Two Years In: Thoughts about Brown, Taking Q's

Colleges and Universities A-Z Brown University
21

<p>Uroogla, could you clarify? While I decided against APMA-Econ, I have a number of friends who are concentrating in that, and I have never heard any of them express judgment against their colleagues who enter investment banking.</p>

<p>Certainly there are qualified students who really, really don’t want to go into investment banking (myself included) because it’s sort of a mercenary, exhausting position… but I have yet to encounter a Brown student who reacts negatively to a fellow economics student entering the realm of I-banking.</p>

<p>EDIT: Also, consider that probably half of APMA-Econ concentrators are in it for a mathematical love of economics and will go on to get graduate degrees in the more applied fields (econometrics, applied microeconomics, finance), while half are in it for the particularly lucrative jobs that you can get with a math/business skill set.</p>

22

<p>I’m not yet at Brown, but I have to say that I would be slightly judgmental towards someone who tells me they’re going into investment banking. I don’t believe that most people who pursue i-banking are genuinely passionate about that field, but are instead just passionate about making a lot of money. Plus, in my opinion, the actions of investment banks have just about zero redeeming social value, and as the last few years have demonstrated, they often act against the best interests of society.</p>

23

<p>Well, because you’re not in college and haven’t studied macroeconomics and the economics of finance, I will cut you some slack.</p>

<p>It’s true that a lot of investment banking has no immediate impact on overall human welfare. (You could say that about a lot of high-paying professions, including corporate tax law, race car driving, and being Warren Buffet.)</p>

<p>However… investment banking has a major role in how the American (and thus the world’s) financial system functions. It facilitates the stock markets which literally make the world go round. (Not literally, but they’re the most successful way we’ve yet determined to get a lot of money into the hands of people who can spend it productively.) Investment banking is mostly about taking extremely large sums of inert funds and taking risks with those funds. And without risks, there are a lot of technologies, brands, and jobs that we would not have today.</p>

<p>It’s true that most investment bankers are cogs in a machine (a lucrative cog!). It’s true that a lot of the very intelligent and hardworking people who go into investment banking and other forms of high finance could make larger social impacts doing something closer to Earth-- like teaching, or coordinating microloan programs, or starting businesses.</p>

<p>However, to write most investment bankers off (and especially the liberally educated ones coming out of Brown) denies the fact that investment banking does have a macro-level social contribution: it allows the overall financial system to make extremely large-scale movements. </p>

<p>The best interest society is always the money flowing to the right people. In this financial system, we assume that the “right people” are those who can make profits – and presumably those people are the ones also creating jobs and developing important technologies.</p>

24

<p>I’ve heard APMA-Econ students talking about how little respect they have for their peers who plan to go into I-Banking. Normally, I’d assume it’s a mentality of “they’re doing this when you could be working towards the greater good,” but knowing these people as I do, I don’t think that’s the case. It’s possible that many of these i-banking students have the “pre-med” mentality of “the grades matter, not what I learn” (far from all pre-meds have this mentality, I know, but it is associated to an extent with pre-meds), but I don’t know. I’ve never taken Econ and was underwhelmed by the APMA courses I took, so I didn’t pursue that field further - my interactions with these students are exceptionally limited.</p>

<p>With all this said, if it is about the money, I wonder why the CS department doesn’t have a similar backlash - our starting salaries tend to be comparable, and I’m sure there are other fields like that.</p>

25

<p>The truth of it… in I-banking, what matters are results and not process. So students with the “the grades and not the knowledge” mindset probably self-select into I-banking, which has similar values. It’s an extremely competitive and challenging field to work in, and what you learn in college does little to train you academically.</p>

<p>Students who intend to go into I-banking because it is a personality fit and because they like the salaries need to send prospective employers certain signals: that they know how to evaluate and “game” systems, that they can learn rules and exceptions to rules, that they are quick with math, that they understand the basics of business and negotiation, and that they have an interest in the deal-by-deal nature of I-banking.</p>

