Hello Everyone - Soon-to-be Junior at BSU

Hello everyone! I’ve been a long-time reader here and finally decided to join in the discussion.

Here’s a bit about me.

I'm a 24-year-old college student currently located in northern California. I have a low-ish GPA (3.3~) and never took any SAT/ACT since my previous major was fire technology and I never thought to aim any higher. I'm in the process of finishing up some lower division business classes at a local community college so I can transfer to Boise State University in fall 2018 with the intent of graduating with a BA in finance. MBA is still being considered but depends entirely on what kind of experience I can get while or shortly after completing my BA.

While my academic performance hasn’t been stellar, I’m fortunate enough to be a good self-teacher and have read a bunch of books on investing, psychology, economics, general business, and quite a few books that fall somewhere within the business/finance category. My favorites so far have been Margin of Safety by Seth Klarman, The Warren Buffett Way by Robert Hagstrom, and Steve Jobs’ biography by Walter Isaacson. For what it’s worth I have also been working through a corporate finance textbook to help cement my understanding of the math and terminology.

I got interested in finance (and hedge funds specifically) while reading about value investing. I saw mutual funds as pretty limited in what they can do, whereas hedge funds seem to be able to execute on a higher level and make use of a wider variety of tactics and strategies. My goal is to work as an analyst for a hedge fund and work my way up from there, but my interest is far greater than my knowledge or experience so I am open to any jobs or opportunities that will help me along to my goal.

Seeing as I have zero experience and have only attended community college so far, I’m pretty out of the loop when it comes to getting into the financial industry and I really don’t know what steps to take or what I could do to better prepare myself for a career in finance outside of getting a degree and being active in school (clubs, internships, etc.).

Any and all advice, recommendations, and suggestions are sincerely appreciated.

Thanks for reading, S. Daniels