Accounting Class Necessary?
Hi, I'm a senior at a target school, and my school is offering an accounting course for the first time in many years. The class is heavily curved (down) and heavy in course load. Thus, I'm debating whether to take the class or not. I already have an IBD job lined up for graduation at a top firm, so if I take this class it would be purely for the purpose of preparing for my FT job. Could some people who have taken accounting classes comment on how helpful or necessary it is to take a formal accounting class during college in order to do well on the job in IBD? Thanks in advance
Don't bother, especially if you seem to think it's harshly graded. That's not to say you won't be expected to have a solid understanding of basic financial accounting, though.
I've never taken an accounting course in my life.
Thanks for the insight, I just hope training + learning-on-the-job are as sufficient as people claim them to be
The better question is whether or not classroom learning and academic theory are a waste of time
if this is a financial accounting class, then I think you should take it
understanding accounting very useful for IB
if you asked people who (1) work in IB and (2) have taking accounting in college, what was most useful course you took in college wrt IB -- think many of them would tell you accounting
I know there's a (somewhat accurate, but also somewhat elitist) view that accounting is analogous to 'trade school' work and that you can learn everything you need for IB on the job - I disagree. While true you 'can' learn this on job, it will require hours of review and is directly applicable to your day-to-day work -- so why not learn it while in school?
once you start in IB program, you will be thrown in pool w/bunch of other go-getters. Some/many of them will have basic knowledge of accounting. If you don't, will be uphill battle from day 1
*Not an experienced professional, so take this with a grain of salt..
I'm sure you can learn everything on the job, but going in with a strong understanding of the basics of financial accounting will definitely give you a significant advantage, both in learning more complicated concepts and performing relative to your peers.
Not necessary to take accounting, as long as you think you have a handle on it. One of the traits of analysts that are taking longer to ramp up in our class is lack of accounting exposure.
I guess a good compromise would be to just learn it on my own through online lessons... any thoughts?
Take the class if you think you have a learning disability that would make it difficult to teach yourself. Accounting is far from rocket science. There's nothing you'd learn in class that you couldn't teach yourself in less time. Accounting is very systematic -- you just need to think through how any transaction affects the three financials statements.
Whether or not you take accounting should depend on how much knowledge you already have. If you already have a basic understanding of the three financial statements already, then you don't need to take the class. However, if you really dont know anything about accounting, you need this class to atleast give you a foundation.
You don't want to walk in as an IB analyst on your first day and ask really stupid questions about accounting. Besides, as someone else said, you can count on the other analysts to already know all this stuff so you'll be starting at a disadvantage right from the get go.
exactly - you only have 1 chance to make 1st impression
I have seen some very smart people struggle out of the gate in IB b/c they lack a basic accounting acumen
sr people are too busy/pre-occupied to give you benefit of doubt and say 'oh, he/she screwed this up b/c he/she didn't have accounting background'
In reality, if you screw things up at start, you can quickly become labeled as a 'B/C-grade' analyst. in my view, would be much better to get B/C grade in your course
Once you are stuck with a poor reputation, it is nearly impossible to fix
Accounting was the most useful course I took in UG
I slacked off in my accounting courses in college and did the bear minimum - barely retaining any of the information, which i regret now. I've spent quite a bit of time relearning and better understanding concepts i should of retained from college. It's truly an asset to be strong in accounting - which will help you immensely in modeling as well.
Knowing what drives each line of the financial statements also is extremely useful as well.
it seems like the consensus here is that learning accounting before the job is definitely helpful and advantageous. to follow up on that, is there a one-stop-shop website / resource you guys can recommend for learning accounting on my own?
repost
Why not just teach yourself?
There are a number of sensible reasons why people choose not to teach themselves
(1) Professor should be able to teach better than you can (2) Rigidity/discipline of academic curriculum will force you to learn/do the work (3) Many people find it to be the most applicable UG coursework for IB (4) Have better things to do in free time than self-teaching accounting
Which accounting classes are useful? (Originally Posted: 01/09/2015)
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Why not just take financial accounting to get a 4.0 and boost that GPA...?
Take some sort of ratio analysis / financial statement analysis class. Usually involves a lot of staring down 10k's and 10q's, but will be good practice when you start doing valuation.
Accounting Classes--Online or at Another School? (Originally Posted: 01/10/2016)
I attend a target that has a liberal arts focus and as such, only offers a single basic accounting class for undergraduates. I'd like to take more advanced accounting classes, which I believe would aid in recruiting and the near universal advice I've received from senior folks in PE is that I should take lots of accounting.
I have the ability to take the classes at a local state school for 2k a class, but would that be better than taking them online through one of the reputable online ed platforms?
Wall Street Prep's is like 30-40 bucks and helped me a lot for Financial Accounting.
How important is your UG accounting & finance coursework for banking? (Originally Posted: 04/12/2010)
As a little background, I'm a senior right now majoring in math. I've taken a basic accounting and finance course but nothing beyond that as far as the finance curriculum goes.
