Work Life Balance - 3.7 at a semi-target

How do you balance school and getting top grades while being able to party as much as your fraternity friends majoring in comm? I have a 3.7 at a semi target and it's a lot harder than I thought it would be (public high school) and I really didn't have as much time to party/socialize as I wanted to. I'm guessing I could let the gpa slip to a 3.3 and still be eligible for on campus recruiting requiring a 3.5 but my school doesn't have a undergrad business program and so I might have to actually try to maintain the 3.5+

Do you guys just grind out and make sacrifices for banking or is it possible to be wicked smart, not study at all and ace your classes? I've heard that business programs are wicked easy but my classes are more along the lines of calc II, Intermediate Microecon, Biology, foreign language, unrelated elective as one semester for example

11 Comments
 

Why would you want a life? That would get in the way of your walking of the road to power.

“...all truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” - Schopenhauer
 

Party/Drinking is overrated.

Anyways, depends on how smart you are. This year, I just studied 2 days before mid terms and 5 days before final exams and got a 3.8 GPA (Calc II, Intermediate Micro/Macro Econ, Foreign Language included). Well, the avg was C+ for all the courses so I guess some people have to bust their ass.

You just have to know yourself and keep a 3.5+ gpa.

 

I'm all for partying and not missing out on the "college experience"...

But if you go to a big party school and all of your friends are just going through the motions when it comes to classes and studying then NOBODY wants to be the the guy pulling late nights/weekends in the library, getting involved in clubs/organizations, being an overachiever .... but after graduation and they real world hits you in the face, EVERYONE wants to be that guy because he's got a great job, living in a big city, making more money than them, etc etc etc but they can't and now they have to play "catch up" ... which sucks.

 
Best Response

You don't need a 4.0 to get a job on Wall Street. I got a 3.3 and managed to land a FT MM IBD position because the interviewers liked me and I had interesting shit to talk about. Yea, I pretty much memorized the M&I interview guide, but that's just stuff that shows you prepared. People would rather hire someone who knew how to have fun in college and graduated with a 3.3 or a 3.4 than someone who spent every Friday in the library and ended up with a 3.7. Why? Because if you ignored the fact that college was a once in a lifetime experience and instead focused on memorizing useless shit like the CAPM, then it tells me that your priorities are fucked up, and I won't want to spend 90 hours a week in a cubicle next to you.

 

Try 1) sandbagging, and 2) putting off harder classes.

  1. Take easy, intro classes to pad your GPA. Make sure you know what you need to know for whatever career path you're going down, though (i.e. know accounting and finance for IBD, chem/bio for med school, etc.)

  2. If you think there's a class that you're going to do badly in (or is really tough in general), then put it off until after it doesn't matter. For example, when I was in college, I had a buddy take metrics and macro II (both required for our econ major) in his last term senior year. I don't know that I would put it off that far back, but I definitely took metrics senior year.

 
CHItizenTry 1) sandbagging, and 2) putting off harder classes.
  1. Take easy, intro classes to pad your GPA. Make sure you know what you need to know for whatever career path you're going down, though (i.e. know accounting and finance for IBD, chem/bio for med school, etc.)

  2. If you think there's a class that you're going to do badly in (or is really tough in general), then put it off until after it doesn't matter. For example, when I was in college, I had a buddy take metrics and macro II (both required for our econ major) in his last term senior year. I don't know that I would put it off that far back, but I definitely took metrics senior year.

I'm econ as well. Do you have any tips for acing calc with premed students lol? I need to be top 25% in my class roughly for that and classes like intermediate micro/macroeconomics are wicked tough as well since they weed out students from the major to some bs major like psychology or political science. Apparently this creates a more talented recruiting pool with the economics kids for the investment banks.

 

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