Which Undergrad Classes Matter?

I checked through the forums and didn't see anything that matched up with this.

Let's be honest here. While we all go to different schools which all teach certain topics to different depth and detail levels, the general concepts and curriculums are essentially the same. SO: As undergrads entering into the Investment Banking world, are there certain classes and topics as a rule that we should be extra mindful of and stay sharp on? And are there certain classes that, after school, you never touch the concepts from again?

Personally I'm still learning more about different career paths, so whatever your experience is in (trading, corp finance, HF, M&A, PE, etc), just specify and let us know what you wish you'd spent more/less time remembering!

 

Accounting, corporate finance, and any other classes directly related to investment banking (i.e. my undergrad school literally had a class called investment banking). Statistics is good if you end up in trading or AM. Any class on investing is good for PWM/AM/HF. Classes on business communications are useful for pretty much any business career (i.e. interviewing/networking/presenting skills). Negotiations is also subtly useful for everything if your school offers it. In terms of business classes, marketing is less important if you end up in the financial services industry. Obviously anything outside of business classes are generally less important unless you plan on focusing on a very specific area of finance (i.e. it would be useful to take biology classes if you want to work in healthcare investment banking).

 

Thanks MBAmarathon, this is super helpful! Is it worth pursuing extra classes if I don't feel set after my degree requisites? Or does it come more with actual work experience?

"In order to make a man covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain." ― Dan Ariely
 

At a minimum make sure you learn enough to be prepared for any interviews you anticipate having. It doesn't matter if this is through classes or self study. If you get the job offer, then you'll know enough to get started on the job. You won't know everything to start out, but you'll learn a ton on the job through formal training and/or simply gaining experience. Only pursue extra classes if you truly want to learn the material or if you have a very specific job you are targeting and you think that class will give you a leg up during the interview process. Overall I'd recommend not overloading on classes because you may end up overwhelmed and your GPA could suffer. But if you have room in your schedule and it is relevant to your career, obviously go for it.

 

How would you say liberal arts are important? Not to put them down, I've enjoyed the ones I've taken. It's just a very different answer from the rest, I'd love an elaboration.

"In order to make a man covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain." ― Dan Ariely
 

Would you say some sort of computer course is necessary at this point? Or can I get away with not taking one if it's not in my reqs for my degree?

"In order to make a man covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain." ― Dan Ariely
 

I've found my Computer/Data Science skills to be the most important in terms of on-the-job skills because of the amount of data you have to work with in HF. I would argue that even in IB the skills gained from DS would be incredibly beneficial working on excel models or ironing out kinks.

These skills are indispensable and are easily used if you ever transition into corp finance or strategy as a lot of firms use SQL and Tableau to aggregate data.

I do agree with the communication and synthesis of documents to also be important.

 

General classes you're taking if you're a Finance major will be relevant, but keep in mind that realistically speaking, while "all" of your classes are important, you likely utilize maybe 15-20% of what you learn in college (yes, even in your fin inv statement analysis class) in the real world. It's great as a foundation but there is a lot of trite information that you have to learn for your degree that you'll never use, even major-specific courses.

You'll likely get good exposure all over, just focus, get good grades, learn something, and have a good college experience.

EBITDA rules everything around me
 

That's essentially what I'd figured prior to posting this, it's nice to know I'm not talking myself out of a bunch of massively important info. Much appreciated!

"In order to make a man covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain." ― Dan Ariely
 

Most banks don't even see your transcript until after you accept the offer, and even then it's just HR glancing at your GPA.

I would prioritize GPA over harder classes. Caveat that if you're not a finance major you should take 1-2 intro finance/accounting courses if you can, but don't kill yourself trying to impress with high level classes as no one really sees or cares about them. No one sees pass/fail or notices, unless you fail and it affects your GPA.

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How would they know if they’re easy? The only scenario I could see someone asking is as a casual question like “tell me about what classes you’re taking” and they’re not going to stop you and quiz you on that history or English class. Most people have to take a number of general classes to fulfill school requirements so don’t think interviewers really care what elective classes you’re in.

Being a psychology, child education, general management, etc major and not really having any business classes (assuming your school offers them) is a different story but finance major taking 1-2 easy classes a semester is normal.

Array
 

my major has been brought up at nearly every interview I've been through for 2019 things. That being said I go to a top 50 non target, so I had to use my major and ACT score to prove that I am smart enough, which shouldn't be an issue coming from a HYP

 

Fellow HYPS student here. For most of the IB jobs, I'd agree and say that the transcript is only read to see the GPA, post offer. However, many more lucrative firms that only recruit from our schools will often times give your transcript to analysts who recently graduated from the same school to see how hard the classes were. I know for a fact that Bain Cap and Audax do this, not sure which others but I'm sure it exists in some EBs and MFs.

Bottom line, GPA is more important, but for the very very very best places, yeah they'd like to see harder classes.

 

I put off one of my Theo requirements until senior year, because I thought it would be awful. Turned out that I was right. I don't remember my professor having high reviews, but because of the tightness of my schedules during undergrad, I took her anyway. She made us answer these long, deep, philosophical questions on morality, which I hated. But we had to do them because she always read them and wrote comments on it at the end. Anyways, I look back and realize that I was quite resourceful, because I took each one with a positive attitude and just ran with it.

