Business, Finance, and Marketing

Webinar Transcription

2021-01-31 Business, Finance, and Marketing

[00:00:00] Hi, everyone. Welcome to CollegeAdvisor’s webinar Business, Finance, and Marketing. To orient everyone with the webinar timing, we’ll start off with a presentation. Then answer your questions in a live Q&A on the sidebar. You can download our slides and you can start submitting your questions in the Q&A tab.

Now we can go ahead and meet our panelists.

Sorry. Hi, my name is Coralie. I went to NYU stern school of business, and I graduated in 2019. I was a business major with a concentration in marketing and management and a minor in business of entertainment, media, and technology. Okay.[00:01:00]

Okay, let me hear you. Okay.

Yes, fairly Murphy’s. I graduated from Notre Dame in 2020 and majored in finance.

Hi everyone. I am home of a freshmen at the Wharton school right now. And I’m planning and concentrating in business econ and public policy.

Okay, great. To start off, we’ll do a poll for the attendees. Are you planning on majoring in business finance or marketing?

We’ll give you guys a few seconds to [00:02:00] fill out that poll.

Okay. It looks like most people are still deciding, but very interested. A few people definitely want to major in business finance or marketing. A few interrelated fields. And if you are planning on minoring in business, finance or marketing. Okay, great. Thank you all for answering that poll. I’m going to go ahead and close that and we can go to our first slide.

So here’s a question for all of our panelists. What led you to your major?

And we can just go in order from left to right on this side. What led me to my major was I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I just had an idea of what I didn’t want to do, which was like doctor, lawyer, engineer. Cause other members of my family were there. [00:03:00] And my parents didn’t want me to go into college undeclared, so I just picked business.

But then when I was in business, there were a lot of different routes I could have gone to because they had a lot of different concentrations. And then I decided to major in or to co concentrate in marketing and management my junior year, because that’s when we have to officially declare it in 2017.

So similarly, I really didn’t know what I wanted to do. I was hesitant to close doors on what I wanted to major in. So I thought I wanted to be pre-med. I started as a chemistry major and then internally transferred within Notre Dame. My sophomore year to the business. I found that during my freshman year, those are the opportunities that I was looking into.

Those are the events I was going to. Those were the speakers I was going to, so I thought I would try to transfer. And then during my sophomore year in about February, I decided to major in.[00:04:00]

So when I was applying to colleges, I was split between going other as an econ major, a few schools, and then going in to a business school for schools that had undergraduate programs in business. And so I ended up making my decision a little bit easier was that, Hey, Wharton is a very well established business program.

But be that going and declaring yourself as pre-professional a little bit earlier, it gives you a little bit more time to develop the skill side. That’s important to be in some more specialized fields. I applied to business econ and public policy, which is the intersection between public policy and the private sector, just because that was most related to what I did in high school.

But the second I got into college, I realized that wasn’t really my passion anymore. And right now I’m focused more on finance and I’m trying to get into a venture capital position.

Okay. Our next question is about high school. What [00:05:00] extracurriculars did you do in high school? So in high school, you did a lot. I did sport, so I did volleyball and then I was JV captain my sophomore year. And then I did tennis and cheerleading as well, but only in my sophomore year. I was vice president of our red cross club.

So he basically like organized school blood drives twice a year and kind of set up those logistics. We had a club called Haitian sensation, which was responsible for Getting a bunch of items to donate to a school and a church yeah. In Haiti. So I was the secretary of that. And then I was also the secretary of our national honor society.

And then I was in students against destructive decisions where we didn’t really have a leadership team, but I was still just one of the people making decisions. And I’m sure there were a lot more, but those are the ones I could think of off the top of my head. Yeah. I went to a pretty small high school, so there weren’t a ton of opportunities, but I would recommend that you make the most of whatever you [00:06:00] have.

So I actually helped start a mock trial team during my sophomore year after really enjoying debate. I did a lot of sports. I play, I swam, I played the car. Played basketball for a little while and played tennis for a little while. Then you put those on there. But I was also on the math team.

We had an amazing math teacher who just really got everybody excited about that as well as student government on the class level. So not on the whole school level, but I was vice president of my class for two years in a row. And then did some tutoring and service through the national honor society.

Yeah, there. A few of my highlights were I was also in the speech debate like Carolyn. And then I did a little bit with my school team. And then my senior year, I ended up getting recruited to be one of the 12 students in the us team. So I got to travel internationally and compete that way. Other than that, I was a congressional intern, which means that I helped draft legislation and policy groupings for my local.

So then I was a student [00:07:00] representative to the school board, which was in the lucky position. I basically meant that I advocated for the interest of high school and high school students, school board, and then a little bit international relations side. I was a student ambassador to the role of affairs council and I helped write a few op-eds and organize a few interviews every day.

