Schreyer Honors College

Penn State’s Schreyer Honors College is one of the most selective U.S. honors programs, promoting academic excellence, global perspective, & leadership. The Smeal College of Business supports this mission with top-ranked programs and opportunities for involvement and study abroad.

Overview

Pennsylvania State University’s Schreyer Honors College was founded in 1997 to create the next generation of leaders to tackle the world’s most pressing problems. Schreyer is widely recognized as one of the most selective undergraduate honors programs in the United States. The Honors College student mission promotes academic excellence with integrity, building a global perspective and creating opportunities for leadership and civic engagement. The Smeal College of Business helps to support this mission by offering a top-ranked undergraduate program with opportunities to get involved, study abroad, and connect with leading faculty and the world's top companies.

Less than 1% of all students admitted to Penn State are selected for admission to the Schreyer Honors College, and of this population, less than 1% are selected for Honors designation by the Finance Department at Smeal. Each year the Finance Department graduates between 20-25 scholars. The finance department graduates the largest cohort of Schreyer Scholars within Smeal each year and is second only to the Mechanical Engineering Department across all of Penn State.

All Smeal scholars work closely with a specially trained Smeal honors adviser to help them formulate an academic plan that incorporates their learning goals and objectives, including fulfilling honors requirements, major selection, minors and study abroad opportunities. Professor Brian S. Davis has served as the honors advisor for the Finance Department since 2014. Finance Scholars are required to complete at least 12 credits of specifically designated finance honors courses.

Honors Education & Pedagogy

The purpose of an honors course is to show students how knowledge in the field is discovered, developed, evaluated, argued, tested, compared, and applied. Class size is limited to 25 students in the Finance Department. Honors students learn what research looks like in the field of finance and understand the scholarship behind the discipline’s core principles. Honors courses often are multidisciplinary and may also emphasize internationalization or diversity. Typically reading of more depth than ordinary is required, along with original interpretation, writing and research. Honors courses emphasize reading primary source material and the analysis of real economic and financial data. Students are asked to confront these sources in discussion, writing and analysis.

Senior Year Honors Thesis

As part of the requirements for graduation as a Finance Honors Scholar, students must complete a research thesis under the direct supervision of the Finance Department honors advisor and another Penn State faculty member by the end of their senior year. A list of 2024-25 graduates, thesis topics and their advisors can be found below.

Schreyer Thesis List 2024-25 
Author Title Thesis Supervisor Honors Advisor
Daniel Alpert Testing Market Efficiency: Post-Credit Rating Downgrade Performance and CPI Announcements Anh Tuan Le Brian Davis
Ryan Banks Antitrust and Big Tech: Challenges and Strategic Pathways for Regulation in the Modern U.S. Economy Brian Davis Brian Davis
Sanchita Bhusari Predicting the U.S. Unemployment Rate Using Natural Language Processing Models Brian Davis Brian Davis
Nicholas Bodie Modeling Synthetic Financial Networks for Outlier-Based Shell Company Detection Ed Ketz Brian Davis
Brooke Boretski Dodd-Frank and Systemic Risk: Assessing the Impact of Regulatory Rollbacks on Financial Stability Brian Davis Brian Davis
Tingfu Chou The Evolution and Future of the Private Credit Market David Haushalter Brian Davis
Advay Deshmukh An IRR Analysis of Permira’s $7.2 Billion Acquisition of Squarespace, Inc. Christoph Hinkelmann Brian Davis
Maanya Devaprasad The Intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Financial Modeling: Evaluating WACC Through Machine Learning and Generative AI Stefan Lewellen Brian Davis
Sanjana Devarakonda Consumer Protection vs. Overregulation: Costs and Benefits of The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Brian Davis Brian Davis
Joseph Fasula Balancing Budget and Beliefs: Uncovering Price Sensitivity of Organic Consumers Stefan Lewellen Brian Davis
David Harris Congressional Insider Trading: Competitor Focused Event Study Stefan Lewellen Brian Davis
Justin Heckler Aerospace & Defense Take-Private Transactions: How Private Equity Firms Evaluate Take-Private Opportunities in Aerospace & Defense Industries Christoph Hinkelmann Brian Davis
Henry Hyduke X Drift: An Investigation into Whether Cashtagged Tweets Can Be Used to Predict Short-Term Price Movements Samuel Bonsall Brian Davis
Patrick Hyrb Rebalancing Portfolios with Machine Learning Mihail Velikov Brian Davis
Sumehra Jinan Strategic Positioning During Equity IPO Waves: The Role of Native Economic Momentum in Shaping Cross-Border Listing Dynamics Richard Bundro Brian Davis
Pearse Kelly Fighting “Fool’s Yield”: A Quantitative Solution to the Pitfalls of Passive High Yield Investing Jason Lunn Brian Davis
Rishi Khanna Evaluating Regional Bank Capital Ratios under Adverse Conditions Christoph Hinkelmann Brian Davis
Hannah Lee Freezing Defined Benefit Pensions: The Impact on Equity Beta and the Role of Funding Status Stefan Lewellen Brian Davis
Akshay Pai Assessing the NBA’s Global Strategy and the Challenge of Developing Basketball in India Brian Davis Brian Davis
Leigh Stern Patents as Indicators: Using Patents Granted to Biotechnology Startups to Predict M&A Activity in the Pharmaceutical Field Stefan Lewellen Brian Davis