Non-Target: Extra Semester or MSF?

Hey everyone, I'm going into my third year of college at a non-target university in the midwest. I'm looking for a bit of advice on what path I should take to eventually get into Equity Research or Asset Management.

Background:

I started college in a completely unrelated major, and after my first year, I realized I didn't like it and decided to switch to our school's business college. In the first semester of my Sophomore year I wasn't sure which major within the college I wanted to do, but around January I finally settled on Finance.

I had no idea what to do for an internship and was applying to anything and everything titled 'Finance Intern' on the LinkedIn job board (without any luck, obviously). It wasn't until quarantine started that I started doing some research on what I wanted to do, and the work it would take to get there. I started reading this sub, as well as WSO and realized that I hadn't been doing anything I should have been doing previously to get into more prestigious roles like ER or AM.

I have some solid leadership roles in clubs on campus and have a 3.8 GPA, so internships and networking are the two things I need to work on most.

So, I'm now entering my Junior year without any internships under my belt and the way I see it, I have two options that would help propel me into ER/AM and I just need some advice on which might be the better route.

Option 1:

I can add a major in Accounting to extend my time here by one semester, thereby adding an extra summer for some internship experience. This would allow me more time to network with alumni from my school and hopefully leverage a solid 'sophomore' internship into a good junior year internship.

Option 2:

I can continue majoring in only finance, and apply for some of the top MSF programs, and get access to more alumni and recruiting resources. I did some research on LinkedIn and found there were ~60 alumni from my undergrad school across 10 of the bigger firms in ER and AM, whereas a school such as Vanderbilt had ~350. This would make it much easier to make valuable connections in the industry.

Any and all advice is appreciated!

 

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