What classes do you regret taking in college?
For those of you who have worked in finance for a few years, what classes/subjects do you encourage or discourage current students to take? Is it worthwhile to take a bunch of finance classes, or should you try to take a broader range of subjects since you will end up learning all that finance material through work anyways?
I would especially like to hear from Wharton alum what your thoughts are on upper level account and finance classes.
all the classes that didnt transfer between schools.
Other wise all the math is useless, I suppose it was great mental endurance test but it is useless for me in real life. I actually seek out other math kids at work and discuss applications and come up wioth nothing other than than a few quants and algos.
all the hard ones. i thought i'd be a smartass and try to "impress" recruiters with all the derivatives classes i took. all it did was get my resume thrown out because of a lower gpa than my friends who took african dance instead.
Math proof classes. Completely useless, along with all the other math classes.
did the math classes/math major at least help in landing first round interviews (assuming GPA was alright, and u listed the math classes under selected coursework)?
Getting a first round interview has more to do with the basic network/good schoo/luck honestly. After that its really fit/te h stuff. No one sifts through stacks of res' looking only for math majors to hire or throw away.
In interviews you will likely know more than the interviewer provided he himself isnt a quant, theorist, algotrader etc...financial engineer of sorts. But even then it has become focused and specialized at point for them.
This is all relative to what you are actually doing/interviewing for.
all the hard math classes
i tell you what really messed up my whole college career.. those damn one hour bowling, tennis, raquetball courses...
I had to take sci classes for my major I took chem I organic chem I organic and organic chem II got A+'s but hated them
The ever-so-subtle grade dropping... nice.
didn't know colleges gave out A+. Must be a community college thing.
yeah... I hate the fact that I took premed focused classes my freshman year. unlike the other poster, I can safely say that I did not receive anything close to A+ in any of them. lmao
Wouldn't really call the Wharton School of Business a community college
I'm sure someone will now come along and try to argue that an A+ is really hard to get at Wharton; only 10% of the class gets one. Those people will be providing a lot of comic relief for the engineering majors in the audience- sort of like the guy who claims that his family is middle class because his parents only bought him a Mustang GT for his birthday while his friends got Ferraris.
hahahaha, yeahhh. A+ wtf is that?
Also, I don't know many people who take orgo (especially II) and get A's at a legit school. Seems like most people are happy passing or receiving a C or B on the scale and picking up the gpa slack w/other courses.
chem major 3
All the stupid, general business admin. courses (waste of time in Ugrad for the most part), except strategy and operations which were somewhat useful.
i've never heard of A+
I regret taking anything remotely related to finance, economics, management, all that bullshit.
I regret not taking more mathematics and engineering courses in general, thermodynamics and metallurgy in particular.
sorry forgot to quote
what about the hardcore finance/accounting classes? Worth taking or waste of time since you learn it on the job anyways?
I went to college in the Delta 23-D system.
I regret taking the accelerated, spring-semester class of 5-Dimensional Elephant Calculatorics. Got a B+.
weather climate geography bc had no interest in the subject and it resulted in the only C+ on my transcript. But I guess that's the price one pays for liberal arts education. In retrospect, I should have taken more math courses or minored in math or something to go along with my econ major.
econometrics. nuff said
To the OP, I don't think you can regret taking some of the upper-level finance/accounting courses.....especially FNCE 207 and 206....corp val and derivatives respectively. Those were the starting point of conversations in a couple interviews (since you'll often get Wharton alums as the junior people in 1st-round interviews).
That said, for your electives, try to take some easier courses to help offset the GPA hit you might get.
Human Resources, Organizational Behavoir 1 and 2. Marketing 2 was a total bitch. Operations Management got retarded and way too much towards the end.
Courses I enjoyed: -Econ Electives and Upper year finance courses. -Working Capital Management --> All about cash and how CFOs BS to make it seem like its there when its not. -Developmental Economics --> How to save Africa one day... -Economics of Strategy --> Using porter and microeconomic tools to look at M&A style decisions in a framework. -Personal Finance --> When you marry that gold-digger how to protect them assets. -International Finance --> What those Hedge Funds did to kick Greece around 4 months ago.
Also any entrepreneurial finance or M&A course, I would take for sure. Since that is what you will be doing for a career.
My school we had Advanced Corporate Finance - Doing cases using the Daren dean's textbook. Most of the class was either going into high finance or consulting. Very easy class as most people by then had done internships and built models, fun discussing some cases too.
Only god knows what I was doing taking microelectonics and VLSI design. Hated that shit so so much.
I still have nightmares :(.
Anatomy and Physiology II
Wharton has always been known for its grade deflation, just like princeton and unlike any of the other ivies.
Recruiters/alumns know this, so there's no point in debating
Yes, it's difficult to get an A or an A+ at Wharton. There's a lot of smart kids at the school and I'm sure that if we transposed Wharton's curve to most good state schools- and moved its students there- most students would get a higher GPA.
But students at Wharton already get the benefit of the school's selectivity in recruiting decisions. What recruiters really need is a standardized system where we can say that a 3.5 GPA means X in relation to a student's class so we can do a separate calculation based off of the school's selectivity. At all the top ten engineering programs, we can be relatively sure that a 3.0 GPA in the core curriculum means an engineer was in at least the top 50% of his class, and a 3.5 core GPA usually means that the kid is pretty darned smart relative to his class- likely one and a half to two standard deviations above average across the spectrum of engineering courses. Very few students- in any of the engineering programs- will graduate with more than a 3.7 or 3.8 GPA, and for that to be a CORE GPA is just unheard of.
H/Y/Prin/Penn all ruin that regime (with the exception of Princeton's engineering department.) A 3.5 at UPenn is roughly average. There's no easy way to compare, and I think that's ultimately to the schools' detriment if the school already has a reputation for giving everyone a B+ or an A because they're smart. Maybe UPenn needs to move to a Fail/Pass & percentile ranking system so we know where a student really ranks.
I may be completely wrong, but a 3.5 is definitely not average (at least DEFINITELY not at the median). From the curves I have seen, approx. the middle 40% of the wharton classes get between a 2.7-3.3 (B- to B+).
stochastic calculus
Amen man. Amen.
This is why in my post I clearly said that the grade inflation pertains to the college of arts & sciences. Having done finance in Wharton and a liberal arts minor in the college, I saw a significant difference in terms of grading and the general evaluation process between the two schools.
But regardless....none of this matters. This is why firms typically have GPA cut-offs, and will even consider students below it if they come from difficult engineering programs or under other circumstances. At the end of the day, it's about your interviews/connections/internships, not the bs classes you may or not have taken to boost your GPA.
THIS IS THE DUMBEST THREAD I'VE EVER READ
Guys, the OP asked a good question. He wanted to know what courses you regretted taking. He didn't ask you to defend/brag about your GPA...
yeah, bump
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