<p>I am transferring from Northwestern to Brown, and am very interested in entering ibanking after graduation. What is the necessary GPA to get first a summer internship after junior year and then a full-time offer? Also, I've been reading a lot of banks websites that say that they are not concerned with your major, that they want to train you their way. At the same time, everyone seems to get technical questions during their interviews. I could take a lot of finance courses at Brown, but would prefer to pursue other interests for the time being. If anyone can comment on any of these issues, that would be really great.</p>
<p>Try to shoot for 3.5+. And I'd advise you to at least take the intro economics sequence and possibly a basic investments course. While it's true that banks aren't just looking for econ majors, they want some sort of credible signal that you're interested in their business.</p>
<p>^That seems about right to me. Plus, I wouldn't think that Brown has any finance classes.</p>
<p>Weasel, what the hell is an "investments" class? The courses you should have under your belt are financial accounting and basic corporate finance. Whether or not Brown offers them is another issue. </p>
<p>Transferring from Northwestern to Brown for banking was a really bad choice, btw.</p>
<p>Brown does offer a class in financial accounting and in corporate finance. The number one employer of graduating seniors at Brown is Goldman Sachs, so I don't think transferring there for ibanking is bad in any way.</p>
<p>Actually it is a pretty bad choice. where are you getting that stat from?</p>
<p>I agree with the other posters Brown and Northwestern are on par for IB recruitment and Northwestern is awesome for Management Consulting I remeber seeing a post by Alexandre showing the target schools for MC. You can major in anything you want, but I would personally stick to Econ/Math/etc. because they are related to IB and are probably more useful than art history or philosophy at least for IB/MC/etc. For your last point, just maintain as high a GPA as possible which shouldn't be hard as I've heard that Brown is no for its loose and inflated grading.</p>
<p>I don't see why people are saying that going from NU to Brown is a step down for ibanking recruiting. Top banks will recruit from both of these schools enough that he should have an equal chance of getting a job from either. He's the same person at interviews regardless of whether he goes to NU or Brown.</p>
<p>Just take a few business related classes and do as much as you can to learn about banking and show a lot of interest in the subject matter.</p>
<p>Brown is not a step down. Top banks want smart people and they can find plenty of them at Brown.</p>
<p>^ ya Brown man1987, I think the others are trying to say that Brown isn't necessarily a step "up" either.</p>
<p>3.5+ sounds low to me. IB is so competitive, I should think at least a 3.7-3.8</p>
<p>As high as possible, but 3.5 makes you horribly borderline.</p>
<p>It's not as if Brown is a bad school, per se, for Ibanking. It's just that if you're putting in the effort to transfer and adjust to a new environment, you might as well go somewhere where the recruiting is considerably better. Brown is just as much of a target as NU, but why take the hassle to transfer during your junior year? This makes obtaining leadership positions even tougher. Also, it seems like NU would have many more finance related courses than brown (they even have the kellogg certificate).</p>
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Weasel, what the hell is an "investments" class?
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<p>Well here's the description for one of the courses I'm planning to take:</p>
<p>ECO 362 Financial Investments: A survey of the field of investments with special emphasis on the valuation of financial assets. Issues studied include how portfolios of assets should be formed, how to measure and control risk, how to evaluate investment performance, and how to test alternative investment strategies and asset pricing models.</p>
<p>Department</a> of Economics - Undergraduate Announcement - Princeton University</p>
<p>thank you all for your comments. just to clarify, i am a rising sophomore, and am either going to major in economics or a program at brown called "commerce, organizations, and entrepreneurship", however, my "academic" interests lie more in economic policy rather than financial accounting, for example. but for sure i can work in some more "pre-business" economics courses. as far as brown vs. northwestern, it had nothing to do with career prospects, it had more to do with being close to home (NYC). as far as recruiting at the two goes, the one thing i was told about northwestern is that while they do very well, they place much better in chicago offices rather than new york ones, for fairly obvious reasons. not to say that plenty don't go to wall street/other new york industries, but it seemed that the ties were better with chicago, and again, recruiting didn't really play into my decision</p>
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The courses you should have under your belt are financial accounting and basic corporate finance.
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<p>This is not true. Over half my analyst class had no business classes at all. You take classes in these things once starting the training program.</p>
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3.5+ sounds low to me. IB is so competitive, I should think at least a 3.7-3.8
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<p>This isn't true, either. While IB analyst positions are competitive, they are not determined that much based on GPA. From what I saw of who is able to get interviews and then who ultimately received offers, there was little difference between a GPA of 3.5 vs 3.7 in comparison to what else the candidates had to offer.</p>
<p>I agree that if your career path is focused on working in finance, you should at least take some financial accounting and basic corporate finance. Banks may employ a few people with no accounting experience, but your learning curve will be so much steeper than those who have had it.</p>