Okay. Now, what was your college application process like? My college application, he was fairly condensed. My mom wanted me to get them all in before November which is when most of the early action, early decision and dates are due, but she just wanted me to be done with them. But I did the common app, which saved a lot of time because I applied to 13 schools and then just filled out the supplements as they were, coming up and as I was able to do them Yeah, I would say it was not too bad at all.

And what I wish I had known before was gotten a better understanding of just what the different schools offered and [00:08:00] how it would benefit me and fit my aspirations just a little bit more. But again I didn’t really know what to do, so it wasn’t too big of an issue.

So just I didn’t know what I wanted to major in. I also didn’t know where I wanted to go to college. I had visited a lot of them. Just being in North Carolina, there are a lot of colleges nearby to see. I was really unsure of my major. So I started with a big long list, narrowed it down looked online a lot, and now they’re even more resources for looking at schools online.

I applied early action to as many schools as I could on my final list which ended up being about 18 schools total. So I believe 12 of those. I applied early action. And what I wish I had known is that there are so many colleges where I could have been successful and could have been happy. And oftentimes I got caught up in that there was one dream school out there for me, but I would have been happy and successful at a lot of those schools that I had narrowed down on my list.[00:09:00]

Yeah. I went through the process who listed about 16 schools. Four of them were DCS. So if you have a good public school system with one centralized application, I really recommend taking advantage of that just because it was a lot less work to apply to those four schools than it was to fill out individualized applications for say four private schools.

But I applied to one school in the early oxygen and it didn’t really work out. So I applied to rust the scores and regular. I know that if that’s position that you find yourself in a no big deal, if you don’t get in the early decisions. On their seats in the regular, no need to freak yourself out about it.

And if I could tell myself one thing it’s that I was focused on a handful of schools that I thought that I would really fit into and looking back on it, some of those schools I would have absolutely on, I wanted to don’t very well in them. And oftentimes I was very blindsided by the us news and world report rankings or the reputation.

[00:10:00] Or even just the cloud that my parents described at each school. And so I’m pretty happy with where I ended up, but I think that of those 16 schools, if I could go back, I’d maybe want to round out my list a little bit more instead of going for exclusively talk to him.

Okay, great. Now, what extra curriculars did you do in Polish? I’ll be perfectly honest. I wasn’t super, super involved in college, but I did do a hall council for my freshman year dorm, which was just setting up events hosting, just general things to make the college experience a little bit more welcoming to students there.

So that was pretty cool. I did AP, which is. A club for minority students and just helps them make connections at school. I did marketing society, which is basically what it sounds like. It’s just different companies that focus on marketing come in. It’s a chance to network the club [00:11:00] itself. You can get resume reviews and they can help you find internships and jobs, which was really nice.

And luxury and retail association, which is basically the same thing as marketing society, but it focuses on a specific industry of luxury brands.

I was decently involved in college. It took me a minute to figure out exactly how I wanted to spend my time. Like I said before, I came from a high school and a smaller town, so there weren’t all those opportunities. And I got to college and wanted to do a lot of different things. So I was involved in student international business council, which is essentially real-world consulting projects for companies that oftentimes have ND alumni and they can.

Create a project and you work on a team to solve that and present it. I was also a philosophy department teaching assistant. So I was a a TA for a class for about five or six semesters that I really enjoyed. It was just a nice contrast to finance. I did college mentors for [00:12:00] kids where we brought third graders and fourth graders and fifth graders onto campus and just did fun educational activities with them in the afternoons.

I also was on my hall leader. Yeah. So again, we organize like academic activities, service activities, fun activities and did a SA a similar role for my class on class council. I was so a resident assistant in my dorm during my senior year, and then I played the French horn in the symphony room.

Yeah. And then, so I’m still a freshman. So I have a little bit of time to explore some more in college, but some stuff that I’m involved in right now is I’m a part of the Penn international impact consulting, which a lot, like we care like. Consults for international nonprofits. The project that I’m working on right now is with the United nations environmental program and Legos, Nigeria.

And it’s pretty fun because yes, there’s some insane Rick with spreadsheets, but also we’re rolling out an entire infrastructure plan for the region. [00:13:00] And it’s pretty cool to be involved in something like that. I’m a research assistant. I did research on using business analytic tools to combat climate change.

And that’s been an interesting experience just because I never thought that I would get into research after being a business major. Other than that I’m on the Wharton alumni relations council, which basically just means that I interview alumni and go to some alumni events. That’s been particularly rewarding, just use Wharton.

One of the draws is a pretty well-established alumni network. I decided to continue as a bait in college at Penn debate society. But to be totally honest with you, I haven’t been very active on it. It’s a huge time commitment. And I feel like it takes away from some other extracurriculars that I want to be more focused on, but still the network of friends that I’ve made there has been really solid.

