Most likely will not get a bachelors from a target school is there still hope?
I would first like to preface this by saying if you take the time to read this and can give any advice, thank you very much. I was a pretty bad student in high school for various reasons, I just did not have my life in order. I am now 20 years old and starting up community college. Since I was a kid I was OBSSESED WITH INVESTING & FINANCE. I can talk all day about various fixed income assets, US equity markets, the US macro economy, I even learned how to do a DCF model my senior year of high school all by myself without being told by anyone I went out and did it. I am very much interested in finance however my High school GPA was a 3.0 exact. I reside in the Chicago land area and I'm worried that I won't be able to transfer after Community college into a school like Northwestern or UChicago which to my knowledge are the only target schools. I could easily make it into UIC however I'm not sure how well the school is when it comes to graduates getting a job in IB, PE, VC, HF, ETC. My other option is UIUC however that would most likely be online since its about a 4 hour move. This online only means that I won't be able to be too involved in organizations on campus or clubs. Secondly I am also worried I will be transferring into what would be my junior year at any school making it harder from the information I've gathered to get internships. If anyone has any experience being in a situation like this or has an idea on what the ideal route to take would be please leave your comments. Thank you and have a good day.
Your first mistake was engaging in "finance" as a high school extracurricular. No prestigious university---except maybe Wharton---appreciates students who anything preprofessional, let alone something with as tarnished a cultural image as investment banking/Wall Street.
Just as an FYI to prospective high school students on here: top schools want interesting students who will enrich the campus's intellectual culture; they want artists, mathematicians, researchers, musicians, athletes, and just interesting students in general who bring new, colorful perspectives to age-old problems. An investment banking hardo couldn't be farther from the desired student. In general, ECs for Ivies/Ivy+ work like this:
Area A: Academic olympiads (AIME/USACO/USNCO/USAPhO/USABO)
Area B: Any kind of research with a professor at a university
Area C: Music
Area D: Sports
Area E: Arts/humanities (creative writing, art, drama, etc.)
Area F: Media/social justice (journalism, political activism)
Excellence/leadership in at least one area + additional involvement in at least two others, along with 3.95+ UW GPA/1550 SAT/35 ACT, will guarantee even ORM applicants to at least one T10.
I wouldn't bucket things to do in high school like that (there are so much more) but yea you're right, the vast majority of pre professional activities people do in high school either do nothing or hurt them in the college admissions process. There are good financy opportunities though such as supporting community financial empowerment/wealth building and more.
Maybe 5 years ago, I saw this person with several national awards denied everywhere but their state school full ride (good but not a T10).
First order of business is to do well academically in community college and get involved in anything extracurricular to a deep level. Student government, a nonprofit, whatever. You need to make yourself the ideal transfer candidate. Do not at all focus on finance for extracurriculars; take free online finance courses, read about it, look for business internships, but for god's sake don't do anything that would make you seem like a finance hardo in a transfer app.
Second, why are you only looking at schools in your immediate area? Room and board isn't cheap, but financial aid exists and you shouldn't immediately cross out the option of going to college relatively far away if you don't have a very good reason for being unable to. Plenty of schools these days have cost calculators on their financial aid pages that give you a rough idea of how much aid you'll get. Just in Minnesota I can think of solid small schools like Colby College, Carleton, and Macalester. Those are just the LACs that come to mind; there are plenty of good universities your region. Going to a target school is not the end-all-be-all of finance recruiting. Semitargets frequently send people to Wall Street. Grinders at nontargets often get great finance roles--not always at a bulge bracket, but still at prominent middle market firms like Raymond James, RBC, etc.
Also unless you absolutely excel in community college and then at the school you transfer to, recognize that the odds are pretty much stacked against you for IB, PE, and VC. For now forget HFs. You need to broaden your search to wealth management and Big 4 auditing, transaction advisory services, valuation, etc.
Just focus on your grades and it will all pan out. One of my buddies in Nevada went to Community for 2 years and ended up with a 4.0 overall; now he’s at Umich ross and has some BB roles lined up after he graduates.
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