Does the honors college at my large public university matter at all? Or should I just graduate.
Outside of my own personal dilemma I also am interested in whether the people on here think honors colleges and research are useful at all in relation to achieving target banking placement. From personal experience, it seems elitist finance orgs in college are the end all be all for non-target students, and honors college admission and research are cute asides in the interview process.
The Two Sides
Graduate early: I am in the Schreyer honors college at Penn State and have considered graduating a semester early without the honors college distinction. PSU according to this site is low semi-target to non target. Whether the honors college Schreyer matters at all or grants any prestige points outside of graduate school admissions is up for debate when everything outside of it on your resume is solid. I have a good GPA in the higher 3.8 range with some math background, programming experience, honors classes, and internship time at a larger bank in a programming/analytics role. I have the credits to graduate with my BS in economics and have a job lined up in a similar programming-type role at that bank which can start as soon as I graduate. Comp is about on par with starting corp fin jobs; approx 80k. Hoping to vault someday into IB through connections etc but really just want some money in my bank account atm so I'll take what is in front of me. Job market timing in Fall graduation is also worse reportedly but I have a job lined up so moot point.
Graduate with honors: I could pay an extra semester of tuition and graduate in the spring with the honors college distinction. The dumbass administrative quacks are forcing me to do a Fall-Spring thesis class sequence which I would start next Fall and would force me to graduate on time despite having enough credits to graduate now. Upside would be more time to party and relax, maybe add a math minor if I bust my ass and then perhaps move up to a better starting job as a result of the timing of graduation and prestige of honors college (but perhaps not). I do not particularly care for prestige but if it helped my career and future trajectory I guess I could suck it up and kiss some ass for the thesis. I guess my worry is that I severely undervalue the honors college and overvalue PSU and will inevitably be screwing myself by graduating early.
TLDR; The end question:
Is the higher prestige of an honors college degree (whether it be minor or moderate) worth paying an extra semester of tuition when I have a job lined up and feel done with a college lifestyle? Am I undervaluing, correctly valuing, or overvaluing this honors distinction in banking when starting out-especially when considering my school is a semi-target to non-target and my area of study isn't finance.
With only one more semester to do, I would just stay in the honors college. A semester of tuition is small in the context of a long career and life.
Will an honors college have an extra benefit in placement? I think the benefit is marginal but it looks better to have it a resume than not to have it.
Agreed with the financial cost. I guess my main issue with staying an extra semester is I have really hated the past semester of college life. My friends are great and I'm not some weird loner but the college-party lifestyle seems so unlike real life and it completely wrecks any good sleep habits and hobbies I pick up when living by myself on breaks. On top of that I have no money which is a pain in the ass. I just want my degree so I'm done with this credentialing process. If honors college adds very little then to me its not worth the costs. So really I just wanna know if its more valuable than I am assuming here.
Will you graduate with latin honors (cum laude or above)? If so, think the honors college is impressive but not wildly additive to your resume.
Math minor won't help too much with IB, so not worth busting your ass for.
But unless you have seriously strong connections it's typically not easy to get into IB post-grad, especially from an unrelated field. The semi-target thing only helps marginally once you're out of college, your current job will be scrutinized a lot more when you're looking to lateral and it sounds like that job is not finance related. Just giving you a heads up that may be a hard path / may require a 1 year masters if you're set on IB
My thoughts as well. I will graduate with latin honors, definitely cum laude and potentially a bit better. Agree as well regarding math minor.
Obviously seriously strong connections are subjective and I have not had the chance to test them out yet. I have a fair number of friends within IB and have some family connections. Whether that will be enough I am not sure especially since, as you mentioned, I am a non-target and non-finance major. I will mention that my role is definitely related to finance, perhaps I downplayed it a bit. It just focuses on financial modeling and data. What masters would you personally recommend? Finance I am assuming?
