Choosing a Minor To Go With a Finance Major

A Posse Ad Esse:

CompSci.

Political science is a solid minor. Adds to the well roundedness of the individual and if you gear your courses towards business like political economy it could give a macro advantage.

No it doesn't

As a guy who did a double major to show my dedication to finance;

No it doesn't matter. GPA is far more important. Pick a minor that you can enjoy and get good grades in.

Do you think philos. or any social science at NYU would be easy or would it be one of the harder minors?

seriously though, no. in fact I've heard the opposite: people want kids who have second majors and minors in non finance subjects because they are more well rounded/interesting/whatever. Personally, I would take a kid with a double major in history and poli sci over a finance kid, all else equal, because they're probably more interesting to talk to (disclaimer: JUST ME THOUGH)

NYU has a fantastic philosophy department from what i've heard and you would be doing yourself a huge disfavor not to check it out

No. The problem is that we don't know what a minor means and even if we did, there's nothing to say you got all CS in your minor courses and balanced it out with As in your major coursework.

A double-major does make a difference in some cases. Adding Engineering or Math to Finance adds a lot of quantitative depth; adding finance or Econ to engineering overcomes some stereotypes (though adding conference basketball overcomes a whole lot more.)

illini what's your picture?

Oh, that's me. Now where did my Walter PPK go again?

I'll be doing a minor from september onwards. My first and second preference are marketing and corporate finance. Marketing because I want to broaden my views a bit, and corporate finance because the classes seem different than at my home-uni. What would u guys suggest?

Marketing is smoke and mirrors. CF is boring.

I'd take CF if i had only those two options but try for something fun. Again, this is coming form a Econ/Fin double major. That extra effort of mine was not worth shit compared to a little networking.

Pick a schedule that will let you find a part time internship if you don't care about partying. Work experience and networking trumps everything.

Victor252:

Marketing is smoke and mirrors. CF is boring.

I'd take CF if i had only those two options but try for something fun. Again, this is coming form a Econ/Fin double major. That extra effort of mine was not worth shit compared to a little networking.

Pick a schedule that will let you find a part time internship if you don't care about partying. Work experience and networking trumps everything.

I had to choose between 5 options, because those were the only ones in english, so i've put marketing as my first preference because I think it will allow me to have more time besides uni + there's possible overlap with my major(finance).

The marketing program includes pitching ideas to real companies, classes on negotiation skills and a teambuilding weekend.

I'm also doing a strategy consulting project besides my minor. I just want to get some experience there, so I'm doing as much as possible(within reason of course)

Minor has almost no impact. Take whichever minor you'd like -- definitely don't do it to better position yourself for an IB career.

That depends - what are your two majors?

Business Honors Program and Finance

So if you haven't guessed it yet, I go to UT.

I have a friend at UTexas. He is a 7th year bachelors student who thinks he's so cool because he has literally 5 minors, 2 majors, 2 bachelors.... He doesn't realize that all that shit adds up to nothing because it's just paper. He's never left the country, never learned a language, never had solid internships with reputable players in his field of interest.

I highly recommend to leave the country, travel and do a reputable summer school program (LSE Summer program is a 3 week, intensive 1 course program: good example of what I'm talking about) and do some backpacking before and after. During interviews, your interviewer will ask you about it, you can actually have a conversation with your interviewer rather than talk about your extra minor.

Best of luck.

everything helps with the big picture.

Unless you are paying yourself and want to save money and work instead, don't graduate early. An easy final semester, or one where you tie up a minor is a great idea. Remember when you join the real world all of those college fun times change. You have to get up at the same time every morning, can't binge drink 4 nights a week, and work 100 hours a week (that is if you get into a banking job). Anyways you're a sophmore, study abroad, take some more interesting classes, you might not get into everything on schedule and need the extra semester anyways. Come back and ask the question if you're still confused first semester senior year.

cares?

forget the minor. if you've got a job lined up, travel that last semester instead of taking it easy at school. you can do it cheaply if need be through a lot of volunteering-type orgs

Thanks for the comments guys.

minor isnt a big deal when applying for banking, as long as you know your stuff

If you have a job, absolutely forget the minor and go travel. Get an apartment in Austin so you can hang out with your buddies but take the money saved on tuition to go backpacking for a month or something. I honestly found that the more I talked about things I had done outside school the more interviewers liked me, and the less likely they were to ask brutal questions. When I didn't feel it clicking I got the tough questions I think.

