Thread for non finance majors

Hey everyone,

I'm a sophomore comp sci and econ double major at a LAC, up till now I've been mainly networking and getting exposure to the industry so my technicals aren't even halfway there. My question is how much grind did it take from being clueless about running a dcf and answering every question about the three statements to being able to master them to a decent level? I prioritized 1)networking 2)behaviorals 3)technicals. Technicals are obviously important but I feel like if I don't have the first 2. I won't even have a shot to discuss the last one.

Thank you!

6 Comments
 

Just went through the recruiting process. I'd say I probably prepped for 2 years (Freshman Spring - Junior Fall). (note: I dont mean like avidly reading books/guides, i mean through internships, networking, and other stuff). But all in all, I could have prepared for interviews - atleast the technicals - within a month. My best advice for learning technicals...build your own 3 statement and valuation models for public companies. There's youtube videos and random articles on google you can find to help teach you. I did this and never had to memorize any technicals because I understood how financial statements interact with each other and valuation.

Ask your fellow classmates, join an investment club on campus to learn more

 
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I am a finance major, but with how accelerated everything is (early sophomore spring to very early junior fall) most finance majors have 0, 1, maybe 2 accounting/finance classes by the time recruiting rolls around. Obviously every class helps, but I had to learn the technicals on my own for a while and it only really took 3 or 4 weeks of working at it to understand them. You are on the right path.

The building your own statement is good advice. I recommend googling some DCF homework questions from finance textbooks and working them out on paper with a calculator, and same goes for accounting. If you can do it all without relying on Excel, you will have an easier time explaining your way through it in an interview.

Array
 

Know someone who purposely CHANGED from finance to another major like art history just to make his life easier and ended up getting an internship at a bank. I don't know how common that is though.

 

Yeah I heard the less your major is related to finance the less technicals there are but it's still not a general rule and fairly risky

 

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