Course advice

Thanks to the ap courses I took in high school and way I planned my schedule, after my sophmore year I'm done all of my require courses. I'm not quite sure what I should take my next two years...I'm a finance major so I'll obviously take 3-5 finance electives, but that still leaves 15-17 open slots...just to give you an idea: i'm interested in private equity, great gpa, already finished my econ minor...

Should i tack on an accounting dual major, stat minor or something like that (not sure what would be beneficial for PE?)

...random classes i'm interested in and/or easy classes...I was told to take a bunch of easy classes, but when I eventually apply to business school won't that look bad?

any help would be much appreciated

3 Comments
 
Best Response

Double major.

Think beyond just getting a Wall Street job. Consider doubling with Computer Science/Math/Stats or a foreign language. CS and other quant-heavy majors are, at least in my opinion, impressive on a resume and increasingly relevant in the workplace.

Foreign languages are fun to learn and could be helpful if you are intererested in international/regional PE.

Or you could just pick up minors in things you are interested in (a friend who's going to a BB this year majored in Economics and triple minored in things like Philosophy, Linguistics etc. simply because he was interested in them and figured he probably won't get the opportunity to study them again in the future. Not saying it helped with landing the BB gig, but it helps satisfy intellectual curiosity?)

 

If the only reason you're considering taking challenging courses if how you think it will look at an MBA, or landing your first analyst job, just take easy classes. It will be easier for your career if you use that extra time to network, and in IBD and when choosing for an MBA they won't really give a shit.

If you do wish to be a more competent and intellectually powerful individual, take challenging courses. The most useful courses for a good financial economist involve math (get a foundation in multivar calc and linear algebra), statistics (you don't have to be great, but at least have the foundation down), econometrics (this is so useful), applied/computational math (math+statistics+programming in Matlab/R/State), computer science (I personally think computational programming is more useful, but a course in C/Java would be an asset).

I would suggest choosing two of those previous areas of knowledge, and taking a handful of courses. It doesn't matter if you get a minor/major. The difference between a "business school finance" student, and a finance student who can manipulate data in R and run econometric analysis is really really huge. And you will be far far better in the long run due to your increased intellectual capacity.

Of course... It probably won't help you get a job at first. Most HR don't understand econometrics or complex fields.

 

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