FT offer but am having second thoughts. Can anyone with experience chime in?
Hey guys, I'm a rising senior who is finishing up his SA stint at a BB. All of my reviews have been good and my associate told me that I'd have an exit interview next week where they'd give me a FT offer. I find finance interesting, I get along with my group, and love the pay. However, the one thing I noticed was crazy hours. People like to talk about it but it's completely different when you're actually doing those hours.
Now, I'm a 21 y/o college student. I don't have any commitments, but from seeing everyone else (especially the associates who have families), it seems really straining.
At college, I'm studying biochemistry and also applied to dental school this year. I have a good gpa, a good DAT score (MCAT for dental school), good dental ECs, and applied to 18 schools. So I'm bound to get into 1 dental school.
I haven't told anyone in my group yet, but have talked to them about other careers and most of the said that if they could do it over again, they'd go into medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, etc.
As for dentistry, I interned at a dental practice and could see myself doing it in the future. I have pretty good attention to detail and hand dexterity. I think I'd be good at the business aspect of it too.
For you guys with experience in the field, what would you guys do? I go to a semi-target, so I worked my ass off to get this internship, but am having second thoughts. I don't want all of that work to go to waste, but don't know if I'd regret going into finance.
I want the wife, kids, dog, house with a red door and picket fence, but I also want to live in a nice area and take trips to europe on a whim without worrying about money. I guess you can't have both though.
grass is always greener no matter which profession you pick. i could see some finance guys saying they wish they had done medicine because it's likely more fulfilling and still pays well. that said, i think you're still going to work long hours at both professions early in your career. the difference being that once you're a dentist you're probably starting your own practice and working to get clients. if you're more entrepreneurial in nature, that might be the way to go.
I have no idea about the life and pay of dentistry but you are correct on the hours in IB and most fields of finance that you'd exit into from IB. But if you stick it out you'll be making far more than as a dentist (unless dentist make much more than I think). I'd weigh how important making money is in your life, the work and lifestyle of IB, and if you'd like to be a dentist for the rest of your life. The thing about IB is that after your two year stint if you don't like it there are lots of options, and not just finance related jobs, that you can take. I'd assume after dentistry school your only option is to be a dentist. Forever. And have a decent amount of school debt piled up.
Can you defer dentistry school for two years? Work in IB and if you don't like it or other exit opps and figure out that dentistry is truly your calling just go when you're done? And although it's not the nicest thing to do, you can accept the IB offer and renege if you decide that you want to be a dentist whenever you have to start sending in school deposits. You'd be burning a bridge but you're never going back to finance anyway.
I'm a more senior guy in finance and I don't know anyone who would rather have gone into medicine. I was just having a conversation last weekend with a good friend who's a retired hedge fund manager (at 40) who had a strong science background and ran a book that invested in healthcare so he actually had some M.D.'s that he'd worked with and he, and I, thought medicine was an awful career. Dentistry's different but being a doctor means a decade+ of school, residencies, etc before you make any money and even then the pay's just not that great and you're stuck in the insurance industry's bastardization of medicine.
I haven't commented on WSO in a while, but I guess this is as good a time as ever.
If the following statement is really true, "I want the wife, kids, dog, house with a red door and picket fence, but I also want to live in a nice area and take trips to europe on a whim without worrying about money", accept your i-banking offer (if not at a respectable bank, quietly shop it around for a better one).
Unless you are 99.9% certain (because no one is ever 100.0%) you want to be in medicine, law or whatever else non-finance related, 2-years of banking is by far one of the best jobs out of college given the training, experience and network you will receive as well as the breadth of options the job will provide afterwards. You don't know what you want yet so make sure you put yourself in a position to have numerous viable options.
Honestly I'm not sure if you're serious because I have a hard time believing someone is actively interested in both finance and dentistry. I don't know much about being a dentist, but people who are going into finance not purely for the money are usually the types who thrive on the fast-paced / competitive atmosphere and/or have a real passion for some area of finance [you don't find many people out of undergrad who are passionate about banking, but you do find some who really know they ultimately want to be public market investors, etc].
I don't see someone who loves a fast-paced, competitive environment and loves finance wanting to effectively go to school until he's 30 and then work at a dentist office. Obviously financially it's a poor decision versus a career in finance, but moreover I think the psychology of the person who will succeed in the two fields is completely different. So I think none of us can give you real advice, it more comes down to you knowing what type of person you are.
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