Hi, I am currently a sophomore at a target undergrad business school. I was planning on majoring in finance and computer science with a minor in math, with the goal of going into BB s&t or maybe even IBD. However, I was speaking with my accounting professor and he recommended doing accounting, working at big 4 for a few years, then leaving to get an MBA and going to the banks after that. Thoughts on this?
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Just to play devil's advocate, why not do finance and skip the 5-7 years it will take you to do Big 4 and then get an MBA?
Working at a Big 4 is just awful
your accounting professor wants you to be an accountant- surprise, surprise
he gave you bad advice.
SECfinance- that is just something that my accounting professor recommended. He said if I did that I 'd be more likely to be recruited by the top banks/hedge funds. I just want to get peoples' opinion on it.
You go to a target. There's no need for you to spend 2-5 years in Big 4 when banking jobs are available out of school for you. Doing Big 4 will set you back 2-4 years (plus B-school) when if finance is what you want to do you can do it out of undergrad.
if finance is what you want to do then pursue it all the way. worse case scenario accounting will still be there.
As an accountant (surprise) and someone who thinks accounting gets a bad wrap on this board, I would disagree with your professor. For most professions outside of IB I would argue that accounting may be better than finance. For IB I'd even argue that some of the advanced accounting can give you a leg up. However, if you are set on IB and at a target there is no reason not to major in Finance.
If your school permits the accounting/finance double major I think that would be ideal, but if the choice is simply accounting or finance I'd recommend finance.
I doubled in Accounting and Finance; I concur with the others - Accounting profs generally give bad advice. They don't mean to, but they are academics, not gun slingers. If you want to work in Finance, get the Finance degree, leverage your target name brand, and either double in Accounting, or just take a few Accounting classes. Intermediate I and II covers most of the material that you'd be concerned with in banking. You could skip out on cost, tax, audit, not-for-profit, etc. Maybe take an advanced class after Intermediate that gets into consolidations, mergers, etc.
I went Big 4 -> MBA -> BB IBD. While having accounting knowledge was helpful, it's definitely overkill to work in the Big 4 before working for a bank.
Not to hijack this guy's thread, but I'm in a similar situation and I suspect he's wondering the same thing. How are Big 4 MBA placements? Is lower M7 realistic with solid GMAT/GPA and working Big 4? Does Tax/Audit matter?
^i would love to know this as well
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