The summer prior to the course, my internship taught me a lot about written analyses. When I go to this class, it was perfect for practicing what I learned, because most of the questions involved some business dilemma, anyway. Every time I had to write in response to one of these questions, I laid out my arguments and assessed the situation using the framework developed in my internship. I would always read the professor's comments to learn how I was performing in delivering my argument, and I would try to assess whether I did a good job on improving since the previous one that I wrote. I knew she would be biased, so I kept that in mind, but I did not hold back. Overall, I did well when grades came out and feel like it was a good use of what seemed like a totally bullshit class.

 

First and foremost, technical writing and public speaking classes are critical. Unfortunately, I feel that many of our previous English classes condition us to meet page lengths and often contain lots of "fluff". In the business word, being able to write succinctly and answer questions directly is critical. This should apply to both written and verbal communication. You should also turn to extracurriculars such as the debate team, student investment funds or speech club to hone your skills.

Other classes I enjoyed, were history classes and nutrition. I'm a history buff and enjoy reading about it in my free time, so I signed up for US and world history classes to fill free electives. I also suggest a nutrition class if you can squeeze it in. There have been a lot of threads lately on health/workout habits, and I'm a firm believer that a healthy lifestyle starts in the kitchen.

If you have the opportunity to attend university and have the flexibility, tailor your schedule to take advantage of it and try to graduate as the most well rounded individual possible. You can take the easiest classes and skate by or you can challenge yourself and make a huge investment in your personal development.

 
Best Response

Syntax was the hardest class I took in undergrad. Now that I'm out of school, I refer back to what I learned there much more than I thought I would (a few times a week, at least). It was a mid-level Linguistics class and we studied word order and sentence structure. More specifically, we would map relationships between words in a sentence, look for ambiguity in writing and try to deduce all the possible meanings in these ambiguous sentences. So, we'd take a simple sentence like this one:

"I saw a man on a hill with a telescope."

and try to understand all the possible interpretations of such a statement:

There’s a man on a hill, and I’m watching him with my telescope. There’s a man on a hill, who I’m seeing, and he has a telescope. I’m on a hill, and I saw a man using a telescope.

and so on.

It's an immensely helpful class when it comes to writing clearly for business and personal purposes. Clear and succinct writing is a rarity these days.

 

I know this might not qualify but my economics teacher has been a great mentor, friend, and role model for me. I go to a school that frankly is nowhere near in the same breath of some of these so-called non-targets that people claim on here. It would be considered a "deplorable" of a school that is really only know for the handful of successful athletes. Fortunately my teacher is a former PM and has been an absolute joy to pick his brain on the markets and we have almost identical interests outside of it like sports, fishing, etc. Don't think I'd be where I am today without him.

 

I took a class on Negotiation Workshop (Yes that's how the class is named). Needless to say it has been helpful to me ever since. Each class we were formed into small groups of 4 or 5 and we would have to negotiate deals with other teams. There were no exams no tests just ten classes of such activities each lasting 3 hours. Easily one of the best decisions I have taken.

"The markets are always changing , and they are always the same."
 

I want to second this, I was going to say history classes as well.

I ran into an amusing problem in a few of my history classes where I found data & sources contradictory to what was in our textbook. This actually shaped me up very well to be able to respect both bear/bull sides of investment arguments.

The difference is...if I write a short thesis and a long convinces me I'm wrong, I might go long as well. In class, when i pointed out that the teacher was factually wrong backed by other sources I got a D on the paper (true story).

 

Offensive Art (UGS Course for You Longhorns) - Class involved discussing and understanding what makes certain forms of art in different mediums controversial. Developed my taste for classical music such as The Rite of Spring and helped me see beyond what the naked eye can see.

In short, helped me to understand several layers beyond what most people would observe which helped me in social situations and become better at being more observant.

Child Development + Lab - Even grown adults act like children and after taking this class I realized kids are smarter (relatively speaking) than what most people would assume. By taking the lab portion and observing kids I realized the importance of building a foundation as a child and it helped me realize and understand why I did what I did as a kid.

In short this class will help me when I become a father.

 

I had a friend who majored in philosophy, but was more active in honing his other skills outside of the major (e.g. coding). He said it has helped him tremendously with his coding career.

It may be useless if the student doesn't pursue internships or other means of strengthening hard skills, but it seems to compliment well in many fields if utilized correctly.

 

A higher level class about Congress for my minor. Great look into the inner workings of the institution and helps a lot in realizing that there's much more than meets the eye when trying to analyze the legislative pipeline. Helps with water cooler talk here in DC. A decent amount of polisci majors from that classed ended up working on the hill.

Quant (ˈkwänt) n: An expert, someone who knows more and more about less and less until they know everything about nothing.
 

Philosophy - helped with soundness of my arguments, making sure I remembered to have evidence to support my claims.

English - Helped cut down on the 'fluff' and helped me focus more on substantive points.

Took some history / art history too, really fun & easy but for me Philosophy and English are the clear winners. Writing is such an important skill as is being able to write succinct and logically sound arguments.

 

Introduction to wines. It was pretty tough as the class was very thorough and meant to carry you to the first somm exam, but was a good way to have a chance to taste just about all the varietals of the world, what they roughly smell and taste like, what they pair with, and what you like yourself.

 

depends on which area.

IBD - not required at all. Take more finance based classes and some basic accounting. GPA is more important than classes. (not entirely true in research and S&T)

Research - more quant classes, econometrics, higher level math(calc & statistics), programming.

Sales & Trading - go for some higher math for sure. Logic, probability, statistics (not as much calc required compared to research)

 

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