| Topic Name: |
Texas A&M or Austin? |
| Message Name: |
Finance at UT |
| Date Posted: |
02/05/2000 |
| In Reply To: |
First, let me address your question about buy side vs. sell side. Buy side is definitely harder to get into. I don't have any stats, but I know that people at Wharton with non-Corp Fin angles had these areas of interest. I didn't investigate it much and find myself managing money totally by happenstance:
You hear of S&T often, only part of that is sell side (the sales role): Trading is not an easy job to get at all, actually quite difficult, but you don't need an MBA to get it. Sales is relatively easy to get and once again you don't need the MBA.
Portfolio management: directs trades to the I-banks and subscribes to IPOs/SPOs etc. Hence they are buying from the sell side. The turn over at money management firms is very low, so networking into these things is one route. The other route is to go to one of the few schools that these places actively recruit from. Otherwise, you're putting all your eggs in the networking side.
Second, you're going to learn similar basic finance at any school you go to. Take a look at the rankings that show by subject. You'll see who is at the top of the finance rankings. I'm sure Texas grads come out with the same skills in finance as I did coming out of Wharton, but I'm equally sure that their opportunity set is narrower based strictly upon what the school provides, meaning that I know there are some UT grads who have a very broad opportunity set because of family/professional connections, etc.
That said, Texas is a more widely recognized MBA program than A&M. |
| Message: |
My recommendation is to go to UT Austin because it is a decent program overall, and because it certainly has a better reputation than A&M.
That said, Finance is without doubt one of the weakest and least popular concentrations offered. Most MBAs come to UT to do MIS or Entrepreneurship, areas in which the program has a lot to offer. The choice of Finance electives is limited, and most professors can hardly be called cutting-edge. UT has a widely advertised student-managed investment fund that allows the MBA student managers to get hands on experience, but don't be too impressed by that.
Hardly anyone breaks into one of the big Wall Street investment banks (most who do end up in Private Client Services). Rather expect to work in the securities department of a commercial bank.
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