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Financial Services Fellowship, 2015: Meagan Keating
"The Financial Services Fellowship is a prestigious award that gives students who are interested in financial services a hands-on experience through an intensive trip to New York City during spring break. Students will meet with people representing a wide range of roles in this industry, including journalists, sales and trading analysts, investment professionals, hedge fund managers, financial analysts and more. All expenses are paid through the generosity of a Reed trustee"
As a sophomore wavering between Political Science and Economics, I applied for the Financial Services Fellowship because I was fascinated with the relationship between capitalism, markets, and economic policy. In this sense, I embarked on the trip hungry for information and knowledge about the financial world that would help me understand it as a system of parts comprising a whole. However, after four days of visiting all sorts of different financial firms and with a few weeks of retrospection, I think I now understand it better as a series of dynamic parts that are constantly shifting and evolving as the world advances. While it certainly didn’t answer all of my questions about capitalism and wealth distribution, I now have a better sense of how individuals on trading floors actually interact with complex financial instruments that are used to mitigate risk and manipulate markets in some seriously fascinating ways.
Beyond my academic reflections with the fellowship, the trip was perhaps most useful in the professional career experience it provided. Every night in New York City involved meeting with professionals in finance (especially Reed alumni in finance!) in formal settings at various highend restaurants. At times interacting with strangers was easier and more interesting than others, and I was able to talk to several Reed alumni who had transitioned from finance to law in their careers and who were excited to talk to me about both professions. While “networking” never really became enjoyable per say, I certainly came away from the trip feeling more prepared to handle future career situations.
Overall, the trip was a fantastic learning experience, perhaps most so in learning how to navigate the foreign world of professional careers and life in NYC. Among the most surprising things I learned were: 1) Despite usually preferring quieter and smaller towns and cities, I actually really enjoyed the pace and feel of NYC 2) I connected with several great students on the trip who I had never had a chance to get to know at Reed 3) Business suits are surprisingly comfortable and it took a very short time for me to feel normal wearing one every day.
I would highly recommend applying for this trip even if you are not set on a career finance, as professional career experience off campus is an invaluable asset to exploring careers after Reed.
Continue reading Financial Services Fellowship, 2015: Meagan Keating
Financial Services Fellowship, 2015: Sophie Bucci
"The Financial Services Fellowship is a prestigious award that gives students who are interested in financial services a hands-on experience through an intensive trip to New York City during spring break. Students will meet with people representing a wide range of roles in this industry, including journalists, sales and trading analysts, investment professionals, hedge fund managers, financial analysts and more. All expenses are paid through the generosity of a Reed trustee"
As the name of the Financial Services Fellowship would imply, fellows’ spring break in New York was centered around career opportunities in finance: We visited salespeople, investment bankers, consultants, research analysts, quantitative financers, portfolio managers, relationship managers, risk managers, newspeople, technologists, and operations professionals in their native environments at major investment banks, hedge funds, economic and investment consulting firms, a financial press, and a private equity fund. Before and during the trip, fellows were also given the opportunity to learn about net present value calculations, bonds, derivatives, regulation, income statements, and asset-backed securities.
More than this, however, the trip offered a broader introduction into the world of work and life beyond Reed. As the rare Reedie who actively looks forward to working in an office this summer and after graduation, it was refreshing to me to wake up early each morning, put on a suit, and experience an 8 am to 10 pm day full of business meetings and smart people getting things done in one of the greatest cities in the world. More than any specific pieces of knowledge, like the difference between debt and a loan and or the factors contributing to the lack of a robust secondary market for private equity buyins, I’ll remember my positive impressions of general professional life and its wealth of possibilities. Within the finance industry alone, there are far more roles than I had originally anticipated, and enough products, methods, and jargon to satisfy a Reedie’s intellectual curiosity for quite some time.
Continue reading Financial Services Fellowship, 2015: Sophie Bucci
Financial Services Fellowship, 2015: Dean Young, Ahyan Panjwani, Zach Harding-Laprade
“The Financial Services Fellowship is a prestigious award that gives students who are interested in financial services a hands-on experience through an intensive trip to New York City during spring break. Students will meet with people representing a wide range of roles in this industry, including journalists, sales and trading analysts, investment professionals, hedge fund managers, financial analysts and more. All expenses are paid through the generosity of a Reed trustee”
Read on to learn of the experiences of a few of the Financial Services Fellows of 2015
Continue reading Financial Services Fellowship, 2015: Dean Young, Ahyan Panjwani, Zach Harding-Laprade
Financial Fellowship Trip in New York
The Financial Fellowship Trip was a great experience and introduction to the different opportunities in the financial services industry. We met with a series of different firms in New York and were able to get a better understanding of what it would be like to work in finance and what the work culture is like at smaller vs. larger firms.
We were fortunate enough to meet and connect with other Reedies in New York and see what would life beyond reed look like and what might the transition be like from Reed to finance. The experience was overwhelming and exhilarating and I would strongly recommend others students to apply next year.
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