Did you ever use what you learned after school? I'm having trouble trying to care in school. Seems like I'll learn a lot on the job and nothing from my degree will be of any importance after graduation? Caveat is I think I'm learning valuable things in my extracurriculars and understand GPA is important.
| +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 |
Career Resources
Get instant access to lessons taught by experienced private equity pros and bulge bracket investment bankers including financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, Comps and Excel Modeling.
Yes. Point of learning is to do
I went to school for mechanical engineering and now work in finance. Therefore, I should never use my degree. However, it's constantly applicable in understanding the operations of companies and requirements in building.
For finance majors, I see my friends use basic bond math and discounting cash flows. Simple, but you need to learn it somewhere. Also, writing papers in school is useful in learning to structure thoughts and ideas for pitches at work.
You’re not going to use everything you learned in school, but there’s more applicable than you think.
so would you recommend taking diverse classes? I've been trying to take engineering comp science biology and things I'm interested in
I'd say determine what your goal is and take the classes en route to that goal. Everyone’s best choice is different.
I use it to an extent, but what I have learned on the job is far more valuable and relevant.
IMO almost all the value of a business degree (this includes finance) doesn’t come from the coursework but from things such as alumni networking, professional development seminars, OCR, and the various business/finance organizations you can join for extracurriculars. Only a handful of roles I ever applied to asked for a transcript pre-offer.
Have literally never used a single thing I learnt in my degree (and have thankfully forgotten most of it). But I was a STEM major and went into finance so that’s probably why.
Engineering? I think high school physics is very useful in daily life. It helps me avoid wetting my feet when I walk in heavy rain.
.
I use my foreign language minor more than my major
this. helpful picking up latinas at the bar
claro que si
A degree for the vast majority of white collar workers is just a right of passage (access to a network, experiencing independent living, access to career paths, personal challenge, extracurricular opportunities etc), most people don’t end up using their degree unless they’re in a licensed field or are an academic / teacher.
Yes. I studied math. Advanced undergraduate level math or not-so-advanced graduate level math teaches you to think very abstractly about problems and gives you the ability to "model the world" using certain assumptions and hypotheses. On the other hand, the same old modeling caveat applies: garbage in, garbage out. Trying not to be that garbage math student.
My co-workers studied physics, med, business, economics (double majored in econ), mechanical engineering, art history, computer science and all others. Sometimes people don't understand what "real logical thinking is" since there are basically classes as a math major that teaches you how to think logically. A lot of people don't understand this so they say hey this is not logical. Ironically, the reverse is usually true.
The few people that I know are good logical thinkers tend to be math, physics and computer science majors. The worst tend to be arrogant finance majors.
I'm not saying "finance majors", but arrogant finance majors. Sad thing is a lot of finance people are arrogant. I guess I am pretty arrogant too sometimes. Hope I could be aware of that.
Absolutely. I did a Finance degree with a heavy focus on private equity. That gives me the ability to understand multiple sides of a deal and what sponsors like to see. Also, it gave me a great appreciation for living the good life :D
As a finance student, I would say that extracurriculars are the place where you learn most of your knowledge while your professors supplement that knowledge with their expertise and experience. Definitely don’t discount the value of your degree as long as you have really good professors, who are able to offer you even a little tiny tidbit of knowledge that you prob would have never known if you just studied by yourself. And that tidbit could prob deepen your understanding of the field into a more holistic manner.
Of course, the purpose of the degree isn’t to make someone an expert, but rather build a solid foundation for a student to pursue expertise within the field they want. Therefore, the ultimate learning does come straight from the job or in grad school, but you won’t learn as much as you could if you didn’t build a solid foundation straight out of college.
I’m also an engineering major and focused a lot of my final year on learning CS skills. I’ve actually found the knowledge I learned in that last year around coding and learning how to organize a project actually fairly useful since a lot of my current work is fairly quantitative. Also being able to automate much of my workflow has been super useful so that I can focus on the parts of the job that require “thinking” (doing analyses of companies, writing papers, etc.).
I’d also say most of my finance knowledge came from work on the job and extracurricular activities such as the investing club I was a part of. But in general, my degree showed me how I should think about large problems and break things down into smaller more manageable parts. Also took Logic courses and proof-based math, which helps with logical thinking as Analyst 1 in IB - Cov above mentioned: I’m curious how those type of courses helped you. Of the courses I took in college, I honestly find my proof-based math courses (Linear Algebra and Probability) and Physics (Mech., E&M, Optics/Fields & Waves) courses among the least applicable, but some of the best at teaching me how to think.
Quas quae rerum laboriosam voluptatem sit quibusdam blanditiis. Aut quia consequatur voluptatem voluptas occaecati esse. Tempora ut eveniet sint rerum. Non alias itaque provident pariatur maiores magnam doloremque. Necessitatibus reiciendis sapiente eos tenetur atque magnam. Dolorem nobis sequi neque dolores. Placeat odio possimus rem magnam commodi aut repellat totam.
Est provident et qui aut quis. In nostrum quia qui voluptate. Sed id non unde dolorem iusto. Ut hic voluptates autem dolorem voluptates. Ea animi sit eligendi distinctio vero. Sunt minima cum id eveniet quis.
Velit vitae quasi dolore repellendus rem. Quod eum debitis est velit. Omnis magnam quidem eligendi quo sit sequi. Voluptatum necessitatibus et iusto repellendus quaerat.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...