CFA, Publishing, and/or Internship?

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Cosachok

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Tl;dr:
Two out of three for an undergrad student with no direct experience: published peer-reviewed papers, CFA, and/or internship?

Hey guys,
I’m a student graduating a little under a year from now, trying to figure out if going all in on chasing the CFA would be the best path for me. I was hoping you could provide some insight on what I should be doing this summer. Here’s the situation, and the options:
I want to dive into a finance career, and my university happens to offer a course that coaches you up for L1- an already paid for prep course with a much higher than average pass rate seems like a pretty good deal to me. I would invest a good chunk of my time during the summer, and finish up in the fall, taking L1 in December. From there, if I pass, I’d have time to graduate and study up for the June 2016 L2. To back this with more than just exams, I’m working on getting two peer-reviewed papers published.
Unfortunately, that’s where the party ends, keeping in mind that the endgoal is a strong career. I don’t have basically any experience in the field: six months as a self-taught on-the-fly analyst at a startup, trying to put numbers to work behind marketing fluffiness (stemmed one of the papers), and three other seemingly useless unrelated jobs before that (marketing at a startup, market research, and very highly specialized IT). To make it worse, the GPA is only at 3.1, dragged down by a pretty nonstandard sophmore year where it was hard to focus on much of anything.

The way I see it, I can do two of three things this summer (because time…): continue work on the papers, begin work on the CFA, summer internship in the field.
First, the CFA. If I don’t start on the CFA during the summer, I will not be able to complete L1 in the winter, will forfeit the opportunity offered by the university, and afterwards it’ll likely become extremely drawn out. At the same time, I understand that the CFA is not the “golden ticket,” as I’ve seen it phrased–although there seems to be a good amount of dispute on this, with statements that it does open quite a few doors, whatever that means.
Next, the papers (already in the works). These seem far too good to drop: published in undergrad definitely set you apart. One of the papers in on marketing analytics, which would help show competency in working with data on an in depth level. The other is on exploratory research in finance theory–seems to me like a fantastic checkmark in a resume, and a show of mastery of the methods used in the process. However, I have little understanding of whether all this theoretical research would actually count when it came to hiring me down the line without the practical experience. I am not dealing with any compliance questions, not glanicng at any financial statements, etc. Quant work yes, but even then not necessarily in practical application.
Third, the internship. The benefits here are obvious: direct experience in the field, possibly flowing into an average job. Consequently, the cost is forfeiting the job experience. Of course, there’s still the matter of finding one this late in the game and with my less than stellar GPA.

No matter how I spin this, there’s a big opportunity cost. What do you guys think? Two of three: tunnel vision to the CFA, intern, publish. Which ones will benefit the most?
It may be worth noting that I’m looking to live and work in the SF bay area (not sure if job market composition affects the pull each factor has)
Let me know your thoughts, sorry for the wall of text, and thank you in advance!
Edit: trimmed a bit and made more readable
 
Gonna be getting punched in the face a whole lot more without one…
 
Go for the internship (as you said if you can find one). Ideally one at a company and position you would like to have after graduation. I would also suggest that if you do find one not to pursue the other two (at least not for career reasons). The most important thing you can do coming out of college is get a good first job, and the best way to do that is kick ass in an internship, so instead of spending 10 hours a week doing other things spend an extra 10 hours going the extra mile at your office (if they let you). Research and passing level 1 would be nice, but are nothing compared to solid intership experience, or even better a manager that you impressed and now wants to hire you.
Also what makes you so sure you will fail level 1 if you don’t study over the summer you will fail? If your a finance major a lot of it will be review, and if I’m not mistaken you can not register for level 2 until you graduate so assuming you will graduate in the spring you won’t be able to take it until 2017 anyway, so I’m not sure passing it in the winter (as opposed to spring 2016) will have any benefit.
Overall, good experience trumps almost anything else, I would focus 100% on getting the intership.
 
Ron Swanson wrote:
Go for the internship (as you said if you can find one). Ideally one at a company and position you would like to have after graduation. I would also suggest that if you do find one not to pursue the other two (at least not for career reasons). The most important thing you can do coming out of college is get a good first job, and the best way to do that is kick ass in an internship, so instead of spending 10 hours a week doing other things spend an extra 10 hours going the extra mile at your office (if they let you). Research and passing level 1 would be nice, but are nothing compared to solid intership experience, or even better a manager that you impressed and now wants to hire you.
Overall, good experience trumps almost anything else, I would focus 100% on getting the intership.
Click to expand...
This x1000.
 
Ron Swanson wrote:
Go for the internship (as you said if you can find one). Ideally one at a company and position you would like to have after graduation. I would also suggest that if you do find one not to pursue the other two (at least not for career reasons). The most important thing you can do coming out of college is get a good first job, and the best way to do that is kick ass in an internship, so instead of spending 10 hours a week doing other things spend an extra 10 hours going the extra mile at your office (if they let you). Research and passing level 1 would be nice, but are nothing compared to solid intership experience, or even better a manager that you impressed and now wants to hire you.
Also what makes you so sure you will fail level 1 if you don’t study over the summer you will fail? If your a finance major a lot of it will be review, and if I’m not mistaken you can not register for level 2 until you graduate so assuming you will graduate in the spring you won’t be able to take it until 2017 anyway, so I’m not sure passing it in the winter (as opposed to spring 2016) will have any benefit.
Overall, good experience trumps almost anything else, I would focus 100% on getting the intership.
Click to expand...
You can write L1 if you are in your last year of a degree. Otherwise agree with what you’ve said
 
Thanks guys! Do you still think this holds in the long-run?
I guess the question I should have been asking is something else… Do you think that in the long run there is tangible weight carried by the CFA and by having publications? And which one has more?
If I was to shoot for the bigger non-boutique jobs, I’m worried that I’d just be one of a million of those fresh out of school canidates with some intern experience at a small firm, except with lower grades. Takign time for the CFA and/or publications, I would be less familiar with the exact ins and outs of the processes, but it would show potential as any, as well as prove a general understanding of the proceses and proficiency in using the tools- and isn’t that what’s really expected from entry-level candidates?
As to why not just take it later on my own: I obviously don’t plan to fail the exam, but I do think the extra degree of safety provided by the program could go a long way against the 42% pass rate (results from the university’s program are significantly higher). It is what you put in, but if there are more reliable proven methods than imporvisation that can potentially save me a year’s worth of time in the long run, I think they’re important to consider.
 
I get the sense that publications carry much more weight for grad schools than most jobs. I think the pool of candidates with good internship experience who dont have a job is smaller than you think, and either way its definitly smaller than the pool of people without experience. Your not wrong that publications and passing level 1 help to show a potential employer that you have the potential to be good at a job, but why show potential when you can prove that you will be good at a job by actually doing it in an internship (yes I know what you do after you start working for real is different than an internship but you get my point).
Your approach is not irrational, given most schools/ academic organizations value unquie kickers, and being in school thats what you’ve been expoused to, but from what I’ve seen most jobs are much more about “can this person do this job really well”.
Also do you have an specific job/ set of jobs your looking to get after graduation? If so what it is?
 
Thanks, Ron. Some day I’ll try and make a meat tornado happen for ya
All I can definitely say as to what I’m looking for is quant work. Research analytics and risk management seem the most appealing (and the closest to what I’ve worked with), letting me play around with statistics and tie it in with with money, while not going the extreme of an actuarial career path. I do have some experience in model building from the start-ups and the papers, just not specifically with default focused models, etc. I have considered a masters in econ or big data, and both of those would definitely go a long way as far as skills there, but that’s up in the air and no matter what wouldn’t come straight after graduating- low grades and all, and I don’t have time to try to finetune an approach for the GRE right now.
And in relation to graduating, I should be able to make the late registration deadline in March for L2 in June, unless things get weird with the scheduling.
 
Cosachok wrote:
Thanks, Ron. Some day I’ll try and make a meat tornado happen for ya
Click to expand...
That like an entirely new meat delivery system.
I don’t know a ton about the risk management business, so take what I say with a grain of salt (and try to get in front of a real person in risk management, most likely an alumni of your college). anyway if your still there, check out an FRM instead of a CFA. Again, I dont know a ton about it, but I get the sense its respected for risk management. Also for quant stuff you might need an advanced degree, look at a masters in financial engineering (or risk management or something else thats as close as possible to what you want to do). It might seem liek a waste to spend all that time and money on a degree when you will re-learn everything in the first two years at a job ( I feel that way about majoring in finance sometimes) but 99% of the time your best bet is to take the most direct route to the job you want.
Hope that was somewhat helpful, and again dont let getting a head start in the CFA take time away from finding the best job you can, you can wait a year or two for a CFA but your first job is HUGE for your career.
 
Is it just me or is it extremely obvious?
INTERNSHIP >>>>>> CFA exams
If you land a good internship, you chance of getting a finance job later is 100000x higher than passing all your CFA exams on your first try.
^_^
NANA
 
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