Baruch MFE Which Undergrad major to take?

[Pilly]

Hello everyone. I'm currently an undergrad student at CUNY Baruch College and I've been hearing alot about its MFE program.
It has caught my interest and I was thinking of applying after getting my BBA.
At the moment my major is Accounting, and I was wondering. Should I continue on with that major or if should I change to something more FE related like Statistics and Quantitative Modeling?
These are the required courses for S/QM majors http://zicklin.baruch.cuny.edu/programs/undergrad/degrees/or.html/

One of my fears for changing into Statistics and Quantitative Modeling is that I may graduate and not be able to find a job, since I'm assuming admission to MFE requires work experience.

Baruch does offer a 4+1 year with Any BBA/MS in Accounting. Should I go for that maybe? Will having 2 Masters look bad?

Btw, I'm a Sophomore and my GPA is 3.7
Thanks

 

[Connor]

Do you have a career in mind? What are your interests? Because FE and accounting are very different things in my mind.

 

[Pilly]

yea I'm thinking of going into finance, and I've been told that as an Accounting major I can easily go into a finance career. I guess thats why I'm so focused on Accounting.

 

[Connor]

Accounting can be good for corporate finance; if this is what you want to do I would recommend doing the 4+1 degree that prepares you to take the CPA (a number of senior corporate finance positions want/require a CPA). Good chance of getting a job here because you can do either accounting or corporate finance

But for doing a MFE and going into the more investment-side of finance (financial engineering, trading, etc) you will want something more quantitatively rigorous.

Any chance of going a double major?

 

[Pilly]

I don't know if my school allows double major for business students, but what double major are you thinking of?

 

[Connor]

Accounting and Statistics and Quantitative Modeling. This would allow you to do the 4+1 masters in accounting if you decided to go that route or do a MFE. Or both masters if you really wanted

 

[Sanket Patel]

Just chiming in with my two cents...

While work experience is always preferred, it is by no means an absolute requirement. I'm not sure how the admissions process work at other schools, but at Baruch, it's more than just apply and wait for the decision. Given that you're already a Baruch student, I would highly recommend scheduling a meeting with Dr. Stefanica, the director.

That said, I managed to get admitted into the program without any prior work experience. Feel free to send me a PM, if you have additional questions about the Baruch program.

 

[roni]

Hello everyone. I'm currently an undergrad student at CUNY Baruch College and I've been hearing alot about its MFE program.
It has caught my interest and I was thinking of applying after getting my BBA.
At the moment my major is Accounting, and I was wondering. Should I continue on with that major or if should I change to something more FE related like Statistics and Quantitative Modeling?
These are the required courses for S/QM majors http://zicklin.baruch.cuny.edu/programs/undergrad/degrees/or.html/

One of my fears for changing into Statistics and Quantitative Modeling is that I may graduate and not be able to find a job, since I'm assuming admission to MFE requires work experience.

Baruch does offer a 4+1 year with Any BBA/MS in Accounting. Should I go for that maybe? Will having 2 Masters look bad?

Btw, I'm a Sophomore and my GPA is 3.7
Thanks

since you are already in Zicklin, I would go for "Statistics and Quantitative Modeling". Just to let you know, it's not as quantitative as it sounds. You will have the chance to take 1-2 programming classes as part of the program. Plus, as the major requirements, you will be able to take 4-5 advanced math classes. I think you can also choose a math minor (another 3 math courses). But, you'll also need to take a few finance courses (as far as I know, the CFA lvl 1 will do the work for those finance courses).
Another option could be switching to Weissman and majoring in Math (or ad-hoc).

I think ACC is a waste of time, if I were you, I wouldn't stay in ACC.
and there is no double major between Zicklin and Weissman. you can do a double major or ad-hoc in Weissman.

btw, I'm also a Baruch student and am preparing myself for MFE. I decided to do it right before I started my senior year and now I'm spending another year to complete the math and programming requirements (I am a finance major, whichapparently is a waste :\ )

good luck

EDIT:

Also, if you don't have a lot of credits so far and you really feel that you want to get into MFE, change schools. If you want to stay in CUNY, go to CCNY, Brooklyn, Queens, City tech and do a double major in math and computer science. I would have done it if I had known of MFE in my freshman or sophomore year. I don't know if you noticed but most of the MFE students are engineering/math majors.

 

[euroazn]

Whoa... hold on a second here. Baruch forbids you to double major? So finance + Stats, for example, is not allowed??

 

[AWilliams]

Whoa... hold on a second here. Baruch forbids you to double major? So finance + Stats, for example, is not allowed??

You can double major in the arts and science school within Baruch, but I don't know so much about the business school. The statistics major doesn't even exist anymore because of lack of interest from the students. Outside of the business school, Baruch is really weak in everything else in my opinion. Hell, math majors are rewarded a BA degree instead of a B.S. which I find pretty strange.

 

[euroazn]

Lol, this thread is like half a year old...
I got into Baruch, (Macalauy, so it would be free), but I doubt I'm going.

So far:
Baruch - Accepted with full ride (Macaulay)
University of Maryland College Park - Accepted with In State Tuition and Presidential Scholarship (8k a year)
University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) - Rejected
Carnegie Mellon (Applied to Tepper and Mellon College Of Science-Mathematics) - WAITING AND PRAYING.
University of Virginia - Waiting but don't care.