I hope CFA never even closely resembles MBA. MBAs are a dime a dozen. Although CFA Charterholders look to be growing exponentially in the past 10 years.
Article would have been more interesting if it said whether the CFA would become the next top 5 MBA…otherwise, if it just becomes the MBA (more generically speaking) then that’s probably a bad thing because fewer people will care about the CFA than they do now
I would argue that the CFA is already more prestigious whan some lower ranked MBA programs. However, breaking into a more reputable tier would be much more difficult if not impossible.
That picture in the article showing people taking the test is crazy! Is that how seating is in some of your exams??! People are just too close and looking left/right in a 3 hour period is almost impossible! thats a serious recipe for getting accused of cheating…Makes me actually appreciate my test centre a little more lol.
Any thoughts on how impactful having a CFA Charter would be on a top-15 MBA application? Thinking about applying to Columbia after finishing the CFA program.
CFA and MBA serve different purposes. I haven’t read the article, but for this comparison to make any sense at all, you would have to limit the scope to financial companies and/or (possibly) corporate finance roles.
There is no marketing, no org behavior (other than governance), no learning how to operate in teams. If I wanted a regional marketer at Coca Cola, or a development officer at a tech startup, the CFA would be nearly useless.
Sorry, you said that large investment firms compete to hire Top MBA students. I was saying that hopefully they’ll compete for the Top MBA students who have their charter or progression even more.
Surprisingly, bulge bracket banks are more-than-willing to hire top-MBA graduates that have no finance experience at all.
A top-MBA graduate that already holds the CFA designation should be very-sought-after indeed.
The reason that this doesn’t happen too often is that most CFA charterholders are unwilling to incur the further expense of an MBA, and because most finance coursework would be redundant to what they’ve already learned.
I hope to be one of these exceptions soon. I’m surprised that more people with the CFA or progression don’t view MBA as a route to go if they’re not content. The CFA costs in term of money is not that high, but taking on debt to get a MBA is scary. I think it’s a good investment if you get into somewhere good.
How about leveraging the network of CFA Charterholders for breaking into IB without an IB background. Not necessarily looking at BBs … a boutique would be fine (and, depending on the firm, preferable).