Could I get into Finance?

Hi! I'm 17 years old from Portugal and currently going to enroll on my final year of high school. I did pretty bad on my 10th grade, but managed to turn it around last year (11th grade). If I can put some work this coming year, I believe I can finish HS with an equivalent of a 3.6 GPA (maybe, albeit not as likely, a 3.7). This GPA opens the door for a relatively easy admission in Medicine in colleges in my country. If i followed Medicine, I would have a good salary guaranteed, plus much better job security compared to, let's say, finance. However, I am in it for the money more than anything else. I don't particularly care about helping people or whatever, I'm extremely competitive and like risk. So, because of this, I've been currently thinking about going to finance instead (these characteristics seems to resonate better with this area). My question is whether my GPA is enough to get into a good college, one that could lead me to a successful career in finance and to landing top high-paying jobs in the area, or if I should just forget the idea and follow medicine or something else. I don't want to go to finance just to end up on some sub par job wondering why didn't I go for something else. I also didn't study Economy in High school, if that matters. Keep in mind that as an European Union citizen my choices regarding college are not restricted to Portugal. There are scholarships and benefits to students who ingress in colleges from the EU. Even then, the only way for me to get in some private or top college would be trough scholarships, and I'm not sure my GPA can actually help me with that. I'm just asking because I don't want to end up going for the wrong choice, so I need as much info about everything as possible. Thanks for your answers in advance.

12 Comments
 

Thanks for your response! Would this be a good plan: do undergrad on either catolica or nova, graduate with at least a 3.7 gpa or equivalent, and then try to enter a mba in a top 5 ( Harvard, Stanford, etc...); finish mba with good grades, and break into IB in the usa. How realistic is this? Any pointers? Would I lose anything if instead I went to London, for example? By last, which major should I pick if I intended to follow this route? Economics, business management, etc...

 

Getting in is the hardest part, I would highly suggest the U.S. For business/finance over England only because of the difference in money flowing through. The U.S. Has more money flowing through its finance market than London by a lot. I'm unawear with nova, but if you could graduate from LSE, Cambridge or Oxford than you could get an mba in one of the top schools. Good luck on your descision.

 

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