Degree in Finance; Good or Bad idea?

How old are you?

At UVA we had a Masters in Commerce. It was a one year program that allowed people with traditional liberal arts backgrounds to shift tracks.

The first semester was difficult, but the program offered great job placement.

History is actually a good start for finance.

The past keeps repeating itself in finance.

LINK

Here's the link for the MS in Commerce program.

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I just don't know many big companies hiring history degrees over finance degrees for accounting/auditing jobs.

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I know a lot of accounting majors that are hired over finance majors for those jobs though

Your OP said IB, the post I responded to was audit/acct. Who are your trying to work for, and what are you trying to get your degree to do for you?

I don't know shite, and I may be very wrong, but if you are based in Louisiana, I am not sure how many IB PE or VC opportunities there are for you. Not bashing it, I'm in Arkansas and it ain't exactly Wall Street South either

From my limited understanding of how it works, you basically you need to move, go to Harvard, then get your finance degree, network like hell, get in at Goldman, slave away for Goldman for a few summers, hope for a job offer from them, take it, move to NYC and work 100 hrs a week

Now that I'm thinking about it. A MS in acct or finance would probably be a better option

There aren't many (or any) opportunities in IB/VC in Louisiana..I've worked in VC for small firm in the VC industry in Shreveport, but that's about the only one I know of in La.

As far as the degree, it will open alot more doors in the job market, but probably not what you're looking for.

You can use the degree to get in to a bank and eventually you may get a chance of their investment arm, but its very competitive.

.. And if you're looking to get into a company outside of Louisiana,LSU/Tulane is your only option. Other than that, go for a more well known University outside of the state

I hope it's a good idea. I am one class short of a finance degree

Learn to code, a good software engineer can pretty much name their price in certain regions these days.

Honestly, a finance degree from a state school isn't likely to get you a job in IB or VC without some serious connections. UA has made serious strides recently with their business school (finance, econ, mis majors specifically) and I'd say at most 3 people per year get a job in IB, big 4 consulting, or VC. In my somewhat biased opinion I'd say that Alabama's business school is better than LSUs unless you're looking to get into some form of O/G IB.

Tulane numbers are inflated for the amount of graduates that get jobs on Wall Street because a lot of them are from New England and have connections that have nothing to do with Tulane.

A finance masters degree is probably your best bet. I'd look at Vandy tier schools. If you can't get into that tier, even a masters degree probably won't get you a job much better than an entry level analyst job at a regional bank.

Also assuming this interest in IB or VC is new and you haven't taken past Cal I, you're gonna have a lot of work to do to get a useful Finance degree, which would be the ones that include a modeling/analytics focus.