Biz club highlight

Approved in spring 2008, the Wall Street Club (WSC) is an emerging business-oriented club at Baruch. The club provides students who are eager to learn about the financial services industry with resources, including access to the club's financial library. It also connects members with professionals through various professional skills workshops and presentations.

"Our club is the platform for us to learn about finance in a unique way that our classes or jobs do not provide, thus enhancing our professional development and with that building up the image of Baruch College on Wall Street," according to thewallstreetclub.org.

WSC started as an idea formulated by current president Matthew Chowdhary. Eager to create a club, Chowdhary and four other members began holding regular meetings at the Newman Library in fall 2007.

"I am an accounting student but I love finance and no club in this school was providing the skills that I needed to know about the finance industry ... so I asked a couple of my friends to join me," said Chowdhary.

Club member and sophomore Mashud Abukari described his exposure to WSC's events. "I had two phone interviews and will be moving on to the third round with JP Morgan Investment Bank. The interviewer asked a lot of tricky finance questions and I wouldn't have known any of the answers if I didn't go to the Wall Street Club because I never took any finance classes before," he said.

WSC holds weekly meetings every Friday to discuss financial terms and concepts, and provide a weekly overview of the industry focus, company analysis and virtual trading competitions.

WSC also offers the Investment Banking Training program. Taught by multiple senior instructors and experts, this two-day training program exposes students to hands-on financial modeling. Saturday excel workshops, also sponsored by WSC, are held for two hours once every two to four weeks.

The Wall Street Club has faced challenges when engaging in activities to enhance students' development in finance. After facing a shortage of funds, WSC remained active on campus, leveraging the shortcomings with the students' willingness to maintain the club functioning. Chowdhary said, "Our biggest challenge was regarding the IB [Investment Bank] training, it was a huge amount of money and we didn't have enough to compensate the students." The club attained funding from the Undergraduate Student Government to balance out the fees and expenses for the attendees, which include members as well as non-members.

To become a guest member of WSC or attend an upcoming event, visit thewallstreetclub.com for details. To become an active member, a student needs to attend at least 11 out of 14 meetings for the semester and participate in self-building presentations. Members also reap the benefit of discounts on investment banking trainings and Excel workshops.