<p>Come to think of it, working just for grades in mostly quantitative classes semester after semester sounds like pretty appropriate preparation!</p>

<p>All joking aside, I think that these perceptions of “gunners” (that’s the term for these grades-oriented individuals, stolen from law school parlance) are colored by only a few students who make a show of how they’re attempting to game their own education. Just like the pre-meds who are likely to end up making really un-personable doctors. Even though most pre-meds are extremely motivated to get good grades, and thus have a reputation that assumes grades are more important to them than anything, we must remember that these grades are the means to an end that they have chosen.</p>

<p>Similarly, I-bankers almost never stay in I-banking for life. It’s a really great stepping stone, especially for getting powerful positions in government and other private non-financial companies. Like a master’s program, most entry-level I-banking positions last two to three years and lead to a substantially more interesting and socially impactful position elsewhere.</p>

26

<p>Also, to bring this back to Brown, for anyone interested in this topic, I really recommend Econ 1760, with Ross Levine: Financial Institutions.</p>

<p>It’s an extremely interesting course which requires basic knowledge of economic principles and some financial literacy (i.e., knowing in basic terms what an investment bank is vs. a commercial bank vs. an investment brokerage vs. a credit-rating agency vs. an insurance firm vs. a hedge fund – though many of these distinctions are made much clearer by the class).</p>

<p>It covers the conflicts of interest (and economic theories behind them) rife within the financial industry, and looks at potential solutions. And you guessed it, there are no satisfactory potential solutions. Otherwise we’d be using them.</p>

<p>But if the above discussion interests you, you would likely be very interested by Econ 1760!</p>

27

<p>Hi, what do you think of a double conc in Econ and International Relations? How are the study abroad programs? How many people take classes at RISD?</p>

28

<p>I think a double-concentration in Econ-IR sounds like it is quite doable and that they should complement each other. When you get on campus there will be plenty of people doing that to talk to. </p>

<p>Study abroad: if you want to do it, you can. Advisors and professors are very accommodating of the urge to live abroad for a while. I personally was looking at English-language programs (having taken Latin in high school and nothing more useful since: Esperanto self-taught!) in the UK, in Tanzania, and in India. We have programs in pretty much every European country, in a few African countries, in a few South American countries, and in most wealthy Asian countries.</p>

<p>That said, if you cannot find a program that suits your needs that is offered by Brown, there is actually a fair held outside in the fall where outside programs come in to discuss their offerings. And if you find something on your own, you are free to seek approval for that program as well. Generally, financial aid carries over to the year spent abroad, but so does tuition: so if you pay $10k tuition every year, you won’t save any money by going to a program abroad that only costs $8k.</p>

<p>Overall I believe the university makes a good effort to support all students who study abroad. Likewise with students who wish to intern abroad during school breaks, such as myself.</p>

<p>Regarding RISD classes: they are a lot, a lot, a lot of work. A lot. So if you can handle the workload (imagine advanced organic chemistry but art), you are able to take up to four, I think. I could be wrong, I would consult the Brown website for a confirmation. One of my dear friends/future roommate took an architecture course at RISD. Let me tell you that they cut her no slack for being a Brown student! You have to work just as hard as anyone else in the class, with the same quality of work, even though the people in your class might have a lot more preparation than you.</p>

<p>If RISD courses interest you, but you do not feel like committing to the 5-year A.B./B.F.A. program, then RISD is absolutely open to you.</p>

29

<p>The architecture program at RISD is known as architorture by the people who go there, so def not going to be easy. That being said, as holly said, if you take a RISD class you are held to the same standards as RISD students who are arguably better artists than brown students are students.</p>

30

<p>Not to say it’s a breeze for the RISD students, though! They are known to sleep under their studio desks when the deadlines loom closely.</p>

