Sophomore joins finance 'Hall of Fame'

This Thanksgiving, Engineering sophomore Ashok Rao had much to be grateful for.

Over the course of the past month, Rao and various teammates he’s worked with have cleaned up with a first place finish in the Wharton Alliance Diversity Case Competition, an Honorable Mention in the Wharton Public Policy Case Competition and most recently a fourth-place ranking in the Americas on the Bloomberg Aptitude Test, earning himself a spot on it’s Hall of Fame.

The Bloomberg Aptitude Test (BAT) — a two-hour, 100-question financial literacy test — is offered for free on campus through the Wharton Undergraduate Finance Club and online through ProctorU for $39. Rao is the only Penn student to make the Hall of Fame this round, but he joins 19 other Penn Hall of Famers who received top scores since the test began a year and a half ago in a total of nine testing rounds.

Rao insisted that his win was “not a big deal” and gave credit to his teammates for their efforts in the case competitions.

“The knowledge level of all the questions on there is something everyone at Penn would know after they’ve taken a few weeks of Accounting 101 and a few weeks of Finance 101,” Rao said.

The purpose of the BAT is to connect students to potential employers, managers of the test have said. So far, 200,000 students have taken the test and 800 employers — from places like investment banks, hedge funds and sports management companies — are accessing information about students’ scores on the exam.

According to Blair Wilkie, a marketing manager at Bloomberg, the company’s goal in developing the exam was to create a “GMAT for finance jobs.”

“This opens up employment opportunities 10-fold,” she said.

Rao, who said he has not yet received any outreach from recruiters using the BAT, is not as sure.

“It might be helpful for people that don’t have access to the resources that you get at Wharton,” he said, “but I think if you are here and you are already motivated enough to take a test like this, you’re better off using the network you have here.”

Bloomberg is investing serious resources in making its BAT successful, Wilkie said. Whether the test really takes off is still to be seen.

“They might succeed with flying colors,” Rao said.

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