I will be attending ND as a finance major in the fall and I want to know what areas of study would be good to focus on to pursue a career in finance. If double majoring is not much of a boost, then I think I'm going to just minor in PPE (Philosophy, Politics, Econ) and fill my schedule with balanced electives. If a second major looks good, my favorites are ACMS (Applied Comp Math & Stat), Economics, History, Psychology. Any advice helps!
| +142 | Is my life over after not getting GS? | 33 | 2h | |
| +73 | Best IB group on the Street | 35 | 8h | |
| +66 | Thoughts and tips on how to speak like an investment banker. | 25 | 1d | |
| +58 | BIG FOUR ARE PARADISE | 15 | 1d | |
| +49 | Tell me one good reason why Jefferies isn’t going to be a top bank in the next 5 years | 23 | 20h | |
| +38 | UBS Outlook | 28 | 2d | |
| +35 | How to deal with egotistical team? | 6 | 4d | |
| +26 | Very ridiculous interview feedback | 13 | 11h | |
| +26 | Got RBC offer but I have cold feet accepting. | 34 | 14h | |
| +26 | Why Is It Called Investment Banking? | 8 | 7h |
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.
The most important thing, more important than your major even, is your GPA. You want to keep it as high as possible. If you feel you can keep your GPA up with 2 majors, go for it if you want. If you don’t think you can, it’s not worth the risk. Stick with the 1 if that’s the case. If you do decide to double major, do it in what you’re interested. If you don’t have a preference and you’re looking for something particularly useful for IB, do Accounting. Econ isn’t really that practical for the job but if you are interested in it then take it, or whatever other major you want. But, the GPA comes first. Don’t kill yourself for no reason. It’s not worth it if you can’t handle it, and you’ll be overwhelmed.
A second major looks good, but for IB recruiting it's not a huge boost. GPA is king. The ACMS major is impressive but will almost certainly give you a lower GPA than finance alone. History/Econ/Psych are fine but not necessarily value adds for recruiting
I would stick with one major and spend the extra effort on GPA, extracurriculars, and networking
Go full masochist and choose CS as the 2nd major, kill it and get a 3.7+, and then report back here and rub it in our faces.
Was going to say this.
If I could re-do UG I would love to do something like Econ / Math, Econ / CS, Finance / CS, Finance / Math, and some schools even have computational finance / computational econ which is a blend of Econ / Fin. with math and cs. All super interesting and I would pick any of those over what I did which was Fin / Econ.
It's stupid hard and not worth it if it tanks your GPA but if you can pull it off you look like a God. My buddy went to Harvard and now works at a tier 1 trading firm doing software engineering after interning at Google. That CS addition is extra nice
Yeah I agree you'd need to be at least a little technically inclined / interested in CS.
The problem I came across and why I ultimately decided against it was that even though I was interested in CS it was not from a "pure CS" perspective. I liked having the ability and comfort with programming languages to accomplish the tasks I WANTED.
Wanting to learn CS only from the perspective of its application to finance would be akin to being an engineer and being forced to take every marketing / mgmt / MIS / finance / accounting class just to get exposure to some business. Just a bit too much effort.
What did you end up doing? I'm a freshman in a similar situation where I have enough credits to do a dual with finance in something like CS, Math, Data Science, but it would be a lot of extra effort and time, that even if doesn't cause my GPA to drop, will certainly take away time that I could spend on the recruitment process for IB. I'm having an early life crisis trying to figure out what I should choose.
Communication or philosophy. Plenty bankers can't write worth a damn.
Reiciendis veritatis itaque velit est. Ex omnis aliquid ducimus cumque deleniti autem. Et qui harum nemo soluta beatae nesciunt ut. Et facilis blanditiis animi ad. Voluptatem voluptatem aut nobis eaque omnis est cupiditate.
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...