I’ve been just for fun. I like playing a real basketball. And I also am in some poker clubs, we just play for buy-ins and pen. And occasionally we’d go down to some other schools and play against students from there. Just try to make a little bit of money. Poker is also very useful for finance.

[00:14:00] Some firms will look for that, so it’s not all fun.

So now we’re just going to have our panelists go over some of the common college classes for business finance or marketing nature. So I, for general business, they try to give you a taste of everything. So we had a BIP track, which was specifically on ethical and sustainable business, which was really interesting.

And then we had to do the basics of micro economics and statistics our freshman year. Then sophomore year again, like trying to give us a taste of everything. I had classes for financial accounting, macro economics, managerial accounting, which is different organizational communication, which is about, how to present yourself, make business presentations.

Business documents, that kind of thing, which was really useful. Foundations of finance intro to marketing management and organizations, Infotech, which is [00:15:00] teaching you about the different softwares and stuff that they use in business specifically for kind of business research and analytics and operations management.

I took most of these classes, but the last two I did not, even though they are part of our curriculum for those years,

The best thing about junior and senior year is that you have a little bit more flexibility in what you take with your classes. So of the junior year classes I took each of those and advanced corporate finance was the only one that you had to complete during your junior year. The rest investment theory, private equity and behavioral finance were electives that I chose out of.

I believe a group of eight senior year. You have even more flexibility. So international finance. Python for finance trading and market security analysis, and then real estate valuation and investment. There’s some overlap between these, so you wouldn’t take all of them. But again, even more options than you have in your junior year and more flexibility on what [00:16:00] interests you, what you’ve had internships and experience in.

And then also looking forward, what career you would like to.

Yeah. And then just as a general note, I think that in all business schools, as you go through the curriculum from first-year crosses to senior year classes, you decide somewhat of a concentration, which field of business you want to be focusing on. So for example, some of my senior friends who went all in on like the quantitative direction and then did like stochastic processes, advanced modeling with R and then other people decided to go say more than marketing direction.

Classes that were a little bit less quantitative in nature, but still very focused on what they wanted to do. So I think that’s where you have the most flexibility.

Okay. So now what is your favorite class that you’ve taken related to your major? So my favorite class was actually intro to marketing. It was basically just going over the basic concepts in marketing.[00:17:00] I think that was my first real introduction to it where I saw everything that it entailed.

But then on top of that, we had a project at the end of the semester where a real company would come in. And talk about its problems. And then we would have to use what we learned in class to be able to help solve their problem. And then at the end of the semester, we would present to their brand manager, like all of the solutions we came up with incorporating concepts from class.

So that was actually a lot of fun. Our project was Klondike. And then like we got to present to the Klondike brand manager who like ended up really liking our idea. So it was really cool to have that. Being thrown right into marketing. And I feel like that just helped. I don’t know, like it just really helped me get an understanding for it, which helped a lot for later classes as well.

I really loved my international finance class and the timing worked out really well. I had just come back the prior semester from being abroad in the spring, and then the next fall I took [00:18:00] international finance. The description sounds a little bit boring, but this is a good note too, that the professor made all of the difference.

So she had worked for the international monetary fund. She had all this real world experience. She was from Brazil. She was a really cool lady and I would have taken anything. That she she taught as well. And then thinking back to the previous slide I have to add that my behavioral finance class was really great.

And for the same reason, the professor was super interesting, actually very into poker, coincidentally he had all of these weird hobbies. Somehow tied into finance. And he really focused a lot on making sure that we understood not only the quantitative part, but also the qualitative part to finance and how biology and psychology and all of that plays into it.

So it was a great, it was a great perspective. That was a little bit different.

And the John, I haven’t taken that many horses yet. But what am I? My favorite so far has been a course called entrepreneurship and venture capital. I’m from the [00:19:00] bay area in California. So there’s a huge sort of culture there, but I think one misconception that people push is that when you have a startup, you have to start from the ground up and you learn it as you can.

And this course taught me that isn’t necessarily true. Usually one in 300 startups will end up profitable, but there’s certain things that you can do to maximize your odds of success. So what they did. Is get us to submit a proposal and then walk us through the process of what it would look like to form a team that initial seed funding fond customers adopt the product based on the market needs.

And then eventually secure series at your series B obviously not all of us decided to go down that direction, but it was really interesting having someone walk you through that entrepreneurship path instead of just being thrown into the market and told, do it yourself, figure it out. And I think especially since entrepreneurship is a misunderstood process almost, or a process that people don’t usually have academic courses to cover.

