How to break into Finance from Pre-Med

Guys I am a pre-med student, who spent most of his time volunteering at hospitals and doing research. However my major is Economics.

I am graduating with a Bachelors in Economics this December 2010.

I have no finance internships under my belt.

I dont care really what type of job I really get, meaning even if its back office or middle office Im find with that.

However with no experience I see my resume is weak in experience in comparison to others.

I have a few questions.

BTW I go to Queens College City University of New York (CUNY)
Its an extremely non target school

My Major gpa is 3.37

  1. Would getting a MSF, be the right move for me at this point?
  2. Since I am graduating is getting internships out of the question all entirely?
  3. What can I do to get my foot in the door without experience so I can get some experience?
 

Where would you rank your school? That would significantly affect your immediate job prospects. Being pre-med shows recruiters you can work hard and if you have a good reason you want to switch to finance, you might have a pretty solid story. Why do you not care whether you're in the middle-office or back-office? That tremendously affects the nature of your work and I think you might need to spend some more time figuring out what you want to do. Finance is a very broad field and there are plenty of areas you probably aren't as interested in as you think.

 
Best Response

Your stats seem a little low to get into a good MSF (Vandy, BC, Villanova..) and a couple years of work experience could help. My advice would be look at back-office positions, possible in custody at a place like BNY Mellon, Citco, State Street.. Unglamorous but not too hard to get into and still in finance. If you can bang out a great GMAT score and maybe pass L1 of your CFA, that could probably convince solid MSF programs to give you a shot (maybe Anthony could way in on this). I don't think you would have a good chance of getting into European MSF programs. You're GPA is below their cutoffs and they most likely have never heard of CUNY (they just might know Gekko went to CCNY). Anyhow, best of luck, I'm sure other people can chime in.

 

So my plan of getting a MSF to get a chance at the front office probably seems like the best bet right?

Now I have to focus on getting into a good MSF program.

I am still in undergrad, should I delay my graduation for another semester and load up on more business classes to bring my gpa up?

Finance classes are a breeze in comparison to organic chemsitry and physics classes, so i know i can bang out A's

What would be custody?

What other back office positions should I be looking to apply for?

 

If you think you can bring your GPA up and can cough up the extra money, it might be worth graduating in June. Plus it buys you some time to find a job. Custody is basically outsourced operations that provide financial statements to outside auditors of buyside funds. It's like ops with less "pressure" I guess you could say. You could be looking at anything operations or better would be financial analyst at an f1000, or commercial banking, although your GPA might be on the low side.

 

What other positions could I try and apply to that would be easy to get with my credentials besides operations.

I was thinking about staying for another year, even though I dont want.

Do i have to be enrolled in college to apply for internships? Also does it matter if I am a junior or senior when applying to internships.

If I stay for another year it will be my 6th year in college because Pre-med took a damn long time to do. So I dont know what my status would be if they would even let me apply to internships

 

Yes, I would be more than willing to work for free, that is not a problem at all, I am really hungry for it and I want to enter this field.

I know that there is a giant list of boutique firms in the investment section of the forums. Ive gone to a couple of the websites and they usually have a career section.

However they either have an email address or telephone to contact the person in charge of the hiring, or they list a couple of positions none of which are interns.

I was wondering when i send my resume to these companies should I tell them that I am simply looking for an unpaid internship with them and nothing more?

Should I also cold call the boutique firms and suggest to them the idea of taking on an intern.

If you guys could recommend some boutique firms that you know or think I might have a chance of getting an internship, please let me know.

Thank you guys, you have been so helpful

 

Also had another question to ask.

Getting an unpaid internship, do they have to give me college credit for it?

Would it be possible to graduate, and have a unpaid internship because I know that the law doesn't allow for internships that are unpaid and dont give college credit.

Could I get an internship that gives college credit and have graduated already and still satisfy everything?

Also I might have asked this before but how do I get an internship at a Boutique firm without cold calling.

 

Don't sell out!!! It is clear that you have talent. Honestly, I would have gone the pre-med path. I dreamed of becoming a surgeon and was committed to the point that I researched specific procedures and watched them on youtube. I loved anatomy and physiology, but couldn't get past college Chemistry which changed the trajectory of my career. If you can handle the tougher STEM courses, I'd advise you to stick with what you're doing and do it well.

 

Even later still, but stick with the pre-med. I would have done it if I could stomach all of the gross stuff, but I can't. I happen to find fulfillment in what I do now, but I think that was through sheer dumb luck. Also, trading crypto's has very little to do with any high finance gig that will be around in 10 years when all traders are replaced with AI. Success is found at the intersection of talent and passion.

 

Math and Econ double major here. My university is in the same tier same Tulane, or maybe a little bit better. My CGPA is only 3.45. I've talked to some people in the industry: banks do look at your major(s) to set lines for the cutoff. Major GPA 3.7 is fine, just write your major GPA on your resume.

Persistency is Key
 

I am in my schools investment banking club. I'm also President of the Psychology club, vice president of another, Treasurer. I am trying hard to network through LinkedIn and the club was supportive but I was dinged last year from everything I applied to. Most didn't even send me a rejection just silence.

 

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