31

<p>Yep, hollyert’s friend is also a friend/past roommate of mine, and I remember that she pulled all-nighters constantly and thought nothing of it. Some RISD classes are only a bit more intense than Brown classes; others are huge time sinks. I know a few people who have taken them––from what I understand, they are extremely rewarding but also a huge commitment. Moreover, as others on this board have suggested, the issue isn’t always the workload. RISD scheduling is very different than Brown scheduling. As a result, a RISD class can place significant restrictions on your Brown ones.</p>

32

<p>You mentioned Brown supported interning abroad. What does it cost to do such a thing? And where is there more information about it?</p>

33

<p>Well, there isn’t a formal school-wide program. (I dare you to find any university that has a sign-up-for-a-foreign-internship program!)</p>

<p>However, various concentrations, including mine (COE), have internship programs that they coordinate on their own.</p>

<p>How Brown worked with COE to ensure that I would be able to complete my internship with enough funding and with safety precautions:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Paid for my international health insurance. The system in Hong Kong is quite different than the American system, so I am glad they coordinated that for me.</p></li>
<li><p>Provided me with a $5000 stipend, sourced from an anonymous university donor, presumably from the Hong Kong area. That’s right: they approached donors and said, “This kid has a chance to work in Hong Kong for the summer–how would you like to ensure that she can afford this?” And indeed at least 3 other students along with myself received funding. $5000 in Hong Kong is enough to cover rent and travel, with a drop left over for food. The rest of my income is made up of a nominal stipend from my employer, which barely covers food and intra-Hong Kong transit.</p></li>
<li><p>Submitted my name to the Alumni club and Hong Kong student association here, so that I would be invited to the various events.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>That’s just the University. My concentration, COE, did a lot more than that–including negotiate the job opening for me and my fellow intern here.</p>

<p>While I can’t speak on other departments’ programs, I’m sure that with some work you could convince the university to provide funding for an otherwise unfeasible internship (I never could have afforded $5000 to get paid almost nothing here).</p>

34

<p>All right thanks! RISD is one of the toughest art schools, so figures its classes are such. So what has been your fav class so far? How much work was your hardest class?</p>

35

<p>I am aware that Brown has no business program, however I notice that there is an economics major. Are there concentrations of business that aren’t very focused in math? Also, how hard is it to get into courses that you like?</p>

36

<p>Brown doesn’t <em>say</em> it has a business program, but just listen to the name of my concentration: Commerce, Organizations, and Entrepreneurship (COE). COE has three tracks: Organizational Studies (mostly sociology), Technology Management (mostly engineering), and Business Economics (mostly economics). So, you tell me, does Brown have a business major? [Yes, it does. It also has a finance major: Applied Math-Economics, Mathematical Finance track.]</p>

<p>COE is not very focused in math, and neither is the regular Economics concentration. They both require the equivalent of 1 semester of college calculus (e.g., AP Calc AB), and an additional class in calculus-based statistics (called Econometrics).</p>

<p>It is not hard at all to get into courses you like at Brown, especially in the COE/Economics programs, because they’re quite large and have excellent staff and planning.</p>

<p>The hardest class to get into that I have ever taken was actually English 18: Introduction to Creative Nonfiction, a small seminar on writing and reading that is taught multiple times by multiple professors each semester. You’d think that having 5 sections of the class every semester would satisfy demand for that class-- but no! Even preregistering can’t secure you a place in the class. It’s all about showing up to every meeting until enough people drop the class that your name is securely on the roster. It took me two semesters to get a place in the class.</p>

<p>In an answer xemailheather, the above English class was one of the most rewarding I’ve taken at Brown. I had a great professor (Kate Schapira) and I got a lot out of the work we did. I also loved my FYS (first-year seminar), So You Want to Change the World, which, despite is embarrassing title, was fascinating and eye-opening and the reason I am an economics student.</p>

<p>The course I mentioned a few posts ago, Financial Institutions, was also really awesome. And I loved the introductory management course ENGN 9 (ENGN 0090 is its official course number) so much I’m actually a TA for it now! </p>

<p>I’ve taken a lot of great classes but those really stand out to me. I’m very excited for the upcoming semester because I think I have chosen five home-run classes with excellent professors.</p>