I think it was a really interesting experience to partake in that type of curriculum.[00:20:00]

Okay. Great. So that’s the end of the presentation part of our webinar. I hope you found this information helpful and remember that you can download the sides in the handouts tab from the link in the public chat, do thing onto the live Q and a all the way through the questions you submitted in the Q and a tab, a piece turned into the public chat.

So I’ve been conceived and then I’ll read them out loud to our panelists. Can give you an answer. You can dress your question to one specific panelist, or you can request that all three answer as a heads up, if your Q and a tab is that, let her use the net questions. Just double check that you joined the webinar through the custom link in your email and not from the webinar landing page.

Okay. The first question I’m seeing in the Q and a it’s a general one, but it’s a good place to start. What do you learn as a business finance or marketing major?[00:21:00]

Any of you guys can just jump in if you want to answer, I guess for business, we just learned the different aspects of it first. So we learned the building blocks of marketing, of finance, of financial and managerial accounting. I’m trying to think operations and technology, and then just deciding where you go there.

I can’t really speak much to finance, but I know for marketing our. Track was well, obviously intro to marketing, which is the basics. Then we have to do consumer behavior, which is the psychology behind marketing. And like why doing certain things in marketing is effective and like what things aren’t.

And then we also had to do a marketing analytics course because what is the point of being able to do all of this and not being able to understand its impact. And then we had a few electives where you could just venture off a little bit, like I’ve taken global marketing, luxury [00:22:00] marketing like marketing in entertainment specifically.

So yeah, there are definitely some building blocks, but then there’s a lot of different ways that you can go in it that provide insight for different industries or like different aspects. So I will say this as a freshman. I used to think that a lot of the stuff that we were taught in our business classes was common sense.

So for example, marketing or management, where they went over bureaucracy until I actually started working at a venture capital firm and integrating some of those skills into the work that I do. With doing due diligence for companies or scouting out financial information or trying to just decide whether or not something’s worth investing in.

So I think that the combination of the like broad academic theory behind what makes a good business and then putting that into practice is where a lot of your education will come from. And I think that’s why, concurrently doing things like internships are so important. And then the other side and finance that I think is available is if you want to get really quantitative [00:23:00] something like modeling through programs like R or Python or understanding like higher profitability likes to cost to processes can be useful.

If you want to go into quantitative trading. And other than that, even if you don’t want to go into a quant direction, things like data science, they’re just very valuable for analyzing markets in general or companies in general. So on the more hard skill side, I think it’s solid understanding and not the computer science would definitely be an asset.

And two, I’ll just add on to this. You can take a lot of these classes and careers and paths, whichever direction you choose. So you may choose to take a more accounting slant on finance. You may choose to take a more corporate slant and work for a company like Kellogg or for example or a tech company, and do finance for them.

Or you could choose to go. Do investment banking or you could choose to go more the consumer banking route. So a lot of that [00:24:00] personalization is up to you, but I would say a lot of. Finance and business. I know a little less about marketing. I’ve only taken one marketing course, but a lot of business and finance, I, I see as just how the world works, especially once you get into accounting.

There’s a lot of explaining the math and the process behind the economics. So I think that’s pretty.

Great. The next question is, would minoring in any of this be helpful to someone in a completely different major?

I would say yes. Just cause I feel like, especially like in America business is so essential to anything that you do really. And I think like the more you work in a specific place, whether or not you’re. Career has anything to do with the actual business operations. Like you will find that it does have some effect and that it does influence a lot of the decisions that are made where you work.

Yeah, I feel [00:25:00] like definitely getting an understanding of it is useful. And just first of all, helping you understand what’s going on, but then also knowing how to navigate, to make a better impact, yeah, I would definitely say. And a lot of colleges are expanding opportunities to do this because they see the relevance of it.

So I know Notre Dame used to not allow you to minor in a business field if you were not in the college of business. And now they’ve opened up opportunities in accounting in real estate. And I believe the other one right now I was entrepreneur. Yeah. So the biggest piece of advice I got in college as a finance major even was to take more accounting classes.

So I really can’t recommend that enough. Even if it helps you just know how to do your taxes, it’s worth it. So I think that would be a piece of advice that I would pay. Yeah. And then just broadly speaking from the macro perspective, even if you don’t end up wanting to go into something like finance, a broad understanding of marketing or management is still really useful with just the way you conduct yourself every day.

And I’m pretty [00:26:00] sure that it would be useful in any career given that so many of these skills are applicable to literally any job that you’re going to end up applying to

The next question is, can you explain the different business finance slash marketing majors?

Is that just the, I guess the different directions you can go with the careers. Yeah, the different tracks, different majors, I think going off of what Caroline said for finance, for sure. You can definitely do like different slants into it. So like corporate tax. Yeah, there’s a lot of them.

