Aside from academics, Michael McEntee is involved with WTHS Deca as well as Future Business Leaders of America.
Washington Township High School junior Michael McEntee has been accepted into the “Mind and Markets: Finance, Economics, and Psychology” course, being held this summer at Columbia University in New York City.
To be accepted, McEntee needed to submit letters of recommendation, transcripts, a written essay and test scores. His background in WTHS’s DECA Club and Future Business Leaders of America group, as well as his course load, including AP psychology, allowed him to surpass the intro level Mind and Markets courses. The finance, economics, and psychology class is culled from graduate-level course material. McEntee will live on campus at Columbia while taking the class this summer, from June 25 to July 13.
“Mind and Markets: Finance, Economics, and Psychology” is a study of how the realities of human psychology affect financial markets, the economy, institutions, legal systems, firms and regulators. Material is drawn from the fields of finance and economics, as well as psychology, neuroscience, law, managerial strategy, anthropology, and philosophy. It serves as an introduction to finance, economics, and psychology, while also weaving the topics together into a cohesive narrative.
Class debate is a significant component of the active-seminar course. Students are expected to leave the class with meaningful conclusions that can be applied in their future coursework, careers, and their daily lives, and it is the hope that some are inspired to use what they learn to contribute to these fields in years to come.
The class will be taught by Zach Michaelson, who is an adjunct assistant professor of finance at New York University and a portfolio manager for the hedge fund advisor Prolific Capital Markets. His published academic research concerns the intersection of macroeconomics, finance, psychology, philosophy, and policy. Michaelson holds a master’s degree in psychology from Harvard University and a bachelor’s in economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
