I'm asking a question for someone I know:
Think of top 3 UC schools (Berk, UCLA, UCSD). Kid successfully transferred to one of those from CC, but as a social sciences major (think psych, philosophy, poll-sci). Last minute he decided he's interested in Finance, and tries to change to economics - doing some crazy summer schedule - and finds out it's just a no can do.
Instead, he decides to major in his social science and minor in accounting.
What would you suggest this person do (aside from networking) to set himself apart? Do you think she/he needs to get a masters?
My first thoughts were she/he needs to just network like crazy (which would have been the case even as an econ major, at ANY school) and explain their interest in [social science] and how it relates to business during interviews/networking.
Would love to hear thoughts/suggestions/stories that may be similar to this. Thanks!
Why does everyone call it Berk?! It's Cal!
If you are not at Berkeley your hopes are slim. UCLA recruiting is weaker and I've never met any UCSD kid in my career. Adding an extra L to poli sci doesn't give me much hope for you.
Fuck the social science major unless you want to pad your GPA. And if you do, make sure you get a 3.8+ bc there is no reason anyone with a three digit IQ should not be able to nail those ridiculous gut courses.
Ivoteforthatguy -- when you refer to UCLA recruiting being weak, are you meaning its difficult for UCLA students to get access to people within the finance industry without hardcore networking? If so, he'll be sharing my contact information with recruiters, which is pretty strong. On top of this, this kid has work ethic like no ones business - so networking for him is like breathing.
I do have to correct you -- I know a kid at UCSD with Goldman Sachs and Blackstone on his resume (front office positions).
More Cal grads on the Street = more people possibly going to bat for you and more people thinking "Hmm, I worked with a Cal grad and he was pretty good -- I'll give this one the benefit of the doubt."
You have less of both with UCLA and a lot less with UCSD. I'm not even getting into the elitism issues now, but those are real too.
The only SA I never knew who never fucked up anything and was never chewed out was a Haas kid. And he looked like Bateman too.
Is this IBD interest or another type of finance? Why don't you stack up on finance related things? Clubs/frats, classes, internships, etc
I do have to correct you - I know a guy who was a fixed income trader at a BB and he was a state school dropout. Now, does that mean all state school dropouts have those same odds?
Sounds like your friend goes to UCLA. The accounting minor is definitely better than nothing, but there's lots of people gunning for the same positions at UCLA, with a fair share of them having pretty good credentials. If your friend is going to be a junior this next year and doesn't have much work experience, I'd probably recommend staying past a fourth year so they can pad their resume and apply for SA positions for summer of 2013. Your friend would probably get lost in the applicant crowd as is, but a good amount of club involvement (Undergraduate Business Society tends to help with finance the most) and internships can help a lot.
.. we really need more details here: whats his gpa? does he have any kind of experience he can leverage? what is he trying to get into.. theres a big difference between quant stuff vs. sales.. or maybe he can take the ops route at a BB and switch over to FO after 2 years? depends how much the name means to him i guess
.. i know he's minoring in accounting but tell him to take some additional math classes if he has room
Additional math classes?
OP, take the advice you get on this thing with skepticism because the amount of misinformation on this site is beyond ridiculous. Taking math classes beyond what you need to graduate is absolutely fucking worthless for banking. You can get by with the math you learned in junior high, period. Can you divide? Can you take an exponent? Can you work with fractions? If so, you're ready for IBD math.
Truly, the blind leading the blind.
this response was completely unwarranted and biased toward only going into banking.. the OP asked about finance as a whole. When i was at undergrad, every BB exec I talked to recommended taking as many accounting and math classes as i can. In addition, when I interned at a BB, interns pursuing math got a certain amount of more respect then interns pursuing finance or accounting at the same school (think S&T, not banking though).
He's going to need to justify that philosphy/ psych major... if he can say that he realized that he wanted to do finance AND began taking accounting and math courses- thus really challenging himself (and his transcript backs it up) he'll be a lot better off. Plus, if he's as smart as the OP says he is, it wont hurt his GPA..
but if he wants to get into PWM at a BB then yeah, forget it... math would be useless.
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