I’m sure one of them could probably go into it more. Cause I didn’t do finance for marketing. There are different aspects you can do. Especially you could do the more psychological side. Analytics, which is probably one of the more like employable functions of it, just because it is so important, [00:27:00] you can do the graphic and design aspect of it.

So those are the kind of main ones that are coming to me right now. Although I will say the graphic end design aspect of it is not something that they will teach you in business school. For the most part, that’s just more of an artistic thing. But yeah, I feel like those are the main functions that you go into really afterwards, after like college.

Sure. So just adding on to that, some of the directions that I’m considering as someone who’s more, in that finance side you can go into investment banking, which is. Like a lot of stuff on wall street jobs, like places like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, et cetera. If you want to go work in the south side, instead of things, you can go into private equity or you can go into venture capital.

You can go into asset management or accounting. And then there’s a lot of other smaller, more niche fields like distress debt investing has become [00:28:00] huge after the COVID pandemic. So really I can keep on going for a long time, but you definitely have options as a finance manager. There’s no one path to go down.

And to majoring in anything in business finance, you can go also into consulting. So a lot of times consulting is not a major choice at a school. But you can go into the consulting field to do financial consulting or you can consult be a marketing consultant. So that’s also another option.

Great. Now our next question is how hard is that for you guys personally, in these majors, in terms of classes and materials?

I’ll jump in and say that there’s going to be an easier track and a harder track and a lot of schools. You can choose to take applied investment management. Your senior year, [00:29:00] or you can choose to take maybe a less difficult class like trading and markets, for example. And that’s just going to depend on the school.

It’s going to depend on the professor. I would encourage you to take what you are interested in that will you, by being interested in it, you often find that it’s not only easier. But it’s a little bit more. And then just talk to upperclassmen to get tips, to get help with which professors to take, how to study for this class or that class talk to them about their careers.

And I think that it’s challenging, but when you choose to major in this, in one of these fields, it’s it’s a life skill and it’ll help you, no matter what career you choose. Off of that. Yeah, I will say the professor is probably one of the most essential parts to how difficult or easy a classes and rate my professor is going to be.

Life-saving. For sure. So definitely remember that, but yeah, I [00:30:00] will also say interest plays a huge part in it, just because I remember earlier on in my schooling career, when we just had to shop around and figure out what different. Pieces of business. There are, I was a lot less interested in that definitely affected my performance in school, but then when I got to junior and senior year were like, I got to take more of the classes that I was interested in and explore the parts of marketing that I actually really wanted to explore myself.

That helped a lot. Yeah, definitely the professors like going for what you’re interested in. And then if possible, definitely try to talk to people in your classes. Cause being able to talk to them about course material helps a lot, although I’m sure it is harder with the pandemic and everything, but yeah.

Yeah. So there’s a running joke, but business majors have the easiest time on campus. And I wouldn’t say that there’s that much truth to that. I think it’s more what you make of it. So there’s definitely kids. I know in the business school who can skate guy and very [00:31:00] easy class. And their approaches. I’m going to come out with a degree and I’m going to be fine.

I think that there’s other approaches that involve developing more hard skills and very candidly speaking, if you want to go into a more quantitative direction. So for example, if you want to exit and work at a firm like Jane street, or like a hedge fund or a Kwan firm, you’re going to have some sleepless nights doing problem sets.

And if you want to go for a field that’s perhaps less focused in those hard skills. Maybe you’re going to have a little bit easier time with your courses, but you’re still definitely going to have to put in the work when it comes to getting internships, interviewing for jobs, all that stuff. So I think by no means, is it easy, but based on where your individual skill set lies and where your interests slides, you can optimize your business, however you want.

Okay. Now someone wants to know what do you recommend being a business finance or marketing major in order to open a company [00:32:00] or start a business?

I’ll say yes. For opening and starting a business, I think was said earlier, it’s not something that you can necessarily be taught, but I do think that. It’s definitely a lot better to go in with a solid foundation of what you’re going to be dealing with. So yes, I, yeah,

I think the right answer is probably something along the lines of it depends. There are a lot of factors that go into a successful business and the degree or the name of the degree that you have, right. Isn’t a huge one of them. It’s more the skill side. So one thing that I did learn is that if you’re just looking at the numbers, companies that succeed and become profitable, most often have a starting team with someone with more like business oriented skills and then someone with very quantitative or like practical skills.

So I think like the [00:33:00] classic example is like the Steve jobs, Steve Wozniak. Do I definitely think that you can’t neglect either side of this. And I think that if you want to start a business by yourself, I’m a business major, even as someone who’s going into engineering or computer science, it’s very doable.

But my one piece of advice would be don’t neglect any of the size of the business. Whether it’s like making a good product, figuring out a path to profitability. You trying to court investors like running a successful business is a very holistic process. I would agree with all of that. And if you don’t choose to major in business, but you have a great idea, definitely go make friends with someone who is majoring in business so that you can go in on that business together.

