Based on what I have read on this forum the best majors for breaking into IB (non-finance/business) are engineering/hard STEM. How hard is it for one to break in with a humanities degree, say history? Childhood Studies? Gender Studies? How often do you see colleagues with humanities major?
| +40 | Wharton Huntsman Program vs Yale vs Dartmouth | 40 | 13h | |
| +32 | Umich Ross vs Rice vs Notre Dame Mendoza | 17 | 13h | |
| St Andrews vs LSE vs Middlebury | 18 | 1h | ||
| +26 | Target School Kids Stop Complaining | 6 | 14h | |
| +24 | Oxbridge or Top 15 US School. | 7 | 4h | |
| +23 | Imperial College Finance Masters' | 5 | 23h | |
| +22 | UCL Vs Warwick Vs Umass Amherst Vs UW Madison Vs UofT for undergrad | 21 | 14h | |
| +20 | LSE BSc Economics vs Cambridge BA Economics | 7 | 6h | |
| +17 | Why is Boston College CSOM praised so much here? | 10 | 4d | |
| +17 | UK/EU MSc's in Finance | 7 | 6h |
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As long as you go to a good school they really don’t care about your major as long as you can articulate a reason why IB. there are many philosophy majors and i even met a Russian literature major who work at BBs.
It definitely works out if, say, you major in History at Harvard and land a gig with a BB. But as someone who majors in Art History, I wanna warn you that you do need to put in extra time developing your commercial awareness, not to mention the technical questions.
While a finance degree won't set you up as the perfect candidate going into an interview, the exposures you had in your finance classes can be leveraged and will only help you throughout the process.
I guess another issue is the mentality. There are a good bunch of hardos in investment banking whose sole purpose of coming to college is to break into the industry. Are you mentally prepared to compete with those kids when you plan to study something you are passionate about for four years? It could be a great edge that you are something different, but at the end of the day, it won't provide much value add for the company.
At the end of the day, it's your decision to make and your life to live. Personally, I don't see the industry being a place for people who'd spend a day thinking about the meaning of life (it just won't allow you to), and I do believe it's better to develop a career-focused mentality as early as you can if you really wanna break in.
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