Advice for a med student looking for a second degree in finance?

Hi!

Since my background is quite different compared to most here, I'll go more in-depth: I study medicine at the University of Helsinki (Finland's top medical university). I like medicine, but my ideal career path would integrate finance and medicine some way or another. Don't know how, but my current plan is to graduate from med school (spring 2022) and start studying finance (I've considered MBA and MFin) sometime after that. Since my background is non-conventional, I have a question which I do not have a certain answer for and I hope that you can help me with that! 

My current GPA is nothing to celebrate about (3/5), but I'll explain the Finnish med school system: The final GPA/class ranking does not affect employment in medicine (no employer of mine has ever asked my GPA and probably never will, all Finnish med schools are very hard to get in to and that's enough for employers in medicine), it is also not mentioned in the graduation diploma. Now I'm not trying to make excuses for my poor academic results, I'm not the brightest star in my year class. However, here are some other merits to consider: I study in the best medical school in Finland, my matriculation examination (high school finals in Finland) has 3 highest grades (laudatur) and 3 second-highest grades (eximia cum laude approbatur), I'm very active in extracurricular activities (I don't want to list them here, since Finland is so small country, I would instantly give out my identity) which include quite good financial posts and leadership positions, and my English is sufficient enough for an English degree. Actually, one concrete example I can give out to you is that my background was interesting enough for McKinsey to get me all the way to final-round interviews, but unfortunately I didn't make it past that. What a shame, summer or two at McK would have been a quite nice boost for a financial career.

Question: What Universities I should/could target? I don't want to mock Finland too much, but Finnish financial degrees just don't open doors to bigger markets. Also, Finland is a very remote country, as far as financial markets are concerned. Because of these reasons, I would like to study business/finance abroad, but what would you suggest for a guy like me? Would I have any chance for higher tier European/UK business schools? Is US completely out of the question? What about Oxbridge/Bocconi etc? What I mostly want to know is, what tier or level of schools I could be eyeballing with my background. Since my graduation isn't anytime soon and most financial degrees require many years of working experience, I'm in no hurry.

Quite a rambling! Hopefully there's something to go on, it would also be nice to hear if there are other people working in finance who also have a medical background. I do believe I'm quite an odd fish around here.

 
 
Most Helpful

Depends where you want to work. In the US? ---> US schools as they use OCR over there

London? -----> UK targets/strong EU targets

For the UK/London: You can either go get another undergraduate degree at a UK target school in whatever field you want (Oxbridge, UCL, LSE, Imperial and Warwick/Durham). This would, obviously, be very expensive. Alternatively you could attempt to get an MFin/ MSc in A&F from a postgrad target: Oxford, LSE, LBS are the main ones with Warwick, Imperial and Cambridge being semi-targets at the post grad level for mfins. To get accepted onto these will require a 3.5 GPA (weighted on a 4 GPA i think so idk for u) and a pretty good GMAT/GRE performance. The idea is you get onto a good program and apply to internships/off cycles that can convert into a full time offer.

MBA in the UK/USA let you skip the analyst years but in the UK they're not too popular. Also to do an MBA you need proper work experience.

 

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