<p>The thing about the finance part is that anyone in the industry can teach you that, but they can’t teach you the math. People don’t get hired coming out of college for their expertise at anything. They get hired for their intelligence, their work ethic, a basic skill set, and their willingness to learn. A couple of finance courses doesn’t make you employable, it just shows that you have an interest in the field and that you know some basic concepts. Any real financial institution is going to insist on training you itself anyway.</p>
<p>If you are intelligent about your courses, your research projects, and your internships, you can get your ticket punched “finance” without the MSFM, at least at the entry level. You don’t really even have to do that, though. One of my relatives has a great finance job now, and he knew absolutely nothing about the field until the day he started work. (He’s a math PhD, and he got hired based on that and his poker playing ability. He was a University of Chicago physics major.)</p>
<p>Other posters here know a lot more than I about the ins and outs of getting finance industry jobs with a Chicago BA. (Assuming there still is a finance industry, and that it’s still hiring. All those quants 10 years older than you? You know what they’ve been doing since they left college? Designing the mortgage-backed securities that essentially failed over the past year.)</p>