Skylar's Journey to Finance

Journey  Map: Finance

CHILDHOOD

Skylar grew up helping out at one of the many Aaron’s furniture stores his family owned in Tyler, Tx.  As he began to apply to colleges during his senior year of highschool, Skylar’s childhood exposure to a small business piqued his interest in attending McCombs.  In addition to being relevant to his childhood, Skylar was a competitive student and was drawn to the business school at UT because of its prestige.  As a future Finance major, Skylar believed he would develop the quantitative skills necessary to run his own successful business one day.  After he was accepted into McCombs, Skylar’s confidence in his decision to study Finance in college was solidified.  Skylar resumed his life as a lazy college senior and spent the rest of the year either sprawled out asleep in the back of his chemistry lab or on the football field.  

ROLE MODELS

 As a competitive person, Skylar knew the importance of getting involved in academic organizations on campus.  When he was selected as part of the Freshman class for the Undergraduate Business Council (UBC), Skylar was exposed to a network of highly successful upperclassmen. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and the Boston Consulting Group, were just a few of the hallmark brands the UBC seniors boasted.  Like many bright-eyed and snot-nosed freshmen, Skylar was silently coerced into believing banking and consulting were the only acceptable career routes.  As he tried to emulate these upperclassmen, Skylar’s confidence in Finance, and Business Honors, as a major grew exponentially.  Instead of learning more about the major itself, Skylar let the apparent success of those influencers around him mold his future.  Due to the fact that most students don’t begin taking major-related classes until junior year, Skylar was able to claim the title as “Finance” major and follow the footsteps of those before him with very little conflict.             

AN EXCUSE TO GO TO SCOTLAND

During the summer after his sophomore year, Skylar decided he wanted to gain experience abroad.  Since the LEB Scotland trip was one the only summer abroad programs offered in the Business school, Skylar joined despite his lack of interest in Law.  After a summer of talking like William Wallace and drinking copious amount of beer, Skylar became decided he wanted to investigate a career in Business Law.  As a Finance major, Skylar rationalized that he would develop the holistic view of business required for Law more effectively than as one of the other majors.  Unfortunately his dreams of yelling “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH” in an old, mahogany court house were destroyed after attending law career fairs and speaking with tenured professionals.  After realizing that Law was not right for him, Skylar considered consulting as a profession because of it’s broad exposure to business.  Skylar’s confidence in studying Finance quickly shot back up as he realized this major would give him the best shot at consulting interviews.  

THE SUMMER OF SYNERGIES

After spending a summer racking up frequent flyer points and mindlessly repeating words like “synergies” and “apples-to-apples”, Skylar began his senior year of college debating whether a life in consulting is right for him.  He came back thinking that Finance had adequately prepared him to excel in consulting and knew that he was too far down the rabbit hole to change majors anyway.  During his senior year, Skylar had more opportunity to take Finance classes, like Real Estate and Entrepreneurial Finance, that he was genuinely interested in.  In retrospect, Skylar agrees that attaining a Finance degree from McCombs was the right move and ultimately flagged him as a very marketable college graduate.