<p>Hey guys, im going to be a junior at UC Berkeley next fall. My major is Media Studies (concentration in Marketing), and up until now, I was pretty set on going to law school. Recently, however, I discovered my (ill-advised?) passion for i-banking. I predict my gpa by graduation to be around/above a 3.7. Will my degree in a rather unrelated field diminish my chances of becoming an investment banker? </p>
<p>Im not really aiming for bb firms because i realize that my chances of getting employed by them are slim-to-none. The firms i am looking at are Nomura International and Macquarie Group. Does anyone know how these two firms compare to bb firms (salary-wise and workload-wise)? And are there any other firms at the same tier as these Nomura and Macquarie that I should look into? </p>
<p>lol @ passion for ibanking. you dont have to major in anything but you should communicate your interest in finance through other things on your resume. both these banks are good and salaries and work load should be quite similar to BB but you wont end up at KKR or something.</p>
<p>wait, I’m a stat / Philosophy double major at berkeley. Is it possible to get an internship at top places like KKR even if you’re not a B-major?</p>
<p>I don’t think KKR even recruits at the undergrad level, and if they did I doubt they would recruit at Berkeley (it would probably be restricted to Wharton, Harvard, Stanford).</p>
<p>Also, Edward Jones probably has a MM shop (so it won’t command the same brand name). If this was for an internship, I would go</p>
<p>Response to op–supposedly not necessary but probably a good idea. </p>
<p>D is starting at a BB next month. She had to take a test to determine whether she had to go to “boot camp” or not. She said the test had questions involving finance, accounting, calculus, statistics. If you “fail” the test, you have to go to “boot camp” to get up to speed on this stuff. Boot camp isn’t that long, so that is a lot to learn in a short time.</p>
<p>I imagine the firms that are not BB’s still expect similar knowledge coming in or to be learned.</p>
<p>Boot camp can actually be quite fun, depending on the firm. </p>
<p>Nomura is highly regarding and I know quite a few well qualified students who ended up there with no disappointments. </p>
<p>As for the major, no, you will not be at a huge disadvantage. As long as you know what you are doing, you’ll be fine. Just be sure to take some of the basics (Intro to Financial Accounting, Intro To Finance, Macro/Micro, etc) even if you aren’t going to be a business/econ/math/whatever major. However, normally these majors are more intellectually grounded and thus produce more intelligent students (ie. the student above with the double major in Philosophy and Statistics). I must saw that most firms won’t be too impressed with Media Studies since it sounds like a specialized Communications degree, so that specific major (more than the fact that it’s not business) will hurt you. </p>
<p>By the way, if you were planning on going to law school, that major would’ve hurt you even more. </p>
<p>Also, unless you took Intro to Microsoft Office and realized how much you loved using Excel without taking your hands off the keyboard, you haven’t discovered a passion for IB.</p>
<p>As I said early, there is little difference in my mind between Media Studies and Communications. The OP also included a Marketing concentration, which in my mind would fall under Business. Both Business and Marketing have been stated as majors that would be looked down upon. </p>
<p>Let’s look at the list of attributes college admissions officers look for in a major:
Demanding analytical courses: no.
Breadth and depth of a liberal arts education: no.
Courses requiring strong reading, writing, and research: no. </p>
<p>First of all, all of these are relative to other majors. You can argue that you maybe did take analytical courses or that you did do a lot of reading, but as someone whose taken Econ, History, Philosophy, and Poli Sci classes as an undergrad and had friends in various top Communications and Business schools (including Penn, Cornell, NYU, USC, and Cal), I can say the two don’t compare at all. </p>
<p>Next, I’m not saying you can’t take stimulating classes on the side. As said from the quote, admissions officers will often look to see what other advanced classes you take. However, they will know that as far as your core major went (where a majority of students take a large portion of their classes, particularly upper level ones), you were challenged and did far less academically stimulating work than someone in a more favored major (such as Philosophy, Math, Economics, History, etc).</p>
<p>^ Yes, finance would be considered a business major in most cases, but be careful not to confuse a Finance major with a Finance concentration in Economics (such as the very prestigious AB offered at Princeton) or a degree in Financial Engineering (Operations Research). </p>
<p>Architecture and interior design would be similarly looked down upon.</p>
<p>kaiden, i just asked a whole bunch of current law school students (t-14 schools) and they said major doesnt matter… even if its media studies/communications…</p>
<p>As I have stated earlier: As long as you are taking one of the many academically rigiorous majors which will challenge you in multiple ways, you will see no variance in law school admissions. A plant science major is the same as a history major who is the same as a French major who is the same as a African Studies major. </p>
<p>However, they were wrong to state that communications and media studies were included in the group that I have previously described. Look at my previous post for support of this statement.</p>
<p>Architecture is an extremely difficult major that requires usually 5 years just to get a basic degree. Saying that an architecture major isn’t challenging when they have to construct portfolios and other pieces of work, and saying that a history major IS challenged (especially when history is considered a top choice of many athletes), is completely inaccurate. While I agree that business, communications, pre-law are all majors not looked favorably upon - don’t extend such a jurisdiction to all majors. You mentioned Financial Engineering/Operations research is seen favorably - as are most engineering majors due to difficulty - and architecture isn’t far from that.</p>
<p>^ I never said that architecture wasn’t challenging. </p>
<p>I said that for the purpose of law school the major of architecture is looked down upon because success in it is largely predicated on a technical skill (as you have so artfully pointed out, the ability to construct physical pieces of work), which is in the case of a law school student completely useless. </p>
<p>However, skills focused on by a history major-- critical analysis, reading, writing, more reading, more writing-- are much more imperative to what students will need to succeed in law school.</p>