I did two internships outside of banking and then last fall, I landed a FT job at a boutique. I will be placed into a product group (M&A or restructuring). In fact, I landed several offers for IBD/lev. finance at some of the BBs too.
In preparation for the interviews, I used the Vault guide pretty extensively. I cleaned up my resume and made sure I could answer the basic technical questions. This wasn't too much work since the questions did not seem to go into too much detail about either accounting or corporate finance. It seems silly that after 3 or 4 years of coursework, the tiny Vault guide is the only thing that seemed to really help in my finance interviews... and it seems equally silly that banks still gave me an offer in lieu of my technical background. I'm sure there are many other students from UG business schools and such with stronger qualifications...
I have no significant experience in valuation or any work related to banking. I don't have advanced accounting or corporate finance classes under my belt either. Am I at a terrible disadvantage compared to the the other incoming analysts, some of who are taking their summer offers or coming from other banks? Should I be preparing or will training be sufficient enough for me to catch up? Were any of you in my shoes before you started your jobs? How'd you manage?
Thanks in advance.
after 2 weeks, everyone will be on the same level.
Many non-business majors have no trouble at all catching up, and firms hire students from various backgrounds all the time. You might think the interview guides are very basic (and they are), but remember that they are good enough for the time of the interview. So the fact that you got an offer means interviewers thought you have what it takes to learn on the job. During training, you'll learn how to actually do the job. You seem like a smart and motivated guy, so I wouldn't worry too much. Most of corporate finance (even advanced corporate finance) is very theoretical anyway. Sure a valuation class is helpful because of modeling case studies, but it's not necessary. And the academic way of doing things are apparently pretty different too.
I agree with the above post. I have seen Psychology and non-business majors make their way into IB, so it is obvious that undergrad finance/ accounting background isn't a prerequisite. Plus, you're a math major so you can catch up with stuff pretty quickly I guess. From what the upperclassmen told me, you can learn quickly just by doing the job as long as you pay careful attention. P/S: Still I got a question. Did you just use the vault guide to investment banking (the one with only ~180 pages) to prepare for all the interviews? I read the book a while ago, and though I feel it gives lots of insights into IB, it doesn't cover enough about the technical part. I want to read more books about technical and valuation stuff, do you and everyone have any suggestions?
The vault guide is finance interviews is more comprehensive and covers a wide range of questions. I think that's the one people are referring to.
pygmalion - if you want to prepare for IB interviews, the best resource available is the M&I guide, especially the technical portion. If you know this guide well, you will be more than prepared for interviews. I got FT offers from all of my interviewers and I used the M&I guide heavily in conjunction with WSO and ibankingfaq.com. I used the WSO tech guide and ibankingfaq to triangulate my studying, and I spent a lot of time writing down experiences pertaining to behavioral questions as well. Good luck.
pygmalion, like CWS said, I was referring to the Vault guide to Finance, which covers banking, s&t, research, etc.
I can't vouch for the other guides that are out there, but I will say that I thought the Vault guide was more than sufficient (on a technical level) for all the full time interviews I had to go through. However, I think I might have lucked out a little bit with my interviews.
How important is accounting in finance position? (Originally Posted: 09/13/2010)
Hi, I need to decide whether I should take intermediate accounting class (i already took the intro one) or machine learning class.
I am actually a math and finance double major.
I have genuine interest in machine learning but I feel that accounting class may be more important for the actual job...
any thoughts?
What job?
Accounting might be helpful for investment banking, but you learn everything you need to on the job and in training. If your going into S&T, accounting is completely useless.
I am very interested in S&T. Its just that I thought having some accounting knowledge is useful overall. But at the same time, I guess its pretty boring :P
If I could do college all over again, I probably would have majored in accounting rather than finance (this is for IB jobs though).
You will need a solid understanding of accounting concepts, ratios, etc., for S&T (more so in sales than in trading), but it's also important to take a major that you can do well and earn good grades in. If this accounting class you're talking about has any kind of valuation in the curriculum, without a doubt, take it.
So your question is "how important is accounting in a finance position?"
Uh ......
I guess it depends on the job, but in IB, at least as an analyst, I don't think you need anything beyond Intermediate Acct, which can be completed within a Finance major in most undergrad Bschools...but correct me if I'm wrong
Accounting is pretty important if you want to go into either investment banking or PE. In my case, I didn't start out at a BB in a huge, structured training program, so it was a major disadvantage not knowing more accounting. It's not THAT hard to learn (let's face it, your typical banker is 50x as smart as the average accountant), so you can learn it on the job without a training program (buy a few books, etc), but I have to tell you, I'd have rather have arrived on the job with a better base of knowledge in the subject. I'm not saying you should major in the subject (learn something cool/interesting while you've got the chance), but I'd suggest taking 2-4 classes in undergrad.
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