<p>I'm gonna be a freshman at IU and plan on majoring finance, but you don't get into the business school until sophmore year. I'm kind of confused about some things...whats the difference between a Masters and an MBA... I always thought it was the same thing. Right now, I want to go into a finance related field. I have a cousin who went to UMich and he was a math/econ major and I'm not sure if he got an MBA at columbia or a Masters, but he did it in one year.</p>
<p>So whats the difference between the 2 and which one should I be gearing my path towards if I want to be working in the finance field?</p>
<p>A full-time MBA is a two-year program. A masters can be one or two years. An MBA is a very broad degree in business administration, and it's what most finance/business professionals get. There are different fields of finance, though. Do you want to work as a quantitative analyst/investment researcher (back office) or be the banker at the front office? If you want to do the heavy math behind all the securities selling, then you might want a masters in financial engineering or masters in computational finance, etc.</p>
<p>But typically an MBA is the one most business people will be going for.</p>
<p>Well definitely the front-end job. What school do you go to and what year/major? Any tips on what I should do to go on the right track when I start off in the fall? Right now, I'm not really sure which field in finance...I'll figure that out once I start taking classes in the business school and actually gain more knowledge on it.</p>
<p>I'm going to be a sophomore at Michigan Ross. We don't have majors in the traditional sense. We only have a core curriculum and a lot of electives to choose from. I'll probably be taking mostly finance and accounting electives, with some management courses mixed in, too. Finance is very broad. There are fields in finance which math Ph.D's do, like actuarial science or quant research, and there are other ones that business/finance (and pretty much any other) majors do, like corporate finance, investment banking, and trading.</p>
<p>If you're going to major in finance, that's a good start. IU has a solid finance program. Of course you should do some career research and talk to school advisors about internships/courses to take/ECs to help you get to where you want to go, but you shouldn't be too stressed out about your career at this stage. And remember to keep your options open.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot for the advice</p>