I like finance, and I’m looking for job security and a career. I thought it was a good choice, but now I’m hearing it’s borderline useless. Banks hire all majors, and they can teach you wherever you need, rendering your degree useless. I could switch to accounting, but it doesn’t particularly interest me and it sets me back a semester.
What should I do?
Where are you hearing that banks hire all majors?
http://cogitansiuvenis.blogspot.com/2012/08/dont-get-finance-degree.html
I read this blog while reading about things for an MBA. It kinda freaked me out. I did more research and many people are just putting it down all together, claiming it’s a useless major.
It’s pretty dangerous to use anecdotal evidence from blog posts and extrapolate that to indicate a trend. I understand where he is coming from though and keep in mind he also graduated in 2008. It’s not surprising that finance was the most popular major given the popularity of wall street jobs leading up to the recession and the subsequent fallout which was literally the worst possible time for anyone in the finance industry. If you look back through his posts they basically attack the university system and value of degrees both liberal arts and the sciences, so you have to take his tone with a grain of salt
As a finance major there was a distinct difference in the performance of junior interns that already knew the fundamentals of financial modeling. When you only have 3 months to prove yourself, having a solid foundation can make a large difference towards locking down a full time offer.
Yes many of the skills you need are learned on the job but that literally applies to almost any career. It’s not difficult to understand the calculations or the processes, but understanding the reasoning for certain actions is difficult to learn quickly. Some people have the aptitude to adapt in that type of opportunity so you will hear about how some non-relevant majors are able to break into the industry but it is not anywhere near as common as you might think.
The blog poster also didn’t go to a target school which he identifies as the exception to his devaluation of finance degrees and I would agree with that. If you look at the acceptance rates of top banks (Morgan Stanley had 90k applications and gave out 1k offers), the chances of candidates from non-target schools being considered are not in their favor. Think about how many top tier institutions there are, the size of each of those graduating classes, and how many of those 1k spots will be filled before recruiters consider pulling in candidates from other schools.
This is why networking and who you know is an important part of interviews regardless of what school you go to. I won’t go into the value of a university degree but I do agree it has become commoditized to a point and the level competition forces you to work harder than finance graduates of decades past.
Make an appointment with career services and see where finance majors with your profile end up working. I’m a CPA but I would not suggest switching to accounting if you don’t like it.
Well, what would you do? Finance or Accounting? Accounting is no real interest to me. Then again, I’m in it for a good paying job out of college. I don’t go to a target school. It would also set me back a semester.
“Then again, I’m in it for a good paying job out of college. I don’t go to a target school.”
Whats your definition of a good paying job? I ask because there’s many people that come to these forums and think that having a finance degree will get them a wall street investing job making six digit salaries right out of college, when in reality that rarely happens. Honestly, depending on where you live (cost of living), most majors will cap around $55,000 right out of their undergraduate unless you go to a target school.
Yes there are exceptions to this rule.