Should I major in real estate?

I’m an acquisitions analyst at a new but fairly prestigious, high AUM (for its size) firm. Been here about 2 months and started right out of school. The UW Madison RE program is well-regarded, but that’s partly because the number of schools offering such a program is SO small, especially to undergrads. Don’t let the US News rankings fool you, because no decision makers are going to put you anywhere near the level of a Penn grad if you’re against them for the same role.

Having said that, it might improve your GPA, but not necessarily your chances of getting an offer. With the 3.0, and ESPECIALLY considering it’s a 3.0 at an “easier” school and not a “target” school, you might have to consider something not directly in finance at first, build a network and then break in when you’re a little more seasoned. At the end of the day, if you’re non-target they’re likely expecting a 3.85+ just to be willing to talk to you in most cases. I don’t think a little bit of a boost by switching will do much for you at this point.

A big part of me thinks you’re better off staying as a finance major and working your ass off to REALLY learn the finance and improve your GPA that way. You’ll never get a BX offer, but if you bump up to a ~3.2 by having a ~3.8+ in your final few semesters while taking hardcore finance classes, there are definitely some smaller shops you could position yourself to and end up breaking in right out of school. The fact that you struggled at first but were able to buckle down and learn it by…(you come up with this part of the story) could end up resonating to the right people and get you that “out of reach” offer. 

At the end of the day, that’s what the analyst role is. It’s being thrown in to a bunch of data and finance that you can’t really grasp right away, and just figuring it out while doing a good job in the process. If you’re having a hard time doing that in an academic environment, how could you expect a hiring manager to believe you could do it professionally? I would STRONGLY consider staying the course in finance and foregoing anything close to a social life for your final semesters if finance is where you want to be.

All RE firms are different, but pretty much all the shops actively hiring nowadays are technical-heavy. They LOVE burnt out IB interns. I didn’t have an IB/traditional financial services internship, so I struggled to break in even with a solid GPA at a target school. I knew what I was doing from a technical perspective, though, and was able to practice demonstrating that enough times in enough interviews that eventually I got the right offer.

I found the entry-level academy courses from breakintocre to be extremely helpful when I first started learning. Good luck! PMs are open if you wanna ask me anything privately.

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If you're in the Midwest, you can work for pretty much whatever real estate company you want coming from UWs program.

Still have to compete for the role, but there's no ceiling for UW RE grads in Chicago, and other Midwest cities. Take a look on LinkedIn and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Program is as good as it gets for Real Estate basically outside of the top targets. Plenty of alums across top PE firms and AM firms. Only switch if you are interested in real estate because you’ll get grilled in interviews from these top firms and it’ll be very apparent you have no interest and you’d have switched your major basically for nothing 

Unfortunately it's tough to network in Madison given the size.The other posters are right tho, focus on your grades from here on out, momentum/trends matter.

I am a UW real estate alum and was at the RE career fair you mentioned last week on behalf of my company. As plenty others have mentioned, the program is well-regarded and the alumni network is strong, but some thoughts:

• Majoring in RE certainly helps, but not some silver bullet to getting an RE job - i.e. if I'm between two candidates, someone having real estate as a degree would not be the tie-breaker. Most schools don't have a RE degree anyways, so hard to compare apples/oranges. When recruiting/hiring I look more for the student's demonstrated understanding and interest in real estate, soft skills/how well they interviewed, experience, etc. Personally, I don't really care whether your GPA is 3.2 or 3.8 but that's my personal opinion. Plus my firm isn't super hardcore about GPA as long as it's at least 3.0-3.2.
• Perhaps you can take the intro RE 306 class first, before declaring. Might be too late in the semester to add a class though. I was undeclared until sophomore year after I took the intro class, which got me interested in real estate.
• Start going to the Real Estate Club meetings each Thursday, listen to the speakers, network, etc. Maybe even go on the annual RE trip they do (assuming they do it this year). When students tell me they went on the REC trip, that's a green flag because it demonstrates some interest in the field.
• Consider applying to banks and/or insurance companies in their RE groups. The firms you listed above are mostly straight REPE or development firms which is desirable but more difficult to get into. Every commercial bank and a most insurance companies have a real estate lending division which opens up a lot of options that are less competitive, but still very much real estate focused (with some finance too, could be a good mix for you). Wells and PNC usually recruit for RE at UW Madison, but there are 100's of others out there (and don't skip over the smaller regional banks). 

No one cares what school you went to or what your major is/was once you open the door to the interview. Major in what you are interested in. Network your tail off. It’s a really hard market right now as half the major asset classes are effectively shut down - office & retail. Therefore, less hiring. Once you open the door to the interview, it’s fair game for everyone and a level playing field. Don’t listen to the kid who posted that they graduated two months ago and you won’t be as highly regarded as a Penn Kid. Sure, Penn is a great school, but so is UW Madison and everyone knows it. Just keep focused on the right items and it’ll happen - network.