Questions For Those Studying Finance From A Year 10 Student (1 Viewer)

[oliver.lacey]

Hello all, a few days ago I joined the board of studies website looking for info on HSC courses for next year (which I'm required to pick in a few weeks, ah!) & I'm amazed at the plethora of information I've found.

After much pondering, I've made up my mind that I'll go for a finance degree when I leave school, although I'm not fully aware of the job opportunities it will open, I hope with a little more reading & asking around I'll soon find out

My question is (& it's a confusing one) is whether or not I should do 3 unit math next year. I do reasonably well at math (I rank in the middle of my school's top math class, hope to move into the top 10 with more work) but I'm not really sure if I'm cut out for it. I know it will ask alot of me & theres a large posibility I could get a better UAI doing another humanity.

Is it worth doing extention 1 math? will the skills learnt be required/make easier uni & beyond for finance or would I be better off doing another subject which would allow me to get a better UAI & stay with Advanced Math (2u)?

Sorry to make this an epic, thanks for reading

 

[seremify007]

Do 3u maths. Even if you suck at it, it might even count for your UAI as I found out. That, and even if you hate it, you can drop it after year11, and it'll help you with your year12 2u adv work.

I failed my 3u assessments in school (ie. <50%) yet it scaled up so much that it overtook my business studies mark of 88% which then got scaled down.

As for helping out in finance, I'm not really sure because I haven't done finance yet. But in QMA (a compulsory subject in UNSW B Commerce of which Finance is a major), we have to do some of the stuff we learnt in 3u (eg. integration by substitution) so if you do it for HSC, it'll definitely help lessen the workload in uni. That being said, despite me getting decent marks in all my QMA tests/attendance (5/5, 4.5/5, 5/5 and 14/20), I still ended up with only 58% overall (after doing final exam which I thought I went okay in) without scaling. Go figure.

 

[blackfriday]

firstly, dont make up your mind because you're in year 10 and you some solid years of underage drinking and other things ahead of you. its good that you have an idea of what you want, but talk to people actually in the finance industry like bankers.

3u maths is piss easy anyway and it'll be stupid not to do it. im not really sure how much it'll help you when you get to uni because the stuff in qma is pretty basic.

 

[seremify007]

Not everyone is good at 3u maths nor QMA

I reckon it's good that he has an idea of what he wants, and if he's serious about it, he can save himself considerable amounts of effort (or prevent the wasting of energy) by trying out some subjects in year11/12 which'll help him either decide whether or not he still wants to pursue those areas as a career, and also to help him when he's studying these things in uni.

I know that if I didn't study eco back in year11/12, I would be quite up the creek at UNSW in Econ1101 (compulsory core subject for first year B Comm).

EDIT: Btw blackfriday, did you actually do QMA last session? Just curious as to how you went... I'm guessing that the loss of marks wouldn't have been from inability to do questions but rather, from misunderstanding and misinterpretting them since most of the questions were in the form of written q's rather than just "calculate this".

 

[overfloat]

the amount of maths you need is dependent on which subjects you end up taking, subjects like Emerging Markets, and Multinational Corporate Finance really dont need much maths at all, whereas if you get heavily into more applied finance you will find that the maths takes up a much larger portion of your study.

however......I think it really is to early to be deciding what specific courses you are going to do at uni

 

[Capitalist]

Well of course, in your situation, the first priority will be getting into your desired course in university. So if you think taking 3U maths may have a detriment to your UAI to the extent that you may not make your desired finance course, then of course, don't take it. Get into university first, then worry about doing well in university later.

If taking 3U maths would not be of such detriment to your UAI, then I would recommend you study it. Finance is in large part, maths based, and the more practise in maths you get, the easier things will be.

And anyway, if it doesn't work out, you can always drop the subject.

 

[volition]

my advice: do 3 unit maths, it's probably worth it in your case.

It's not that hard, and it will boost your UAI more than humanities will I think. (this is a generalisation and not necessarily true)