Hello. I am a freshmen majoring in Sociology in UC Davis. I am very much satisfied with most of the aspects of this schools. I love the campus, my major, and the general environment. Though, I started to grow a lot of interest in studying marketing in the business college, and want to dual-major or minor business along with Sociology. Even though UC Davis is such a great fit for myself, it does not have a business school, and I am really eager to study business in college. Would there be any possible selection (colleges with business schools) for myself to choose from?
My stats are like the following:
Have Mediocre ECs
High school GPA approximately 4
Current UC Davis GPA 3.9 (would definitely maintain this)
Iād askā¦do you know what marketing is ? What is studied? Marketing is typically the āsoftestā of business majors and I say this as an MBA with marketing focus. Iām also a history and journalism undergrad. So I know soft
You can do marketing without being a marketing major.
So many ābusinessā students study economics. I would do that and apply for marketing jobs / internships which few students typically get until after 2nd year.
Iām not against the study of marketing. Iām against a kid who says I love the campus, the environment. When you transfer, you go into the unknown. You have to start again and meet people who already have a head start. Itās not impossible but itās not easy. If you like where you are you can get to marketing from there. In fact you should get with your career center, find some marketing alums, and reach out to them to learn your path.
Youāll find that once you get into an organization, you can often move around based on your interests. And your major will count less.
Since you like UCD, look into Managerial Econ or regular Econ as a major or minor at UCD instead of transferring into a Business school. As pointed out by @tsbna44, you do not need to major in Marketing to work in that industry. Also only 3 UCās have an actual business school, while there are many students at all the UCās whom are studying Business related majors without attending a Business school. I would work with your UCD advisor to see if you can stay where you are and still achieve your goal.
Or switch into Psych as a major, and make sure you take the full sequence of Stats (not stats for business majors, which is āstats liteā but actual statistics coursesā¦)
Youāll be just as competitive for marketing roles as any marketing major (Iāve hired hundreds of marketing people in my career). Marketing today is ALL about the numbers-- the intersection of human behavior (hence psych) and the quantifiable impact on a business (hence the stats). Understanding regression analysis, being able to pick through a 30 page report on survey data and identifying the three important trends, understanding āshare of walletā and how a business measures thatā¦ this is what marketing people do today. If you love sociology, psych is a first cousinā¦
100%! Today data analysis is king. Much of corporate marketing is digital marketing. You need to be comfortable with large data sets, synthesizing data, creating compelling visual presentations of data, etc. Iām sure you can take plenty of computer classes at UCD that incorporate these skills. Marketing is different than, say Accounting, where you need to know very specific methods and that typically requires a number of accounting classes to master.
If you are a freshmen then you have only had one quarter of classes under your belt. Did you take Econ first quarter? Is that what made you interested in business and marketing?
I agree about looking at Econ/Managerial Econ at UCD. Regarding data analysis, you might look into Data Science. If you are not a numbers person, check out cognitive science.
