Today, I attended an event at Bloomberg. WoW, first of all, the facility of Bloomberg is really fascinating.
It is the closing event of the 4th annual NYSSA (New York Society of Security Analysts) Investment Research Challenge, and four schools on the finalist would present their equity research report, answer questions from the panelists and compete for the champion.
You can get the back ground of this event by search online. This year, the four schools on the finalist are Baruch, Seton Hall, NYU and Fordham, and the other five schools which didn't grab the top 4 places (sorting by the score of written report) are Columbia, Pace, Rutgers, St. John's and Yale. The winner's prize is very attractive. This year, one day at Prudential is still the same but ringing the closing bell of New York Stock Exchange seems to be gone.
Eventually, the team from Seton Hall won the champion and I guess they won it with a huge margin – last year my team tied with other school on overall score but lost the champion because of 1/3 point margin on presentation. One guy on this team obviously is the star of tonight.
What I want to address is that academic reputation is indeed an important factor, as what I wrote last night; however, one should grab any possible chance if he/she happens to be at a so-so school yet at a "hot" area. I believe not too many people ever hear about Seton Hall. The event of tonight is really awesome. Pretty many Wall Street veterans attended, serving as panelists or simply being the audiences. I believe the man who I described as the "star" would certainly raise the interest of those professionals. And of course, such an event is also a good chance to network.
If some guys come to New York for finance, I would certainly recommend you to join NYSSA as a student member ($60/year due), and try to participate this competition if your school is one of the participating schools. Society of Security Analysts is available in major cities such as Boston and Houston. Actually, next year, Boston will start to host a similar equity research competition. Four participating schools would be MIT, Harvard and two other schools which I forgot the names. The winner at Boston will have a competition with the winner of New York, and possibly the winner from Hong Kong.
For guys on accounting major, I would recommend you to join Beta Alpha Psi ($55 pledge and $40 life-time due), a national honor organization which has chapters in numerous schools across the States. I am only familiar with the chapter in my school. Lots of events are going on every year. You can get a lot of chances to meet the recruiters from the firms, expose yourself to professionals, and attend quite many great events.
It is essential to keep a good GPA, but GPA cannot guarantee you everything. It is definitely not a good approach to studying all the time. Try to get involved in such organizations as soon as possible and as much as possible, esp. for those guys in big metro areas such as New York, Boston. I believe most of you would find this after you start your degree, but it is better to know beforehand.
[此贴子已经被作者于2006-4-21 9:32:07编辑过] |