Independent Study Ideas

So i'm trying to come up with some ideas for to apply for another independent study for either the fall or spring semester. I'm interested in IB and S&T the most and was wondering if i could get some opinions from guys in the field on what i should be looking to research. Basically, i'm just asking what people working in IB or S&T think are topics that translate well to what they do in the real world.

Thanks a lot guys

21 Comments
 

What year in school are you? What is your major? What finance experience do you already have? How is studying a language "not rewarding to Your bank acount" compared to doing some random independent study? Perhaps if you told us a little more about yourself, you could get some decent advice.

 

I'm a senior, Economics and Finance double major. I'm done with my econ major and have a few classes left in finance. I'm also nearly fluent in Russian in regards to the language requirement, but i was just making a joke. The guy was clearly being sarcastic so i gave what i thought was an appropriate response, sorry if it came off as anything else. So far i've taken corp finance, advanced topics, current market strategies, m &a's, and derivative markets. Again, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

I'm planning on doing breaking into wall street course, but for now i'm looking for ideas for an independent study. Maybe i was too vague in my original post, but at my school you can do an independent research study for a class credit. So with that in mind, anyone have any ideas ( a general topic) that i can narrow in and focus in depth enough to get a semesters worth of research out of?

 
Best Response

Were all your Econ classes all theory or did you have any application classes? Econ was one of my majors and my favorite class was "Law and Economics" where we basically went through property, contract, tort etc. law and analyzed cases and ideas from and economic perspective, there was a good amount of interesting game theory. And the professor a super cool dude.

I think writing about something with a real-life application and something somewhat tangible that you can analyze with econ theory should easily provide a semester's worth of work. Pure theory stuff like the Solow model and Stackelberg games have been pretty much thought out and would be hard to expand upon unless you're a PhD.

 

olafenizer, thanks for the input but again i might need to clarify more. Unlike a lot of schools, econmics and finance are two different majors at my school. I'm already finished up with my Econ major so i can't do an independent study in Econ ( i wish i could). There's a ton of stuff i find more interesting than what i learned in some of my elective classes and if i could go back in time I absolutely would have pursued them. I agree about the real-life application part though, thats kind of what i'm looking for. I've recently gotten really interested in institutional sales and would like to do some sort of application into sales analysis.

 

I did skew my response too far in the econ direction. Econ and Finance are separate majors here as well, but a number of the courses are cross-listed so you could take them as either, but that's neither here nor there.

I'm not really a sales and trading guy, so I can't help you much there, sorry. Have you done any internships that were related to what you want to cover? If you've kept in contact, hit up one of the guys you know at the firm and ask them if they have any ideas.

 

I actually had a good networking session with an alum (actually 2 of them work on the same desk) and e-mailed him earlier tonight about this same idea. I was just trying to get some other perspectives, buy side is always in demand and demonstrating and understanding of who you're working with can only be helpful. At this point i think I-Banking is a real long shot ,but ultimately is what i would prefer to do if given the choice so i'm up for suggestions there as well (not asking you directly). Kind of off the topic, why the hell are you up so late man? i thought i was the only one haha

 

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