The advice that has been said is good. Forget the minor, it doesn't add any value to your resume unless its one of those specialized minors that are very selective. You have two pretty good options for the semester. You can travel, which is something I really wish I could do before becoming a banker. I think it will definitely help with your sanity later on. The other, and more practical option is breaking up your courseload so you have it a little easier in your toughest semesters. This will boost up your GPA and give you some extra time to focus on extracurrics, recruiting, etc. I'm also planning on taking some classes that I was always interested in as a pass/fail - advanced public speaking, psychology, literature.

i will go against the crowd. dont take a double major or minor. spend the semesters doing CFA level 1 AND dealmaven financial modelling.

The Business Honors and Finance major kind of coincide, so it won't be hard to complete. And from what I heard BHP really gives an edge to UT kids during recruitment.

But thanks for everyone's opinion, I really appreciate it.

If you're a business major looking to get into fundamental finance roles, then no.

I would choose one, and do extremely well in whatever you choose.

Your CS minor would only be helpful if you're planning to get into Haas MFE

bad sign for your P/NP classes. if you apply to grad school, it almost sounds like you're not hardworking or trying to hide bad grades.

CS is useful for the boring curriculum, hardcore training, and the logical mind required to build programs.

Minors as a whole are useless. If you aren't majoring in a subject, getting a minor instead will do very little for you.

Having a technical/STEM component to your education will always help you and open up lots of new possibilities. Your school may be different, but at most schools a STEM minor is a lot of work. Most people that get them are already in another STEM major and already have all of the necessary pre-reqs, which may be a couple of years of work (more than one class each in calc, physics, chem, etc.).

What I'm saying is that adding a Comp Sci minor may be a ton of work, and it might make more sense to just get a double major (assuming you can add an extra year or so to college).

might give you more tough courses to count, technical education, and possibly edges in recruiting networks or chances to transfer if you're not already in top targets.

I can't speak to how it would help you in a finance career. I minored in computer science and ended up loving it so much I took every class I could. It ended up being tremendously helpful in getting me into the tech role I have now.

If i could have changed my major I would have, but the extra 2 years to do so wasn't worth it. I just piled on the courses and let my transcript speak for itself.

It is a lot of work as TechBanking said. I probably spent more time on my minor than I did on my major(operations and logistics), but it's also a ton of fun. Watch out or you might convert :)

edited- take/learn more math classes if you feel insecure about that.

don't forget about comp sci courses too

what sort of compsci courses? Anything specific?

Either way you'll be fine. I think it's more important you pick whichever route allows your GPA to stay at the highest and worry more so about getting good internships.

Doesn't matter, whatever you want or whatever is easiest. You don't have to put it on your resume, if you don't want to.

Mathematics Electrical Engineering Computer Science - you will learn something

political science, law, psycology

Ive never heard of needing a minor if you double major and most Bachelors of Business Administration's in finance dont require a minor like accounting BBA

hey um thats insane kudos for double majoring and getting a minor also I would major in econ and minor in psycology then get an MBA from a public Ivy like University of Vermont

Go with Psychology if you want to go into trading or anything investment related. If you want to go into IB then choose something specific to what interests you.

Minor in something that you really like. It doesn't need to be anything remotely related to banking or finance, and it doesn't need to be even useful at all, just something that you have an interest in and can talk about coherently in an interview. I took a few years of Arabic and then picked up some Middle Eastern history to get a minor. When I was interviewing, people seemed to like asking me about that.

College is too short. Study what you want. Only do a minor if you actually like the subject. Otherwise it's a waste of time that you could spend otherwise studying something else or boning up on your two majors.

History would round anyone out well.

Classics obviously

I'd do something writing-based and interesting, like History, Political Science, Philosophy, English, Psych, etc. You're already double majoring in pre-professional subjects. You don't even have to put the minor on your resume if you don't want to, but I think that it would make you more rounded to add it on. Makes you seem less boring, imo.

If you do a minor in math or CS or whatever, it might end up being too much to handle given your double major. One of those minors would probably add a slight-slight-slight boost to your app given that you're coming from a non-target, as long as your GPA didn't go down (and if that is likely, then you shouldn't minor in any of those subjects). But either way, I don't think it's worth it. Learn something interesting and just network a ton.