Ended up picking my state school over NYU-Stern, now what?

So a few months ago I came here to ask if it was worth taking out 150k in loans to go to Stern rather than my state school, University of Maryland (i'm in the business school though). I will graduate from UMD debt free and my parents were willing to give me about 25k cash from the difference they saved.

Now that I am here what should I do to be most readily prepared for the industry, I hope to go into a hedge fund but I presume that an IB 2 and out path is more likely?

Thanks for any advice!

 

Transfer If you can. Life will be a lot easier even with the debt.

 

There's no way if you transfer into a t25 or w/e (which you clearly can if you got into Stern) they're going to make you pay the sticker price. Just apply everywhere after your first year at UMD and see what stick. Look into the private target schools because they give out a ton of financial aid where as the state-schools are going to just shaft you with OOS tuition. 

 

resume?

linkedin?

need high gpa (at least 3.6...likely 3.6+ and relevant internships)

too bad UofMD is not on handshake - but look through its portal

network with recent and older alumni and look through family and friends from life.  if you went to prep school they often have job fairs and alumni networks.

your freshman internship could be anything - acctg, wealth mgmt, gen business for a small firm.  by sophomore summer you need to have something meaningful like coverage, asset mgmt, ibanking (could be public finance or back office or wealth mgmt) etc.

- it's a clubby world so get use to talking to folks and asking very directly for favors.

 
Most Helpful

I made this exact decision (although different schools) and went to a mid western school to play sports. Graduated with 0 debt, ~$30k in my bank acct from internships, got laid regularly, partied with attractive girls (instead of weird finance hardos at NYU) like every weekend just began working in NYC BB. I am not the only one from my school who enter NYC IB
 

In reality, this is not a hard process. UMD has alumni across the street - one is an analyst at my bank and he will gladly help an kid from his school. 
 

The last thing you want to do is to waste away the next 4 years of your life by loading up on 150k of debt to go to a school that’s incredibly competitive and everybody is sharp-elbowed.  These are the best 4 years of your life. Go somewhere you think you will be happy, you can easily place from almost any school in the country into NYC BB
 

You might not have OCR, but I have found my processes at various banks to be much much much easier (in terms of quality of competition) than those with OCR (one phone school at alumni, one first round, superday, offer).

 

For the rest of your life, you're going to be able to tell people one of two things: You went to (insert target school), or you could have gone to (insert target school). No one gives a shit about the second one. Think about that.

 

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