Undergrad at Wharton Looking for General Advice

Hi everyone - Current undergrad at Wharton looking for career advice. I'm majoring in finance, have a 3.8 GPA, and have some diversity going on for me. I have experienced in the past that it's pretty easy to get my foot in the door with any firms, especially the ones recruiting on campus. Since it's much easier to get into certain firms through an internship and we have strong on-campus recruiting, I want to take full advantage of my time left here.

My long-term goal is to start my own firm. Maybe within the impact investing sphere. My short-term goals are to acquire as many hard skills as possible and build a solid network on Wall Street.

Definitely interested in a career in finance. What I know for sure is that I do not want to do IB. It seems not that challenging and intellectually stimulating to me. Moreover, I am not motivated enough to put in that many hours when I do not see myself working within IB or PE. I do not see any point in going the same corporate route as literally everyone else when it seems like the world is my oyster.

However, this leads me to my dilemma: I am not sure what I want to do.

Venture Capital seems interesting to me, especially as I am interested in entrepreneurship, but I am not sure how many hard skills I would actually acquire as an analyst at a VC.

Working at a hedge fund intrigues me as well, but I am not quite sure how to start out either.

Moreover, as many firms are trying to push more and more females into trading, I would like to hear some input on whether you think this is a great way to start out a career and would eventually help me lateral into HF?

What about working at a reputable firm such as JPM on a trading desk or within research and then go from there?

Or since I am interested in impact investing, would it be better to start out at either an impact investing firm or within an AM group focused on impact investing at BB?

Or would it be better to first do something more broader and then go into a more niche field later on?

Please serious responses only. Just a little lost and would appreciate any input.

1 Comments
 

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