as many finance/accounting/econ classes as possible. Joining finance clubs etc. IMO this would be a pretty good hedge. It does have the unfortunate requirement that you're smart enough to get good grades in the major though.
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