Got it. Connections will help, but similar to the school prestige thing, would have been more helpful if you wanted to do it right out of college. Lateraling into IB directly from a data/programming role is just extremely uncommon and connections don't really overcome that unless your family is C suite, head of an IB group etc, although I'm sure there is some precedent for someone moving over from a data role.
Top schools for finance masters are Princeton (not really an IB feeder, but if you love data/quant stuff it's THE place to be), MIT, Vanderbilt, UVA, USC, WUSTL... there's not many programs in the US. Maybe you'll like your data job and want to stick with that, or IB lateral will work out for you - but if you are truly set on IB down the road and looking for an alternate route, this is probably the way (MBA instead once you get like 3-4 years down the road)
My thinking as well. Trust me I am not trying to say Penn State is something it is not. If anything I was really disappointed in how shit PSU was. A bunch of idiots with a few ivy subs that have a chip on their shoulder being taught by professors that are pissed off they don't have the prestige of their Ivy or psuedo-ivy counterpart. You can sleep through their courses and get a 3.8+. Although I have heard the grade inflation is somewhat similar to ivy I still find it hard to believe that an ivy league school would have classes as easy as some of the classes I have enountered at PSU...
idk this is a good question, I got accepted into the honors college for a school that was on par with the one I actually graduated from, but didn't go to the honors college at that one, and in the end ended up with what probably would have been the same job. I am curious to hear others' experiences.
My thinking is unless:
1 - honors college has a capstone/thesis that would grant valuable relationship via connected professor
2 - honors college is far and away more prestigious than the university you are attending
Then you are merely chasing a credential to set yourself apart. In my mind this just wastes time and can make yourself come off in interviews/when your resume is being looked at as somebody who wants to validate themselves because they feel underqualified. In the end an honors college from a non-target will never make your resume equal to the guy from Wharton even if hes studying History and you graduated with an honors degree from so and so state university in econ or business.
I could be wrong and undervaluing these non-target credentialing mechanisms (which is why I asked the question on WSO) but ultimately I'm not sure an honors college will ever make a significant difference in a non-target getting their foot in the door. Anecdotally it seems like there is a distribution of outcomes for non-targets which takes into account luck and skill in which some grads end up doing better or as well as the average target-school grad while most do worse or significantly worse. Thats my 2-cents at least.
the rest makes sense and was my line of thinking to, but are there any examples of this? None come to mind that I'm aware of.
My Honors College in school was very focused on getting Rhodes, Truman, and Fulbright scholars. I was admitted to the Honors College sophomore year. They also had a fund for studying abroad in a country of interest. My country of interest at the time was China and I submitted a Fulbright application to study "Underemployment in China" and the Honors College paid for the whole trip including airfare, food, and tuition. I only had to pay for beer. The trip was the summer before the Fulbright to gain culture and language experience to strengthen my Fulbright application the following year.
I was accepted by the US Fulbright committee, but China denied my Fulbright terms. Most Fulbright scholars study arts and culture, but my request was unconventional and apparently the Chinese didn't want me meddling around with their Economic systems.
The Honors College also let me create courses, including 1:1 courses with the teacher if approved. I designed much of my curriculum around an International Business Studies major. If I weren't in the Honors College, I would not have been able to create these courses and also it was nice they paid for my trip to China.
But, overall the Honors College I attended didn't have much of an impact on my resume for recruiting. I received a gold star on my diploma. The benefits for me were mostly during college.
Also, this is what is printed on my transcript for those looking at my transcript (Grad schools, etc). It's on the top left of the official transcript. Pretty badass I might say:
"John Smith has completed the Certificate Track of the XXX University Honors Program, taking at least 18 semester hours of Honors courses, designed to stimulate as well as challenge the best students at our institution. The Honors Program is a highly selective course of study for exceptionally capable and well-prepared students. Only 2% of the senior class complete the program annually. In every Honors course, students are required to meet individually with their professor for a substantive weekly conference which contributes toward the goals of the class, and are challenged to explore the subject matter of their courses in more depth than in non-honors classes."
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