What finance courses to take as an undergraduate?

There are no "best courses" to take to become a money in finance.

Just take the maximum amount of credits and overnight like crazy. This will give you the best preparation for a career in banking, much more than some European history/child psychology crap.

bows

Any Psych class... if you're going into finance, you should at least try to chase box while you still have the time.

Your view on European History has enlightened me. Before reading this I viewed it as just another BS class I am required to take, but I now view it as another BS class that will make it that much easier to BS my way through an interview.

public speaking. art history.

I would add Spanish/Mandarin to that as well since we will all need to be able to speak it sooner rather than later

Midas, the one course you've forgotten to include is a course on meditation and self-reflection.

Regardless of whether you are on the Street or not, taking any class that teaches you how to meditate and reflect on yourself will put you in a better position. I know I'm always talking about reflection, but it's the truth. One of the best ways you will find yourself being able to succeed is by being able to step back and reflect, particularly if you are a trader.

I would add one or two proof based math courses.

Game theory and programming for S&T

SB'd for time-series, although I'm surprised that your Secret Scholastic Brew comprises of only 3 courses.

Gonna try and enroll in an European economic history course next semester.

I think that any courses related to psycho could be relevant. Moreover it show to everyone a different way of thinking.

Most of the classes I have taken, even within my finance major, don't really go above and beyond in terms of preparing for a real world job, i would say though any form of business communication class or sales class that really just forces you to speak in front of other people, present deals or ideas is very helpful experience that could make your more comfortable once you start working.

The best course I took in college was a no-credit seminar taught by an old alum (from the '50s) who is a retired partner at a Big 4 firm. I'll summarize it:

1. "I wanted to be a millionaire and retire before age 50."
2. "This entails: saving and investing prudently."
3. "Not did I only crush that objective many times over, but even my secretary did it on her salary by age 45."

If I could do it all over again...

1) More accounting courses. Accounting is a pain in the ass, but if you really understand it you can really pick apart a company and understand how it works.

2) Public Speaking. I had to do a lot of presentations in front of large groups in college, so this came rather naturally in the job world, but it is something that everyone should get good at if you want to succeed in this industry.

3) Negotiations. This is a big one. Closing deals, negotiating comp, etc. Negotiations is one class I definitely wish I would have taken.

4) VBA. I know a very limited amount of VBA, but I know that if I had taken a course in it, it could definitely speed up my day-to-day.

5) Excel. Take some course in excel. This was the biggest thing I was able to bring to my firm when I came on board. Especially with no formal training program, knowing the ins and out of Excel straight out of school was huge.

Gimme some bananas...

Introductory microeconomics changed my life. It was a completely new world view for me at the time, and it has truly stuck, even after 7 years. (This is really teacher/topic independent, though.)

Any class where when you fail the first exam, you tell yourself to pass the next two. Then when you fail the second one, you calculate what you need to do to pass with a D. Finally come final time, you pass ... but miss the D by a few points. Then you walk away from it a champ knowing that you did not drop because you are not a quieter. Sure, it dings your GPA - but the fact that you refuse to retake it next semester simply means you have more important matters to attend do. I learned more failing a class then I did in my 20 years on this planet. I reflected for a couple minutes (well, more like 5 days). But I got over it, and I'm on to the next few more classes before I'm done.

excel/VBA, public speaking and "negotiations" all sound very practical but not many top colleges offer courses like this unless you go to some vocational/no name school that needs to teach their students very practical stuff just to stay competitive. I've struggled with this before: why does my college offer seemingly outdated, theoretical, hard and useless classes and topics? Why does my programming class only focus on theory rather than the programming language and practical applications? I had a discussion about this with one of my MD at my internship and he claims that at school ur really learning how to learn and expanding your capacity and speed at picking up new topics. Very rarely do you learn practical skills in school that are directly applicable at the work place. Sure you can go to ITT tech and learn how to program in language ABC, but if you need to program in another language, ur fucked. If you need to learn a new skillset, you are not going to be able to compete with those kids that had a more dynamic, although less practical education. Same goes with finance, trading and banking. Any monkey/consultant from India/China can pick up a textbook and memorize how to model. But these top firms are not trying to hire modeling/ number crunching robots, but rather they are trying to hire teachable future talent with a lot of potential.

So at school, I am going to take all the classes that interest me and learn the fundamentals rather than choosing classes based on what I think is going to be useful on the job. With that said, VBA and excel skills are definitely very helpful. But you should be able to pick those things up with a few weekend courses/self study sessions

I agree with Midas in that child psychology is a good class to take, first to learn about human behavior, and secondly to meet the nice young women that will be taking the class (never thought group projects would be so much fun). In addition to this most colleges now offer leadership classes that are useful in teaching how to effectively be a boss that people might actually want to work for.

Problem with me is that i would need have done my first year in psychology if i wanted to take extra psychology classes besides my finance study. Things are different here in europe

I'm in a money and banking class now and the professor was a director of fiscal and economic affairs at the US Chamber of Commerce back in the day before he was a Cornell Professor and a top 3 blue chip picker in 07 (I think it was 07)

I took an African American Women's Literature class and learned A LOT about how to deal with conflicting views, hostile environments, etc. It didn't hurt that my prof was world renowned too but there can be value found in a lot of different fields/courses

Logic was good. (game theory was involved in it also)

Id imagine everyone these days takes an "business/info systems class" but maybe another computer networking class. I think for most college students these days you can do this w/o a class. But when I was an SA, I got high fives and thank gods for knowing how network all the printers to anyone's computer in maybe 2 minutes. Chaos would erupt when an MD would ask someone to print something to color because they just had B/W etc..After looking at an IT guys screen for 5 seconds it was so basic but so foreign to everyone else.

Public speaking is good if you dont have that famous harvard style lecture.Learning how to remove the "uhs, likes, ahs" from pauses in sentences is good, especially in interviews. Having answers and not fillers.

A sales job (obviously if you can get something finance related go for it) outside of school is very helpful. Something with numbers commonly dealing 1000s (auto, equipment,high retail etc..) helps your math, people reading skill, create a tenacity (especially if you have commission, general work learned stuff like shitty and good bosses, fellow employees etc....

more econ classes but as mentioned it is teacher dependent. its been a self study of mine for years and your market outlook can out shine others.

you'll learn the important shit by force in a few weeks on the job

Can any recent Michigan grads point out how difficult it is to make Ross from undergrad now that most of the class is filled by preferred admit

Ultimately it should be what interests you more, but if I were in your shoes I would take the accounting class. Never hurts to learn some more technical info

Although basic technical information is useful, winning a case competition is a great talking point for interviews/ shows your commitment and interest.

Of course, but winning and participating in a case comp are two different things

Bro, your username...

Can you help me by answering to the subject , my username isn't something important.

If you just want to do banking, biz calc is enough. Also, GMAT math = SAT math -> no calculus. Just get a good grade. Trading/Quant stuff will probably require higher level math past the basic calculus requirements.

The real Calculus sequence will keep your options open if you ever decide to do a master in finance or quantitative finance degree. Since you're a freshman your goals may change and it is a good idea to keep your options open. This is especially important if you go to a non-target and want to re-brand yourself without getting a MBA.

Banking specifically doesn't require much math however, and it is more important to keep your GPA up.

how about if i take honors maths class, and possibly publish lets say a research paper on maths?

bump