Small Liberal Arts College Student Looking To Hit Investment Banking And Curious About Paths To Other Industries
Hello WSO,
Full Disclosure: This is a post by a confused undergrad.
I am finishing my third year at a small liberal arts college in Massachusetts called Hampshire College (not anything approaching a target school). I have studied three things at Hamp: Molecular Neuroscience, Finance, and Music Composition. My school has no first year requirements for classes allowing students to specialize and take any course they want and there is a business school near by that I may take courses at. The business school I can visit is UMASS Amherst's Isenberg. I take mainly upper level classes like corporate finance and Financial Modeling and find them to be very easy. Mainly because I looked into investments so much on my own free will so I knew at least half of the material already. They are also - as undergraduate courses - very basic.
I have always been interested in investing but considered medical school to be the route I wanted to go down. Yeah, I am one of those. I am beyond considering leaving the MD path to hopefully go into investments and pursue an MBA to work in private equity or consulting. Life is too short for medical school I now feel. Not to mention that a terrifyingly small fraction of doctors say anything except "don't do it." I thought that I could get an MD and then work on wall street as an equity researcher in biotech but after meeting with some of these guys, they have made it clear that getting an MD to work on wall street is an awful idea and that most of the people who work in this area just wanted to leave medicine. WOOPS.
Basically where I am at is this: I have one year left where I can take a ton of upper level mathematics and finance courses to make myself appealing to consultants, ibankers, etc. I am also working on a neuroeconomics project looking at options pricing and decision making at the suggestion of an ex-wall street guru who thinks projects are going to be a good guiding force into getting an analyst/ associate position. I am working with said ex-guru on the project. All of the finance professors who have seen my CV think it looks good (hirable) with a high percentage of them saying outright if they saw a class on asset pricing and risk analysis that I would be a no brainer. I have been successful in science, interning at Columbia University at a good lab that I will return to this summer for my thesis project.
TLDR: I have attached my CV. I am a science student with some finance background trying to use their last year in college to take the courses necessary to get into consulting, investment banking, or an MBA. Please someone give me any guidance.
Thanks,
CS.
If you went to say, Amherst, Williams, Wesleyan, I'd say "yea, go for it." But since you don't go to a target school, rationally or unrationally, banks and consulting firms are not going to even look at you unless you have amazing referrals (ie connections). The rational logic is that if the institution does well, it was not luck, and if it screws up, the who else could have done better. The irrational logic is that by seemingly judging the name of your school alone, they're judging you on achievements done long ago. Also, because its a field which requires MUCH more intelligence to get than to do successfully, the whole school thing is just a social dynamics thing (be around people like yourself).
Get an MSF. If you can pull a 700+ on that test, you should be good for Princeton or MITs program and you'll then be assured to be hired.
Funny story, Hampshire students can take classes at Amherst and the economics professor there refuses five college students. There is also a legend that once a Hampshire student took so many Amherst classes that Amherst had to limit the amount of courses that off campus students can take there down to two a semester because Amherst technically owed them a diploma.
Anyway I would PM if I had the bananas but I have considered that I will need to get an MBA or a Masters in Financial Engineering or something. I have never heard of an MSF, are you talking about getting 700+ on the GMAT? You're saying I should be good because of my CV?
I will never be averse to an extra year or two of school to get into this. I know that i am "smart" but cracking any of these industries seems to be so dependent on much more than that.
Who the fuck told you that?
I'm sorry, who told me what?
This makes zero sense. The reason you are limited to two classes off campus is to attempt to stop kids from taking a ton of ridiculous classes at UMass like "Intro to Nutrition", where you can be comatose and still get an A.
Hah, I wish. Amherst is actually the only school with a cap. I have taken more than two off sites courses in one semester before, it's no problem on Hamps end. I took a screenshot of the registration policy but can't upload it in my comment I don't think.
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