Okay. Now I’m seeing in the chat, what kind of marketing projects, last assignments where you give it.

So the main one is definitely the one I got in my intro to [00:34:00] marketing class. That was definitely the most like rounded out and holistic one that really focused on the same process that accompany would go through when deciding. How to like market or launch a new product. We had a lot of projects, literally a project for every single marketing class and they were all group projects.

But those, I would say were probably more just based off of doing research or something like that. The ones that I personally had weren’t as I guess, practical. And experiential in terms of what you would be dealing with outside of the classroom, other than the intro to marketing one.

Yeah, I’ll pass on this one since I haven’t taken a marketing class yet, but yeah, I took one marketing class, like I said [00:35:00] before. And probably the coolest thing we did was a simulation. So we were on teams and had our own business and our own business and had to do all of the marketing behind it.

So it was. Branding and all of the pricing and everything, just to figure out how it would play out with other teams in our class. That was just the one big project. It was a semester long project. And also something to note is that the presence of group projects in majoring in finance and business and marketing lots of other areas of college as well.

But I think that is very representative of the real world in that you’re going to have lots of group projects and teamwork in business needs.

Great. Next question. What internships can you get? Or I suggest as a high school student in the field of business,

A lot of what I would recommend as a high school [00:36:00] student is figuring out how to either do informational interviews or some sort of shadowing. You understand the different newness on and finance it’s careers. Sometimes there are going to be some actual internship opportunities, but a lot of times the learning options communities are going to come from observing people and working with people and seeing what their job entails.

Yeah, to be totally straight up. I applied with without a single bit of experience in the business field, I’d been a legislative intern and all of my extracurriculars have to do with international relations or debate. I’m very shocked that warden accepted me with that being said, I have a few friends in high school who want to go that business route.

And what they’re doing, if you want, like a really technical answer is a lot of them have gotten really good at cold emailing and are cold emailing, other VCs or accelerators. Usually they don’t hire from like high schoolers straight up. But what they will do is refer you [00:37:00] to portfolio companies that could use some help.

So for example one of the VCs that I work at that I’ve worked at redbud has a few portfolio companies. And one of them was amplify snack brands, which is the company that makes skinny pop popcorn. And they took a few high school insurance just because they were rapidly scaling. They didn’t want to pay their interns and they thought it could be a cool experience for a high school kid to get involved in.

And then if you want to start more generally developing your skillset, I’d say two things that you could invest in or one getting decent with a data analytics tool. And then two, we’re getting decent with understanding just like code something like Python, because I think those thought processes really do help you with modeling later on.

I don’t have much to contribute on the high school point, but off of the earlier point. Yeah. Coding is. Like a very large part, even for marketing, like coding and analytics. Yeah. It’s something that you’re going to need. And there, luckily are a lot of, like free at least online classes or [00:38:00] tutorials or YouTube on it.

So that’s definitely something that I will try to start sooner rather than later.

Okay. As a quick break in the middle of our Q and a, I wanted to tell you what you can do after this webinar. If you want to get help on your college apps from any of our panelists or other CollegeAdvisors, we have two advising plants, the starter plan, and the scholar. They’re both monthly subscriptions, where you can get matched with an advisor of your choice and you get one or two hours of one on one advising each month.

We also have library packages which involve more hours and a longterm partnership with your advisor. As advisors, we will work with you on your college essays, choosing schools, interviews, and more. I’m going to send everyone a link to get started.

This offers links to our page to sign up and get started. [00:39:00] Our students that CollegeAdvisor have had a ton of success. This past admissions season, we had CollegeAdvisor clients get into all the IBS and every top 25 school in the country, our clients paid us 9.8. And that’s because advisor has put a ton of care into working with you.

One-on-one through every step of your application process. If you want to discuss one-on-one with any of the advisors, this is a great chance to work with us. Okay. So now we will continue with our Q and a, the next question I’m seeing what major is most helpful for going into stock?

So stocks is a very broad concept, but I think that we can clarify this question on the two sides. If you want to go into those markets, there’s the buy side and the sell side. [00:40:00] So on the sell side, that’s where you have something.

Say I want to buy a disciplines in this company and the people in the investment bank make that happen. So that’s where you have a little bit less control over the work that you’re doing, but you’re essentially selling those securities to people that need. And then more on the buy side, that’s where you get things like venture capital firms, private equity and hedge funds.

That’s where you go proactively seek out companies and say, I would like to buy a stake in you, or I would like to buy all of you and you have a little bit more freedom on the buy side, because that’s where you’re actually making your decisions on what to buy or what to sell. And then, so to answer your question on what majors help you get it.

