Soon, Petra Salko will pick a direction to take her professional life. Thanks to her work ethic and aptitude both in the classroom and on the course, the senior on the Oregon women's golf team will have plenty of options.

Salko and her UO teammates began play Monday morning at an NCAA Regional in Cle Elum, Wash. The senior from Turku, Finland, has only a few rounds left in her collegiate golf career – but her future is wide open.

Prior to enrolling at the University of Oregon, Salko was on a pre-med track in her native country. She entered the NCAA Regional tournament with the Ducks' top scoring average this season, 73.38, and "absolutely could" consider playing professionally, UO coach Derek Radley said. At Oregon, Salko has pursued a business major with an emphasis on finance, and the accolades she's collected in that pursuit have been many.

Earlier this spring, Salko was named the Pac-12 Scholar-Athlete of the Year for women's golf. She has a cumulative grade-point average of 4.05, having never earned a letter grade below A- while in college. Recently, the Lunquist College of Business department of finance named Salko its most outstanding student for 2018-19.

"Petra's a rock star," Radley said. "She's gonna succeed at whatever she does. I'm just thankful to have coached her even just for one year."

Salko's prowess as a student-athlete was evident from the start. As a freshman, she played on the UO women's golf team that reached the NCAA Tournament quarterfinals at Eugene Country Club. She also was named an All-American Scholar by the Women's Golf Coaches Association.

Three years later, Salko is playing in her fourth straight NCAA Regional with the Ducks. And she's still excelling in the classroom, having never earned so much as a B+ while at Oregon.

"I've been a perfectionist my whole life," Salko said. "And so around sophomore year, when I realized my GPA was pretty high, I was kind of like, I want to keep this going."

That she has, with enviable success. Part of the UO finance department's consideration in naming Salko its student of the year was her participation with the UO Investment Group (UOIG), which manages a portfolio of about $1.5 million in real dollars. In the fall, Salko was tasked with recommending a hold or sell on John B. Sanfilippo & Son, Inc., which distributes snack foods. Salko recommended in November that the UOIG hold onto the stock, at which point it was priced at $63.66 per share – "undervalued," according to her analysis.

This past Friday, it closed at $80.12.

"It's a very time-consuming and analytically demanding group, and she's been a great contributor to that," said John Chalmers, finance department head of the Lundquist College of Business.

Chalmers said the finance student of the year is chosen based on overall academic performance, achievement in finance courses specifically, and also other aspects of curriculum such as the UOIG.

"Petra, in all of those combined, was a runaway choice," Chalmers said. "There were other great students too. But Petra was at the top of the heap."

It would stand to reason, then, that Salko plans to pursue an MBA once she completes her undergraduate degree, and enter the world of finance, right? Wrong. Or more accurately, maybe. As graduation approaches, she's still unsure which of her passions to pursue professionally.

In her youth, Salko was interested in a possible career in anesthesiology. Assessing and delivering patient needs appealed in part to her love of numbers: "I've always liked math," Salko said. "I'm weird that way."

In secondary school back home in Finland, Salko took a courseload heavy in chemistry, biology and physics, with plans to go on to medical school. But she was also a top-five player in Finland, and wanted to test herself against elite competition in golf. For that, there was no better destination than the Pac-12.

"She takes a pretty analytical approach to the game, and I think that's a direct correlation to her success in the classroom," said Radley, an assistant at Arizona before taking over at Oregon. "Because she's so intelligent, she really loves looking at problems and figuring out how to solve them. And you can see her out there on the golf course doing that.

"She's not attacking all the pins. She's saying, where's the easiest place to make par from? If you look at her scores, she tries to eliminate big numbers, and really that's what this game is about."

Salko tends to avoid big numbers by making par on the golf course, but she's consistently put up big numbers in the classroom, and her stocks have done the same with the UO Investment Group. This summer she plans to return home to Finland, and consider the next step in her life. Wherever it takes her, Salko figures to find success.