How respected is Penn State in the IB field?
I am a 24 year old full time luxury car salesman and college student at Penn State (online student). Ill cut to the chase. My high school grades were dogshit (mostly because I was always playing hooky). I had the advantage of being such a little shit that I got sent to court ordered military boarding school which only gives a pass or fail for grading. I graduated with full honors and a diploma from my home school and started making 6 figures selling cars. I always wanted to break into IB but didn't think I had what it takes to finish all the schooling necessary. Long story short, I make really good money and have a solid resume, and my job pays for almost all of my schooling. Penn State was the best school I figured I could get into, that was considered a target or semi-target from my research due to not having a GPA (Even then, they only let me in due to my resume. I work at a Ferrari Dealership in Sales if you were wondering). I have 6 years of sales experience, not sure if that helps.
Currently I am in my second semester of my freshman year and I am trying to build a pathway to make my case as strong as possible to get an internship next year. I have a couple of questions if anyone would be kind enough to answer.
1. I cannot get into the Nittany Lion Fund since it is an in person class only course. I was able to get into the Intrieri Family Student Managed Fund, which I start next week for the Fall semester. Is it as recognized or respected on Wall Street like the NLF? The experience is pretty similar from what Ive been told, just with $1m instead of $15m.
2. Ive done a ton of research, I found some 8-12 week programs on Coursera from UPenn that teaches quantitive financial modeling, along with a plethora of other IB related certificate producing courses. Are these worth anything?
3. I really like the culture at Penn State (Minus the alleged butt stuff in the Football locker rooms LOL) would it be worth it to apply as a transfer to a college like UChicago? (Or attempt to anyways. Im rocking a 3.6 GPA currently. If they are willing to look past my HS records and see what Penn State saw plus a half decent college GPA I might have a shot.)
Any other advice you'd have for someone in my position? TIA
Penn State is well respected. When are you graduating? That will give you a good timeline to recruit on. If you are Dec 2024/spring 2025, you're aiming for SA 24 which is going to start recruiting in Feb and you should be starting to network in the next month or two.
Few quick things:
- 3.6 is about the minimum GPA for an unusual background like yours - try to get this to 3.7/3.8 if you can
- UChicago and co will definitely want your HS transcripts, and 3.6 isn't competitive to transfer to a target. Stay where you are, you have a chance.
- those courses are not worth anything. you do not need to learn how to model to get an IB internship. take finance and accounting courses early at school if you can, but otherwise your focus should be on 1. internships and 2. networking. You should start networking before sophomore fall
I don't know PSU well, but NLF is really the pathway. The experience itself is less important than the branding/alumni benefit from NLF. Are you 100% unable to go in person?
I’m doing it online, I live 1300 miles away otherwise I would. I have a wife, house, and 2 cars. I can’t afford to quit and move down there just for the NLF. My wife wouldn’t exactly be on board for that 😅
With a 3.6 at Penn state in an online degree and not a part of their main fund - I never say things are impossible, but in this case it's ridiculously close to impossible to get BB IB.Transferring to a top university is completely out of the question.
Your GPA is way too low. Like the poster above said, you need around a 3.7/3.8 to transfer to a school like Chicago, and if you plan to stay, you need nearly a perfect GPA from PSU to even have a chance at IB.
In addition, from the 1 PSU analyst I've talked to, it seems that you are screwed without that Nittany thing. Why not consider something like consulting instead? Why IB?
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