<p>So I am interested in accounting and the buy side of Wall Street (investment mgmt). Therefore I'd like to be prepared to do either if I ever decide what I want to do :P</p>
<p>So basically what is the worth of an economics degree in asset management companies (e.g. Merrill Lynch, UBS, Vanguard)?</p>
<p>I would go Acct./Finance double major but Rutgers doesn't allow this (not that I'm 100% committed to Rutgers but it's probably where I'll end up).</p>
<p>And on that note is Rutgers sufficient to get into one of the aforementioned schools?</p>
<p>Acct and Finance would have been a great combination
since Investment Banking requires a lot of spreadsheet analysis and modeling.
However, if your school doesn’t allow you to do so,
Econ and Acct might not be a good substitute.
Economics and Finance might seem similar in many aspects
and they do concern the same issues in the area of financial economics.
But they are quite different in many ways.
Economics is the study of choice as you know while Finance is the study of money,
assets, wealth, etc.
In college, if you study economics, you would focus on industries if you do micro
or market, countries, and maybe the environment if you do macro.
In finance, you would study risk and return of financial products if you do investment banking or how companies finance their operations if corporate finance.</p>
<p>With accounting and finance together, you can analyze the financial statements and evaluate the risks and returns of the companies. But economics do not specialize in that area; therefore, it is not a very well complement with accounting.</p>
<p>If you are interested in accounting, I would suggest you to see if there’s a faster track to obtain your Master degree in Accounting and get your CPA asap.
The market needs CPA more than people who have taken a few ACCT courses only.</p>
<p>I feel like Accounting and Finance overlap more than Econ+Acct., but Rutgers doesn’t allow that double major because those are the two biggest majors in the school by far.</p>
<p>Again I just want to make clear that I’m not interested in banking but in asset management (eventually becoming portfolio manager). So basically I’m trying to decide between CPA and CFA.</p>