Taking hard classes and doing OK vs. taking easy classes and doing great.
(Gorilla, 673
Points)
on 11/23/12 at 4:00am
Moderator Note (Andy): Best of WSO - this post originally went up March 2007 and we thought it deserved to go back on the homepage for those who may have never seen it.
I made the mistake of taking difficult courses much earlier and in a shorter timeframe than other kids, and I'm paying for it with an average GPA and very few internships. In short, if you have any doubts whether you can get an A/A- in all your classes in a given semester, make your schedule easier. The banks don't care what you take as long as your GPA is high. Sadly this is true for all banks and all areas.
+2
+2
It's not only about your
It's not only about your GPA, it's also about your educational background and knowledge. With easy classes, your GPA will be high, but you won't have important financial and quant skills (as those classes are usually most difficult). Why to study at all if you don't plan to take maximum out of your education?
life is probably unfair...
life is probably unfair... choose easy courses and choose an easy field of study such as history...don't make that mistake again
but in most cases they don't care for your gpa, they just need to like you
Here's something a lot of
Here's something a lot of people I know did:
take an easy major (history, english)
take a few econ and math classes pass/fail
Then in cover letters they always said they took math and econ the please their parents, but then developed a love for it, blah blah blah
BTW you have to be at a target school for this to work, otherwise you're screwed.
Yeah guys I can really
Yeah guys I can really relate!
I ended up with a 3.1 in chemical engineering, and I kick myself every day for it!
Because you know what? No one liked to hear excuses! I was still in the top 3rd of my class, and frankly they don't give a rat's ass......which really sucks because you just sit there, seething, knowing that they were an econ major and have no clue how hard your classes were.
It makes sense though, I mean, who wants to go to a doctor who got B's and C's?
I could have picked a tough major (business for example) that still would have been a walk in the park compared to chemE and ended up far better off.
If you start getting B's and a few C's, run like hell!
Oh well.....I do have a cool ring on my pinky and I can put the letters PE after my name....
I Agree With The Above Post
As most of you already know, bankers are "results driven." (feel free to use that term newbies as part of your behavioral interview personal description)
At the end of the day, I don't want excuses. I'm not taking the class with you, so I can't judge the level of difficulty and frankly I don't give a fuck. Get A's. End of Story.
That way AFTER you get the job, although you may be lacking in your developing knowledge and application skills, prove to be a fast learner and choose to challenge yourself at that point in your career where no single letter will be permanently adjoined to your perceived performance capabilities. (Until your annual review. In which case you now get a number. lol)
"Cut the burger into thirds, place it on the fries, roll one up homey..." - Epic Meal Time
Agreed. Most IBers I know
Agreed. Most IBers I know run scared from any course that has any kind of math in it to preserve their GPA.
Re: It's not only about your
It's not only about your GPA, it's also about your educational background and knowledge. With easy classes, your GPA will be high, but you won't have important financial and quant skills (as those classes are usually most difficult). Why to study at all if you don't plan to take maximum out of your education?
1. What important quant skills? Add, subtract, multiply, divide? Quant 'skills' are just a product of how you think and how you reason things, I doubt a course in xxx is going to change how you think.
2. Maximize your education = make your GPA as high as you can? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder..
3. It's never too late to learn, it's not like once you're out of college you can't learn anything ever again. From my experience, go for the GPA, you have the rest of your life to learn about an extra theory.
Take the hard classes
Take the hard courses you want to take because they challenge you. Fill in your extra course space with easier classes you know you can do well in. This way you can average out a nice GPA around 3.5.
I have a joint honours degree from my school. It involves advanced economic theory which is the same course as first year grad students in econ take. It is a great degree to have, but I can never get above a B+. So I took some other courses that interested me and were much easier.
Work out a balance. The worst thing you can do is go through school taking easy classes and feel like you did nothing with your 4 years. It will come to bite you in the ass later on if you get any advanced degrees. I mean why go to college...just to get the job. That is incredibly shortsighted of you.
Just an idea.
Easy for sure...
I agree with the post above that said life is not fair - go easy.
Just take the easiest classes that fulfill your degree and if you are really committed and want to challenge yourself then do a ton of independent study. You can learn anything you want by simply picking up a book.
The GPA will get you the interview and the independent study will nail the offer.
Hard work, luck, AND strategy are what gets the offer. Play your cards right.
Re: It's not only about your
It's not only about your GPA, it's also about your educational background and knowledge. With easy classes, your GPA will be high, but you won't have important financial and quant skills (as those classes are usually most difficult). Why to study at all if you don't plan to take maximum out of your education?
1. What important quant skills? Add, subtract, multiply, divide? Quant 'skills' are just a product of how you think and how you reason things, I doubt a course in xxx is going to change how you think.
2. Maximize your education = make your GPA as high as you can? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder..
3. It's never too late to learn, it's not like once you're out of college you can't learn anything ever again. From my experience, go for the GPA, you have the rest of your life to learn about an extra theory.
yea honestly the type of math/finance you need to know to get a banking job is by no means anywhere close to what you are making it out to be. you don't even need to have taken difficult math/finance classes to know the shit in the vault guide.
i know people who are engineering majors (considered one of the most difficult majors)at my school with low 3's for their GPA who got numerous banking offers. i think banks understand that different majors have different average GPAs.
