Majoring in Wall Street?
Right now, I'm a freshman at a non-target school majoring in finance. My question is three-pronged:
1.) I've heard that Finance, Econ, and Accounting are by far the best degrees for landing on Wall Street. I've heard that Finance is slightly better in terms of entry-level opportunities, and I prefer finance as a major anyway. But is General Finance the way to go? Or International Finance? Or a different type? And then, B.S. or B.A. degree?
2.) Is it worth double majoring? I'm not sure what my second major would be, but what are some good ones? And do they truly make a difference in the application process?
3.) Is it even worth it to get a minor?
Thanks for helping me out, I know its alot but I'm just starting out and want to make sure I make the right choices.
Thanks!
Finance is finance. As long as that word appears on your degree (that piece of paper with fancy font you get after 4 years) - you're good. Nobody on the other side of the interviewing room's giant table will care whether it's international or not. As long as it says finance, your butt is good.
Double majoring is worth it if it gives you actual know how. If you want to be a Quant on wall-street, you need to know MATLAB, SQL, and a few other programming languages. R is a very important language for WS.
Anything that teaches you relevant languages for wall street, you should major in. R and MATLAB, Python, relevant.
If you want me to be genuinely honest, i think none of these even remotely matter as much as the school you go to. Companies are so stingy, they'd hire someone in NYC or interview someone there because the talent pool is just bigger and they don't have to pay someone from say Florida to fly in.
A guy with a econ degree from Columbia is more likely to bag a job in your dream WS firm than someone with a Finance Degree and a minor in actuarial science from the University of Idaho.
My experience. B.Sc Finance 2015.
WHATEVER YOU DO. Don't listen to the failed premeds who complain on here saying they really wanted a career in business. They could still have one if they weren't sobbing all the time
Forget the majors. Transfer to a target school. You could be studying "Women History" in Brown University or "How to Raise Cow" in Cornell University and still have a much better chance to getting an IBD at BB rather than "Double Major in Finance and Economic with Triple Minors in Accounting, Tax and Math".
I think the most direct route to being a quant takes you through grad school. I'm not saying there are ways around it-- just that if you have $130K to spend (or better, if you can get into a PhD program), it's the most direct path (not necessarily the cheapest). The government of Singapore also offers free tuition to some smart students willing to work for their sovereign wealth fund, which is sort of a win on both fronts- free tuition and guaranteed employment.
Whichever degree you get, make sure you cover UChicago's minimum math requirements, which is probably a good target for most MFE, ORFE PhD, and Econ or Finance PhD programs, and maybe do real analysis and stochal if you can. Basic programming is something you should also get.
3 sounds better, #1 or #2 could work, although I'd recommend a CS major along with an analytics or quantitative finance major if your school can offer it. If you want to do Econ, make sure you get through the intermediate courses there as well. (IE basic accounting and bond mathematics for finance and intermediate econ for Econ)
Edit: Princeton MFin admitted a student from Nanyang who studied Mathematics and Econ. She had an excellent GPA, research experience, and an internship at Barclays. I am not going to single her out by name, but the resumes of all Princeton MFin students are publicly available.
Here is what UChicago has to say on the matter for their MS Financial Mathematics program, and their requirements are similar to most schools:
For any of these programs, you need a GRE.Q> 165, ideally 170 if you can. You should be getting As, >90%, or first marks in most (not necessarily all) of your courses.
As far as MFE programs, you need to aim for the top ten. Baruch, Chicago, Berkeley and CMU are a bit easier to get into if you're competing on grades and test scores, but a bit harder to get a front-office job out of. Stanford, NYU, Columbia MSFE, Princeton, and Cornell admit fewer students and place more into the FO.
On top of the academic requirements for an MFE program, they're also looking for internships and American or British English skills, at a minimum.
PhD programs will be less concerned about an internship but they will look for research references.
The most competitive programs run out of stuff to select on by the time they've checked off the grades, GRE, and even internship or research boxes-- there's still 200 or so perfectly qualified applicants in the pile for a class of 30-70. So they start whittling it down further and start thinking about how they want the class to look. International Math Olympiad (IMO) medalists are in. Published research (in journals profs at those schools submit to) gets you in. Athletes are in. Interesting military service gets you in. This year, Princeton has two MFEs who competed at the national level in swimming. The year before we had a few triathletes and a guy who flew motorized hang gliders in South Africa to track poachers (not me). My year someone flew F16s in the Korean Air Force, another guy won his category in some big city marathon, and we had a few IMO people.
Coming from Nanyang, which to be sure is an excellent school but doesn't necessarily have the international reputation of Tsinghua, Peking, IIT, or Polytechnique, you are going to get to the top 200 applicants if you have the grades, coursework, and an internship, but you will need something more to make the cut to the last 30-70 applicants. (Edit: I take this back; Princeton admitted from Nanyang last year so to any extent this comment throws shade on the school, that's probably wrong.)
But if you want a Stanford PhD, Harvard MBA, or top ~2-5 MFE or MSCS, you need to start thinking about this now. Learning to fly a hang glider isn't as hard as it looks. If you are OK with a tier 5-10 MFE (and I use this term very carefully because some of the T5-10 schools do a better job of teaching their students stochal) and having a good shot at the FO in the US but knowing ~50% of students land in risk for their first job, sometimes outside the US, don't worry about that and just focus on grades and getting an internship.
Relax. You'll make it. Be patient, work hard, and be open-minded.