Lars Kain Email & Phone Number

This is my second semester in the Ivy College of Business at Iowa State University for Finance. I started my college journey in Environmental Engineering because of my love for the environment and interest in math. My transition into Finance has been nothing but amazing. I have great levels of interest in classes like financial accounting and economics because of my passion for understanding the nuances of money and how it is tied into businesses. My greatest achievement in my schoolwork thus far is getting a 99% on my financial accounting excel project. In this project I used the financial statements of two companies and put key information into excel to calculate all different kinds ratios such as profitability ratios and leverage ratios. I then used these ratios to make a formal write up on which company I believed was the better investment. Although the high grade achieved was nice, what I found most exciting about this project was doing my own outside research and realizing how it can apply to other companies. It is one of the first times I realized that what I was learning in class wasn’t just applicable to the exams. What made this so special is that I have always been driven to do my own research on things I find interesting. I was able to use skills from this project to make my own stock portfolio in excel, and an updated comparison worksheet where I can plug in financial statement information and get an automatic comparison between two companies. For me, when I’m truly interested in something it never feels like work but rather feels like any other passion or hobby. That is what I love most about finance, it has become something that I want to learn more about so it never feels monotonous.

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  Iowa State University

  Junior