Re: It's not only about your
1. What important quant skills? Add, subtract, multiply, divide? Quant 'skills' are just a product of how you think and how you reason things, I doubt a course in xxx is going to change how you think.
2. Maximize your education = make your GPA as high as you can? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder..
3. It's never too late to learn, it's not like once you're out of college you can't learn anything ever again. From my experience, go for the GPA, you have the rest of your life to learn about an extra theory.
Nothing personal, but I think its kinda loser's strategy to avoid valuable (but hard) classes in order to boost GPA. Though, probably it is peculiar of the U.S. mentality (I don't know, I was studying in another country, where the only way to go is as follows:
1) try to enter one of the best universities (otherwise your professors would be sub-par)
2) During your studies in a bachelor program (and I am talking about the faculties of economics or finance only), to choose hardest classes and graduate with high honors (it's like 3.75+ GPA, if we use US metrics)
3) While in the 4th year of bachelor program, start working full-time somewhere (not 80 hours per week, of course, but still full time) - and this should not prevent you from this GPA
4) After receiving your BA or BSc, enter Masters program (probably in the same university) - and by that time you definitely should be working full-time on a finance-related job, no matter what
5) Graduate out of your masters program with high grades (3.5+ GPA by US metrics, or better with high honors again)
6) after this - usually at the age of 22 or 23 - apply to full-time positions at BB investment banks (of course, another option is to apply there later, for a 2nd or 3rd year analyst position - in this case you may work in some other investment banks or boutiques)
Basically, very many people in this country follow such a way. Of course, positions in BB banks here are limited - offices are mostly of a satellite type - but I would bet a lot on the fact, that those guys who make it to those spots, are MUCH stronger analysts than those abeforementioned U.S. Ivy school grads, who were choosing easy classes on their way to maximizing GPA.
P.S. And yea, I fully agree it's never too late to continue studies. There is a CFA program, ACCA, CPA, CIIA, stuff like Euromoney training courses - it's all about whether or not you wanna pursue it :)
Ivan
Your conclusion that international students are "MUCH stronger analysts than those aforementioned U.S. Ivy school grads, who were choosing easy classes on their way to maximizing GPA." is fundamentally flawed and biased. Specifically, you fail to take into account that pretty much all of the best international students study in elite U.S. universities. Therefore, graduating with "High Honors" from your international universities is not all that difficult and fairly meaningless. If any of those kids came over to an elite Ivy league university and attempted to take on incredibly tough courseloads, they would quickly get poor grades and realize the folly of their ways. They would be competing against the world's best, rather than some random kids who weren't good enough to get a scholarship to Yale or Stanford or whatever. You can call it a "loser" strategy or whatever you want, but quite frankly natural intelligence and ability matters a hell of a lot more than working full-time your senior year or getting a Master's or whatever it is exactly that you think is the way to go. There's a reason why the captains of industry are heavily weighted towards Ivy league schools and not some podunk university in Germany or wherever you went to school.
midwestisthebest wrote:quite
quite frankly natural intelligence and ability matters a hell of a lot more than working full-time your senior year or getting a Master's or whatever it is exactly that you think is the way to go. There's a reason why the captains of industry are heavily weighted towards Ivy league schools and not some podunk university in Germany or wherever you went to school.
Ok, ok, as you wish :)
The only thing I wonder is how do you measure this specific "natural intelligence and ability" which matters that much?
If via stuff like GMAT scores (for natural intelligence), then it's hardly that much in Ivy grads favor (720+ GMAT is pretty common here among top students - BB IBD analysts, even given the fact that English is not a mother tongue).
If via different means (especially for ability), please enlighten (apart from the really difficult and finance-related CFA program exams, its hard to find anything which doesn't depend on the country of presence, puts everyone under same conditions and allows to measure ability - but only a few of those in investment banking usually pursue this designation, so we do not have a large enough sample to make conclusions).
Yea, and one more thing to think about: if top graduates here were of a sub-par quality compared to Ivy's, how could you explain why base salaries and bonuses for I-bankers in local offices of BB banks are more or less of the NY level? After-tax income is usually higher, thanks to tax rates
How does a pass/fail class
How does a pass/fail class look? I've never gotten a B yet on my transcript, and I think I'm getting one in a stats class (not directly related to my econ/math major). I'm debating whether to pass/fail it, or just leave it on my transcript (I have ~A gpa now). Does the pass/fail matter that much? WIll they think I did even worse? Granted, I have never pass/failed a course before...
Ivan, the kid probably
"Producing in an investment
Pass fail it... you aren't
I'd say take the easy class
Well
Re: Taking hard classes and doing OK vs. taking easy classes and
Re: Pass fail it... you aren't
Is taking more math classes
My school prints the median
Damn, I hate schools which
Honestly, this applies both
Re: Honestly, this applies both
Honestly, if you are at a
You could graduate with a 4.0
rajpbt: You could graduate
I just enjoyed reading
I'm doing a triple major with
Yes it is true that you want
It is not about the title that you have, it is about how much money that you have.
midwestisthebest: