MSc Finance and CFA or just CFA

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TCDublin

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Hello,

I have been wondering what decision I should take concerning my next step in life. I lived in Ireland for 1 year and have been in the States for about 5 years now. I have an undergraduate degree (BSc) in Business Management emphasis in Finance and Economics.

I took the CFA Level 1 exam this June 2015 and I failed. I have been working as a equity research intern in a small firm, but I have learned a lot.

Where I need advice is: I could go to Trinity College Dublin to get my MSc Finance, while I prepare for the CFA Level 1. Or I could just prepare for the CFA Level 1 again.

I really want to go to TCD but it is just too expensive, since I didn’t get a scholarship, lets say I would have to take 40K in loans. Why do I want to go to Trinity in the first place? Because I would like to work internationally, hopefully in Ireland, UK, South America or USA. TCD has a great reputation world-wide and I already got in. I am 24 years old and I don’t want to waste time. TCD (I believe) will give me the opportunity to find a good job and will help in networking, interview, job hunting settings.

So I did the math and I would have to be making around 7K more each year to make the TCD deal profitable. (Lets say I find a job now with BSc and I make 50k, I would be aiming for 57K at least to make this interesting.)

1)I have no attachments here
2)I will need to get a loan
3)I would love to go to TCD
4)I will get lazy and I wont go to gradschool if I dont go to TCD
5)I don’t have a job and I can’t the job I want to!

Thank you,
TCDublin
 
Only reason to go to a MSC of finance program is for the recruiting opportunities that come with it. If you think you can get a much better offer after graduation then absolutely do it if not just stick with your current job if you can convert that into FT and try to lateral out later.
 
Thank you all for your responses. But, what do you think would be a better path?
Have you even heard of TCD before? I did when growing up a lot, because there was a famous professor -from my country -who went there for his PhD.
 
Do you think you could turn the ER Internship into a full time job? If so I would try that first, if you can’t get any sorta of full time job you want than you might as well try grad school for a second shoot. I’m curious, do you have a sense of how competitive the finance job market is in Ireland? That could obviously move you one way or the other.
 
Sadly, they are a very very small firm (4 full time employees), they love what I do, they just don’t have enough clients and the models are already in place. They hired me to create a DCF model, a Discounted Dividend model, and some other stuff. Now I am doing some research in the healthcare sector (mostly ETFs and MF) and my work is pretty much done. So FT job is not a possibility and they told me from the beggining pretty much.
To be honest, I have talked to students, alumni and admissions - they all work in what they want, I dont know if they make money or not, but they all work as analysts, researchers, etc. Which is pretty nice. There is a more competitive university in dublin called UCD - Smurfit Business School. But that name is not well-known in South America or North America.
My biggest concern is the 40k in studend loans I will need to take in order to finish the MSc and pay for rent. That 40k is without adding the money I could be making that year that I will be studying.
I dont know if people will know TCD when/if I come back to the US.
It is a CFA accredited, FRM accredited program though, which is nice.
Thanks again,
TCDublin
 
TCDublin wrote:
Sadly, they are a very very small firm (4 full time employees), they love what I do, they just don’t have enough clients and the models are already in place. They hired me to create a DCF model, a Discounted Dividend model, and some other stuff. Now I am doing some research in the healthcare sector (mostly ETFs and MF) and my work is pretty much done. So FT job is not a possibility and they told me from the beggining pretty much.
I dont know if people will know TCD when/if I come back to the US.
Click to expand...
Yeah from the sound of it you are not gonna be able to use this internship to spring into a full time position somewhere
also I had not heard of TCD before this, but if alumni are getting positions that’s the best indicator of succes coming out of it. Just make sure that the students your talking to are a representative sample, if you ask admissions about students they will direct you to the ones who got jobs, even if it’s a tiny percentage.
 
Have you looked at the historical placements of the program and average starting salary? To me that’s the most telling things about how effect a program is at placing its students.
 
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