<p>This thread is most relevant to fellow Whartonites but still open to anyone.</p>
<p>I hear you need to be at the top of your class to get the top jobs (unless you have very strong connections). So what’s the correct game plan:</p>
<p>a) Take courses to stroke your GPA
b) Take courses that are of genuine interest with hopes of perhaps becoming self-employed (forced move due to non-competitively low GPA)</p>
<p>I’m actually not looking for a Wall Street job or anything in investment banking / commercial banking. I am much more interested in trading/money management. Thus, I need to know whether my goal should be high GPA for internships/jobs with hedge funds or take the hardest stat/math/derivative/finance courses with the dream of starting up my own venture.</p>
<p>high gpa with killer schedule might not be an option for me (I’m not a savant). As for the transcript comparison, I’m afraid once you get into advanced courses where one gives everyone an A and another gives only 4/40 people an A, employers might prefer the former.</p>
<p>Maybe someone can appeal to my business logic. Going for an entrepreneurial dream in an increasingly complex environment is really high risk. Risk that I cannot diversify away nor hedge. Going for a corporate job is relatively safe but seems to defeat the purpose of going to Wharton (I could have gone to my state school for free, finished first and gotten to basically the same level). Any advice?</p>
<p>1) You don’t have to be at the TOP of your class at Wharton to land an amazing job. They know Whartonites are the best of the best, and far and above ANY other graduates from other colleges (be them from Harvard or Michigan State) in terms of business knowledge.</p>
<p>2) If you take classes you don’t enjoy, you probably won’t even get a good grade even if it is an “easy” course. Either way, it’s better to challenge yourself and do what you are truly interested in and get a 3.2, than flit away college with easy courses and get a 3.8. I really believe that the more you enjoy college, the more you will succeed as a result of it.</p>
<p>3) Finally, it’s actually pretty difficult to gauge which courses give all As and which do not. You’d be silly to pick a course based on the <em>probability</em> that it will yield an increase in your GPA.</p>
<p>I agree with a lot of that but let me put some more concrete examples for you guys to appraise:</p>
<p>I took calc BC this year and took AB last year. I got a 5 on AB and most likely got a 5 on BC. The question is: do I go on to multivariable or take it easy with 104? 104 has it’s merit because I had a crummy teacher for BC so I’m not very strong with series and polars. multi would open up financial derivatives for me.</p>
<p>I am most likely going to be taking a foreign language because I won’t exempt out. I could take the exam and place into a high level Russian class (I’m a fluent speaker but illiterate) or I could play dumb and take introductory Russian and nail it. (GPA hedge)</p>
<p>I’ll end on a philosophical note: I used to play chess competitively. In one of my prep books, the author suggested not to look for available squares for my pieces but to figure out where the pieces would be most effectively situated and put them there. As such, I need to figure out my game plan so I can base my decisions on what I’m trying to achieve.</p>
<p>necro, I was thinking about the same exact stuff as you for a long time. I took BC in my junior year and signed up for multivariable calc this year and did nothing so now I don’t really remember any calculus! And trust me I remember nothing about series. But I’m still probably going to sign up for 114. It is probably better to challenge myself rather than take “the easy way out” because eventually I will be challenged, so I should be prepared. What will you do second and third semester after you “retake” subjects that you know? You probably wouldn’t do that well.</p>
<p>necro- referring to math: about half the math 104 class last semester had gotten 5 on BC. I had not (I took AB and got a 5). I would venture to say that there was absolutely no difference in grades between AB and BC kids. In fact, the BC kids I know did worse than me. For that specific example, I’d go ahead and take 114.</p>
<p>In general, I would say take it easy for first semester (take a pretty easy russian course for example–i did the same for spanish). You’ll find that you can handle the work and will probably feel comfortable taking classes that aren’t guaranteed A’s</p>