Finance industry everywhere sucks in today’s world. Don’t you have higher unemployment rate in UK than in US and many people who used to work in Finance are flipping burgers in Wembley. I guess people from Boston are not dreamers but realistic and know the limits of this charter, at least in states. May be in places like Ghana, they worship you if you get your charter.
East Coast people annoy me in general and i find them to be much different than west coast or southern gents. i think it has to do with cold weather making people wear more layers, which leads to more clothing to judge people on. In warm weather, the millionaire is wearing shorts next to the 30kaire. not ALL East Coasters, but a lot. You guys on the east coast are all crammed in there too tight. hard not to get on each others nerves when your personal space is minimal
I get kicked around at work nearly everyday, keeps me motivated…actually keeps me very very motivated.
Skip, I was thinking about making a move to west coast sometime in the future. Maybe after MBA i can work for PIMCO and enjoy Newport Beach! I never been but heard its beautiful. But people don’t judge you on the west coast? are you kidding me, LA is all about money and beautiful people.
Its limited…true… but its extremely easy (haven’t done level3 yet though)… compared to a masters or an MBA… takes considerably less effort… no opp cost since most people work whilst doing it and its free for most people as work pays for it… I just don’t see the downside…
I am pretty sure most of the CFA curriculum encompasses most MBA-level coursework, though some areas are not as detailed. But this brings on the classic MBA vs. CFA argument.
Wow Aiming, so masters in econometrics was easy? I always thought masters in econ dealt with a lot of higher level math?
Are you kidding me? MBA doesn’t take 4 months of hard work. You can pass MBA even if you get B grade. B-school doesn’t test you everything at the same time like CFA. The amount of material you learn in the CFA is 20 times more than the MBA. Every class in MBA has only 1 text book from which professor teaches you unlike CFA, where you have to study 6 fat books. They judge you on your presentation and interpersonal skills, how fast you can think unlike CFA, where you learn for 4-5 months and then need to spit out everything in 6 hours. MBA is a joke compare to CFA (IMO).
MBA’s focus is different, like you mention the presentation and interpersonal skills. If you concentrate in Finance in your typical MBA, the material will be very familiar to CFA, though some coursework is concentrated, and will go into a little more depth (i.e - take a valuation course in b-school, you’ll see similar formulas, but work with more realistic examples than CFA questions). I think dedication to the CFA curriculum is much more vigorous and thus, deserves its credit.
This is a huge conundrum for me too. I just don’t see myself learning very much more from an MBA beyond the CFA material, and yet it seems like a requirement in order to break into the senior ranks at most firms. It’s just such a massive expense (120k plus two years opp cost), for so little new knowledge. The only new stuff I think i’d learn in an mba is general management skills (which probably can’t really be learned anyway) and marketing (worthless). Anyways, I’m not going to worry about it too much until after June. Most MBAs strike me as way overrated. Just because they spend two years working out case questions and putting together ppt slides doesn’t make them somehow magically more capable at anything.
MBA and CFA are overrated in their own way, but do we really have any option to move forward in our career? Employers have setup the benchmarks like CFA and MBA for mid level job positions and we all have to follow this do-not-make-sense rule.
I agree with cfaboston - MBA is a joke compared to CFA. I work at a hedge fund and most people I deal with have their charter. I work with two people who have Wharton MBA. One of them went on to get CFA and he said CFA is harder, n/j…
A friend of mine is on his way to Wharton MBA and he failed L1 twice and gave up.
hardest part of MBA is getting in. Once you are in, its a breeze. You can study your ars off on CFA, know the material, then go into d-day and a few questions wrong here and there and your done. Trust me, it happened. You know what sucks even more, the same thing can happen this year…
Unless you start in September and study every single day