I think finance probably helps you get into almost anything. And then you refine your skills also boost and what internships and what classes you take. But a path that a lot of people don’t consider until they’re in college is if you really want to get in [00:41:00] on the buy side and work in something like a hedge fund, a lot of hedge fund managers are looking for data scientists or applied math majors, just because winning markets.

Isn’t always about like reading through a company’s balance sheet or just understanding business skills. It’s about actively understanding the math and the probability that goes into stock market and using those skills and high-frequency trading to beat it that way. That’s where the jobs are moving towards.

Now, if you’re interested in that at all, statistics or applied math is also a very common, second major, depending on where. You go to school. But especially at Notre Dame, I know it was for finance majors or my minor or major second major in economics as well. So a lot of what you will learn in about finance and about the stock market in general, or just trading you will learn in class and your classes will be more relevant than ever, but also your internships.

Paying attention to the news, learning about what’s going on in the world in other ways. [00:42:00] Beyond your major.

The next question I’m seeing is how do you manage classes, studies and sports.

This is a tough one and it’s going to vary for everyone, but I would reiterate doing things you enjoy. If you are enjoying playing sports, that’ll be PR perhaps a break from academics. I know for me I just had to mix it up. So whether I’d spend time with friends for a little while and then work independently or play intermural sports and then go to a club meeting.

As long as I was mixing it up, I like to be busy. But I like to be doing different things.

Yeah, I never did sports on a varsity level in high school. So I don’t really feel qualified to talk about [00:43:00] that just because there’s a huge difference between playing basketball, recreational, you’re playing in a JV team and then like actively, putting in the work in the weight room every single day, competing competitive where you going to bigger leagues.

So anyway I had to travel a lot for it. And then the best advice that I can give you is make it work. Take any spare moment that you can. I would do a lot of work in the plane. I would do a lot of work and my way to school, I would often finish up my homework for the class that I had next hour in the class before it honestly, whatever works.

Okay, next question. What are some things that helped you the most during college? Some examples of student gears or having an iPad to take notes or finding a friend that’s in slash out of your mates.

I would say on the notes aspect of [00:44:00] it, at least finding however, works best to take notes because like sometimes having the iPad is easiest for some people sometimes like the laptop. Also some professors don’t allow technology, so yeah, definitely just figuring out what works for you and what is allowed.

I will say having friends in my major and in my class classes did help a lot just because being able to talk to people about concepts helped learn, help me learn and build on the concepts outside of class and helped me understand them a lot better. And it was nice to have people to study with.

But again, like I know it’s probably going to be hard with the pandemic and nobody knows how long it lasts. Although I will say I’m in a master’s program right now that I just start. And I have been able to meet people and make friends. So I wouldn’t say it’s something that’s too worrisome, but yes, definitely being able to find other people in your program is really helpful.

Even if it’s just to vent about a certain professor, like any sort of reprieve helps. And then [00:45:00] also this isn’t technically like on the school technical side, but just finding ways to be able to de-stress is really important. College is intense and it does definitely take a toll. So just being able to find time and space to take to yourself and to recuperate is so important.

I would the second, all of that, and also add that make use of the resources that you have at your school. Whether they are online, so online libraries or going in and talking to the business library and about those resources. Make use of your professors and you tutoring hours, tutoring, small groups.

Your classes are gonna be challenging. And for the first time, for many of you, you’re going to need to get some help from your peers, from your professors from TAs. So definitely don’t fall behind and get on that. Oh, on that point as well, office hours. I’m like someone that doesn’t really like to ask professors for help and college was a very rude awakening.

So yeah, definitely go to office hours and don’t [00:46:00] be afraid of being annoying. They’re literally there to help you. Don’t forget that. And yeah, like Caroline said, make the most use of it as you can. And then the last thing that I would add is something that’s really helped me is having a front circle that keeps you focused and really inspires you.

So it can be really easy when you walk into college to get blindsided there’s opportunities to. Something fun. Literally every time. I could be going out to parties 24 7 if I wanted to. But I think that’s where your friends circle really has to come in and keep you grounded reminds you, you have to get some work done.

Sometimes you have to start applying for internships. You have to keep up in your coursework. And then other than that, just being around people that do cool things or have unique interests really motivates you to also work on your side. And I think God really is what college is all about. And I think that I’m really grateful to have the group of friends that I do that motivate me to be better all the time.[00:47:00]

Okay. I’m not seeing any more questions in the Q and I, so we have 10 more minutes. I’m going to take a few from the pre panel questions that people submitted when they signed up. The first one is an NBA recommended slash Adventist.

It definitely is, but you wouldn’t be able to get an MBA until you finish your undergrad studies and then work for at least two years. So yeah, it definitely will be, especially if you do want to become an executive at some point in your life, but and I don’t think it would be essential for finding jobs after undergrad, for sure.

