Intern
Joined: 09 Mar 2017
Posts: 35
Concentration: Accounting
GMAT 1: 730 Q48 V41
GPA: 3.64
Re: Benefit to taking undergrad classes I will retake in grad school?
[#permalink]
29 Oct 2017, 09:34
Okay, my first thought is to ask whether you could audit/just sit in on the Investments and/or Problems in Financial Management courses. I'd say, depending on your own motivation/time you can devote to the classes/etc., you could probably learn maybe 50-70% of what you would if you took the class for a grade. But that 50-70% might make the transition to grad school a bit easier, if you already have some exposure to the topics of some of your first classes there. It could also help you learn the topics more deeply than you would have if the graduate course were your first exposure to the topic.
I'm not sure about the Problems in Financial Management course specifically. Hard to know without a course description or syllabus. In general, I'd say I have found that graduate courses that are "basically" the same course as an undergraduate version.... you'll cover much of the same content, but usually do so a little bit more rigorously. And the homework/problem sets might be a bit harder and require more intuition and independent thinking. They tend to teach assuming that you've had calculus/decent quant background, which means they can do proofs/explanations "the right way" instead of waving that stuff under the rug as tends to happen in undergrad. (My experience is mostly with stat/econ/accounting classes. Not sure if all this is true for Investments specifically, but definitely some of the more quantitative Finance courses.)
Other things to consider: are most of the MSF programs you're looking at one year? That is, would you be applying for jobs in the fall of that year? In that case, having more business background AND more finance courses on your transcripts *before* fall on-campus recruiting would be helpful. So that might argue for, no, not a waste of money. Because some companies might ask for transcripts and be looking for a specific number of business or finance courses. And because if you get interviews that have a business case study component, you'll be at an advantage if you already have some of the terminology under your belt.
On that note, you might also consider looking instead at general business classes that definitely wouldn't be taught in your MSF program, to give yourself the broader business background that a specialized masters might not. Something where you wouldn't have to worry about wasting money on repeat classes, but that still would be useful background. Maybe Macroeconomics or Management? Or, if you think your quant/math background is weak, Stat or Linear Algebra perhaps (depending what you've already had/need.)