The up and coming branch of fintech and data is a useful and impactful niche that is growing more and more day by day. Stevens Institute of Technology’s School of Business expresses this through its majors offered such as Quantitative Finance, Information Systems, and Business and Technology. The classes offered in these courses don’t focus solely on the typical business classes that are believed to be taken at colleges, such as finance, economics, etc., but also classes that focus on coding and excel modeling and its applications to the business world. Those who pursue these courses could often be going after jobs in the industries of investment banking, data science, or business analytics.
The world we live in is filled with data gathered from many different sources. This could be on a big or small scale. Data can be analyzed in many different ways, one of them being by the use of Excel. Excel is one of the many tools that can be used by those in many different analyst professions due to the many built in functions which can aid in the analysis of data. So how can this information be applied to someone who is not pursuing a career in this field? Excel can be used to do something as simple as keeping track of your finances. So how would someone effectively create a budget on Excel? First, start by labeling three separate columns by “Reason,” “Date,” and “Amount.” Then go ahead and fill in the rows with their corresponding answers. Create a total cell under the amount section. Type in “=sum(),” and highlight the numbers in the amount row, and press enter — and that’s it! Your total will appear and let you know what you spent in total on all of your expenses, and will let you easily reference what you spent money on, when you spent it, and how much it was, all in one organized place!
Furthermore, there is a large demand for careers in the interdiscipline of financial technology. This is what makes it such a lucrative and sought after career by many. Also, many go after their dream of working on the world famous Wall Street in New York City, where major finance companies are. The constant hustle is what many work for, whether out of passion or desire for the high salaries.
So how can students get involved in the field of finance technology or just learn about it? Well, if they are still in college they can take a correlated class as an elective, or even take up a minor in the subject! If planning to go on to further studies, students can try to go into their intended fintech field by pursuing a masters in the subject. For example, if a student is majoring in Computer Science, they can pursue their masters in Computational Finance, still allowing them to pave a pathway into the field.
Being in college is a time to figure out your interests. Just because you go to college planning to pursue a certain major, you may realize that it may not be your finding. If that is the case, then consider this. Are you a data oriented individual? Do you enjoy analyzing data and seeing what sort of conclusions you can form from it? Do you like to learn about the financial market, economy, or another business discipline? If your answers are yes, it could mean that you could be well suited to become some sort of analyst in business. This could be a financial analyst, economic analyst, data analyst, and much more.
Although, it is important to know that this is not all there is to fintech. There is much, much more ranging from algorithmic trading to Venmo. It’s a large and diverse field filled with many different aspects that help make not only the financial world, but the whole business world more efficient and help companies achieve maximum effectiveness.
