Jen and Kristen here! Welcome to the first edition of our newsletter!

At The Wall Street Skinny, we're all about breaking down barriers in high finance. From our engaging podcasts to our educational videos on social media, we turn complex concepts into bite-sized, easy-to-digest lessons that make learning about finance fun.

In finance jargon, being “bullish” on something means you have a positive outlook. We have a positive outlook on YOU: your career, your personal development, your potential.

This Week on The Floor

We can't believe summer internships have come to a close and it’s time for fall recruiting to rev up. Many of you are either returning to campus, getting ready to hit the desk as a full-time employee, or thinking about your next career move.

Recruiting cycle has hit levels of absurdity in terms of how early everything starts. We're already talking about the window closing on Summer Analyst applications for next summer 😳.

We’re here to help you optimize your career path, and that often starts well before you land the job.

Today we’re doing that by answering one question we get every single week: “What college major will land me a job on Wall Street?”

• What’s next in the markets after a week of massive volatility?

• Summer analyst 2025 application deadlines are THIS WEEK

• What college major will land me a job on Wall Street?

• Coming up on the economic calendar: US inflation, production, and retail sales data; UK Q2GDP and inflation data; JPY Q2GDP

Markets Recap / Deal News

Interviewing this week? Here’s some content for your conversation.

Summer analyst application window is about to be slammed shut 🪟

Summer analyst applications for 2025 windows (for both rising sophomores and juniors!) are closing this week for many of the Investment Banking and Sales & Trading opportunities at NYC’s bulge bracket banks.

This speaks to the continuing trend of deadlines pushing earlier and earlier at a majority of firms.

Missed your window?

Don’t despair if you didn’t get the memo. We’ll be posting off-cycle internship opportunities — as well as other roles globally that recruit well into the fall semester — in upcoming editions of this newsletter.

What College Major Will Land Me a Job on Wall Street?

The answer might surprise you. 

After all, to the casual observer, it might seem like in order to land a job in the world of Finance, you should major in…Finance?  However, that is not at all the case. 

First of all, many schools don’t even offer a Finance major.  Liberal arts colleges — like Princeton and Brown where Kristen and I went to school — do not. 

They may offer majors in subjects that are what I call “finance-adjacent”, like Economics, Math, or at Princeton the notorious “ORFE” (which stands for Operations, Research, and Financial Engineering yet requires you take Organic Chemistry as a prerequisite). 

But you’ll find that Wall Street is full of senior managers and analysts alike who all majors in subjects totally unrelated to finance. 

Why?

Wall Street is built on the apprenticeship model of training. The vast majority of skills you need to know for performing the daily tasks related to your job are either taught during dedicated training sessions AFTER you’ve secured the job, or on the desk itself. The rest of the technical skills and market knowledge you need to know can be gleaned from publicly available courses (sign up for ours HERE) and typically ISN’T taught in a Finance, Econ, or Applied Math major. 

The bulk of what employers are looking for consists of four primary factors:

1. Raw intelligence

2. Curiosity

3. Grit

4. Personality

Notice how “Finance Major” appears NOWHERE on this list. 

In fact, most employers would rather see that you thrived in a challenging major that has little to do with finance, proving that you have the intelligence and tenacity to learn hard stuff, than to see you get a B+ in accounting. 

STEM majors have been tremendously popular as incoming hires because the structured thinking associated with the hard sciences tends to develop a great analytical toolkit. And, as basic coding skills have become part of a normal set of expectations for incoming analysts even in Sales roles, proficiency in Computer Science has increased in popularity as well.  

But that’s not all — in fact, Blackrock’s COO recently gave an interview saying they want more English majors and creative minds on Wall Street here. 

This isn’t just paying lip service to intellectual diversity — rather, some of the most successful investors on Wall Street have been humanities majors, because they’ve honed the ability to analyze texts that are widely open to interpretation and produce a cogent thesis and structured argument defending THEIR interpretation that can stand up to rigorous scrutiny.

Ironically, if you’re a 3.6 GPA in Finance, you might be (unfairly, perhaps) seen as a less attractive candidate than a Neurobiology major with a 2.9 GPA. Why?

One, the Neurobiology major is generally viewed as more difficult.

Two, because there is an implicit representation (rightfully or not) that you should know MORE than your peers with that kind of background and will be judged more harshly on technical skill. Whatever technical skill the Neuro major picked up was done in their spare time.

And if you majored in say, Accounting…but are applying for say, a job in Trading? Or an Econ major applying for a job in Investment Banking? Well, why did you spend your precious academic years focused on a finance-adjacent niche that has virtually nothing in common with the job you’re applying for?  

Applicants tend to fare better who pursue majors they are legitimately interested in that may have nothing to do with finance, while building up the rest of their resume with extracurricular activities that support their professed passion for finance. 

Regardless of your major, your extracurriculars and internship experiences are going to be the main focal point of your resume anyway. 

Your potential employer wants to see tons of internship experience, involvement in finance-related clubs and organizations (yes, we know how competitive these can be), and other pursuits that demonstrate your ability to work hard, learn quickly, and be a FUN PERSON TO HANG WITH. 

After all, if I’m going to spent 12 hours a day sitting next to you, you know what I don’t want to hear about?  Your finance classes.

This Week in the Markets

If you’re interviewing for a job in any kind of markets-facing or investing-based role, it helps to have a handle on economic data releases.

We will be rolling out training this Fall to help you learn to read financial news effectively and get you up to speed on the markets!

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