Hey everyone. New to the forums after occasionally lurking the past couple of months. I'm currently a freshman at a local community college, hoping to transfer to a target/semi-target for the fall 2016 semester. I feel I have a decent grasp on what I am and should be doing - at the end of next semester, after retaking the last 2 classes of a failed semester in 2012, I'll be at a ~3.8 GPA, I'm involved in a couple of student clubs on campus with officer/leadership positions coming next semester, have formed good relationships with my Economics professor and V.P of Research at the school, as well as a family friend / alumni / former professor at Columbia, and have an economics research internship lined up this summer (under the aforementioned V.P).
Now, I'm currently finishing arrangements to create a Finance / Investing Club at my school as well, which leads me to a couple of questions. First, in addition to the other things I have to put on my transcript, what else can I or should I be doing, if my goal is to transfer to Stern/Columbia/etc? My ultimate goal is to end up at a HF, so my financial interests are aligned as such - I like to read any ER reports I can find, and I've been looking through companies myself to familiarize myself with the process of properly finding and evaluating an investment (at least as much as I can without professional experience). I've also finished the BIWS Excel course and just started the Financial Modeling one. Are there any ways to leverage that on a resume, or should I just keep that to myself?
Secondly, while I initially wanted to start this Finance Club to have a 'president / founder of student-run club' on my transcript, I've been surprised by the interest some of my classmates and friends have taken to the idea, and I'd actually like to run a good shop over the next year. I thought for fun we could have a standard investment challenge with paper portfolios, but what kind of relevant and useful information would you suggest trying to bring to attention? To give you an idea of what the current base of knowledge is, I don't think anybody save for a couple professors know what buy or sell-side is.
Also somewhat unrelated (however still relevant to admissions offices...) I am an URM (black & jewish), so does that realistically increase my odds at getting into those schools?
Jeez, didn't realize how long this post got. Thanks to anybody for making it through the whole thing, hope to be more active here soon.