Okay, next question. Do finance majors make a lot, I guess [00:48:00] after college. I laughed here because I majored in finance. And I’ve actually been a middle school teacher right now. So I am looking to fit in, yeah. Get back into finance after this. But I’m also doing a master’s program right now. I’m getting my master’s in education from Notre Dame as well.

So it all depends. Can go and work in New York and make it yeah. Very large salary, or you can go and be a middle school teacher, or you can do a year of service or you can do all kinds of different things. So that, that’s a very broad open-ended question. I wouldn’t do it just for the money though.

That’s me personally. But everybody has their own thoughts. Yeah, on that note. One thing that I like about finances and major is that there’s some versatility to it. You can go in and do drastically different stuff that you didn’t even consider. Or if you really want to fall send it, you can go like trade stocks in New York all day.

You can sit in front of a computer and write algorithms. That’ll make you [00:49:00] hell of money and get you seven figures. It really is what you make of it. There’s pros and cons to each approach. I will warn you against going into finance for easy money. If your dream is to work in an investment bank in wall street, the numbers might look appealing at the end of the year, but the work culture is rigorous and you are going to be putting in a lot of hours and a lot of late nights at the office.

Really there’s no such thing as a silver bullet to life, you will not get your finance degree and be showered with Bonnie. Everything takes work. Don’t do it just for the money

on that point. For working on wall street, I know friends that have 80 hour work weeks, so yeah. Unless you love it, don’t do it. And like I’ve had friends that have had internships there that have really hated the office and company culture. It is. Yeah. It can be very toxic if you are not a certain type of person.

So yeah. I really only go into it if you genuinely like it, for sure.[00:50:00]

Next question. What interests do finance major? It’s usually hot.

I feel like this is such a stereotype, but outside my room right now, my friends are literally paying, playing a game of poker. Like I’m probably going to join up to this call. Yeah. That type of stuff, we like, like playing sports a lot just because it’s a nice break from, sitting in front of the computer doing problem sets.

I think a lot of them. Possibly shape our own portfolios or to do a little bit of strategy in the size, just for fun on, yeah. Some of us are interested in entrepreneurship and like following startups a lot, it varies. It depends.

It absolutely varies. I, my biggest advice would just be to do what interests you don’t try to be someone that you [00:51:00] aren’t or have an interest that you think will be more, a little bit more financing. You can be interested in a wide variety of things and major in.

Okay, this is the last question I’m seeing. So if anyone else has any more questions, feel free to submit them in the Q and a, but for now, what jobs slash fields can you venture into after sitting business? That has a good work-life balance.

I will say, just living in the us work-life balance is it’s not as work-life balance as it could be as other countries have it. But I will say it probably again, like I have friends that work on wall street. That’s not a good work-life balance at all, but if you like it. But it really depends more on the company than it does the job function.

Just because the [00:52:00] same job can have drastically different hours company cultures, that really just expect you to put in long light for no reason. So yes, I would go looking more into the company than I would into a specific job function, because it can really vary either way.

A job is also what you make of it. I have a friend I have like friends at different companies, Goldman Sachs, which ends you that have very different approaches to it. A few of them are like, I’m going to full send every night. I’m going to get that promotion. I’m going to get those contacts. It doesn’t matter if I’m working 80 hours because longterm, I will benefit from it.

There’s other friends that I have who are like, I’m going to do the bare minimum to not get fired, enjoy my big McKinsey paycheck and try to live out my life to the fullest. You can decide where you want to go with your future and do what you want with your job that way. But there is no upper limit to how hard you could be working.

Just like there is no [00:53:00] lower limit to how hard you have to work. You can choose which direction you want to go in and you can decide what combination of work and financial reward is optimal for the lifestyle you want to live. I’ll just add to that. A lot of times your finance job right out of college.

As soon as you get that job, you’re going to be looking for another one. Pretty soon. You don’t last very long in an analyst role. You’re typically going to be moving up the hierarchy or a different direction, maybe investment banking to private equity or venture capital. So just note that as well, it’s a lot of hours, but then maybe you go and spend those hours in a bit different work environment as well.

Okay. Great. So I’m not seeing any more questions in the Q and a, so we can go ahead and wrap up here is the information about our panelists. Again, if anyone missed that in the beginning, and this is the end of the webinar, thank you all for [00:54:00] coming. We had a great time telling you about business finance and marketing.

I hope this webinar was helpful for you and that you feel more prepared with your college applications and goals. We have a brand new webinar series for February and March, which you will be redirected to after leaving the webinar. And thank you all for coming out tonight to tonight’s session.

Okay, great. Thank you. I’m going to go ahead and end the webinar now.