Best Degree for a Job in Finance?
Before you laugh at my naivety, remember I'm just a high school student.
So I need to make my decision for college in the next few months and I know I want to end up in finance, but what is the best route? I'm good and math and enjoy engineering but am positive I want some job in finance or management.
From the three top schools I have gotten into: UWisconsin, IndianaU, and UMichigan, would it be better for me to get an engineering degree from say Wisconsin and then a MBA, or a finance degree from Kelley or Ross and then eventually a MBA
I don't want to be stuck in a boring, dead end engineering job for my whole life, but yet again I do like the subject matter and am good at math related subjects. I also have a passion for finance and love reading about investing, trading, etc.
I come from a slightly upper middle class family so it is not like I have a ton of connections.
Any suggestions?
Straight into finance and straight into the best feeder school.
Never attended the schools you're talking about so do your due diligence but there is one thing for certain. There is literally zero need for an engineering degree. None. You're making life harder for yourself because the coursework is harder and on top of that what really matters is your finance background.
Finance degree from semi target and 3+ internships (example financial advisor, then equity research, then IB, then IB full time).
The best advice any young guy can get is this "What would I want if I was the interviewer".
Your degree in engineering while impressive in the "rigor" has literally next to no value to your managing director or vice president when you start in investment banking. If the kid already knows how to do basic pitchbooks and basic financial modeling, it's a no brainer.
If you put a 3.5 GPA+ finance + internships versus Engineering 4.0... The Engineer goes into the "do not interview pile" immediately.
Good in school does not mean good in the workforce.
combine the two, financial engineering (MFE). or software engineer and build algos/trading models
What's the best major for finance you ask?
I would say Math/Finance double major with a few computer science classes here and there and with accounting up through intermediate financial II would be ideal. I really wish I would have done this but I was dumb and didn't take the appropriate math classes early enough to be able to graduate on time and took random gen eds.
This would be as difficult as an engineering major (much more useful though) so you would get props if you had over a 3.5, and could open a lot of doors in terms of career options. It would also make undergrad interviews easy as shit for technicals and you wouldn't have to stress through the guides like a lot of us do.
how do you enjoy engineering if you're in high school?
go to umich ross, major in whatever the seniors/juniors tell you to major in for banking recruiting and get a 3.7+. get 3 internship by the time junior winter break rolls around: pwm, equity research, hf, pe, boutique banking, MO at a BB, Federal reserve, us treasury etc. take your pick. (if you're a freshman something niche and cool like fbi or cia might be a great talking point too)
network hard late summer/fall semester of junior year and land ~15 first rounds, ~7 superdays and ~2 offers. Make sure you apply to everything in sight, OCR, online, random drops on your career website etc. (I got an offer through a random drop and 0 networking but didn't end up taking it).
Good luck!
Ive seen and talked to a few Indiana alums in IB. Two of them were double majoring in finance and accounting. They also had above 3.7
UMich, best name school out of them, and school name does matter, especially when many of the guys in BB institutions have gone to Ivy League or Duke/JHU/Stanford/MIT. UMich (AA) is right next to UVA, UNC-CH, UCLA and UCB as the top state schools in America and are seen as having academic programs comparable to schools like Cornell, UPenn, Columbia. This also means UMich has the best OCR, which will be your best friend.
Michigan is your best bet. As the person above me said, it has the best brand name, tons of OCR, and, if you wanted to do engineering, probably has the best engineering school of the bunch that you could switch into if you were to change your mind.
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