<p>Hello I am a Business Administration major in a community college right now. I am 3 semesters away from transfer so I have some time to choose my concentration before I get to the aacsb accredited CSU of my choice. I know you all have heard this a thousand times but like many Americans I am not too good at math. I am already struggling getting through the "basic" math needed for a Business Major. Although I am not well at it, I won't let it get me down. Here is the issue. I know Accounting and Finance are the better options or Econ... but I can't have a career circulated around pure mathematics and numbers. I just wouldn't be happy. A little math fine but not mostly... I am doing fine in my Accounting classes and I find that it isn't difficult math, it is mostly rules and formulas BUT I don't want to limit myself to being an ACCOUNTANT. I want job options. I have narrowed the search to Marketing and CIS. I know these majors may be looked down upon but I am trying to meet in the middle. Something that I know I can do and be happy with and something that can have a LITTLE job prospect afterwards and have some money in it. I don't need to be rich... Trust me I am from a low income poor background, I just want to be comfortable and able. I like computers a lot but I would not last in CS I know it. I really love Business so I thought CIS would be the perfect combo. I enjoyed my CIS class so far. Marketing always seemed like something I liked since childhood. I would see Marketing people in movies as a kid coming up with brand messaging and pointing to statistics on a board and talking about demographics and I was like... HEY! I wanna do that. BUT... I see that these may not have the best job outlook. I need a little advice. CIS or Marketing. Which is the best of the worst? I just want to enjoy my life and live a good life. Doesn't need to be lavish or in riches. I am not looking to be honored. I just want to have a career and be content. Thank you all for your future responses. I value all opinions (just not unnecessary mean ones). Thanks again.</p>
<p>Do you have the high-energy / outgoing personality and excellent social skills necessary for an initial sales career? If so, I think your best bet would be to start out as a Marketing major and do your best to get marketing / sales internships in every one of your summers, or regular sales jobs as a last resort. Hopefully you would at least be able to get a decent sales job after college and maybe eventually work your way into a true marketing career from there.</p>
<p>Just do your best to develop statistics skills as best you can, and if you are not already at the best school you can get into, you should transfer when you can (if affordable). If you don’t have the attributes necessary for sales, then it is a very tough situation, and I am not sure what you should consider doing.</p>
<p>School reputation is important for every degree, but especially important for both marketing and CIS, and I assume you are not going to a top school. Students that get actual non-sales marketing positions straight out of college normally have strong mathematics/statistics backgrounds from top schools and good marketing internships on their resumes. And as CIS major, you will be entering an industry that at entry-level is already more demanding (qualifcations-wise) than many other industries, and rapidly growing more so every day. On top of that, you will already be behind countless CS / CE graduates. CS enrollment (not including CE) has increased 29% this year alone in the United States, and increasing the annual limit on new STEM / IT foreign worker visas is already a Washington topic of discussion for the upcoming “comprehensive immigration reform” legislation.</p>
<p>CIS majors that graduate with a “simple” curriculum of coursework (whether voluntarily choosing the simple courses or forced into them through a lack of any other options at the school) are going to almost certainly end up unemployed. And even top CS / CE majors themselves are having no easy time getting jobs. So if you do go with CIS, as quickly as possible make sure you can handle the complex parts of it (even if non-mathematical parts), because if you cannot, that will be a serious problem for your job prospects. If your school’s CIS curriculum is not very technical or complex (once again, even without mathematics), your chances of employment afterwards is very low.</p>
<p>I am not even talking about prestigious jobs, high-paying jobs, or long-term career prospects. All of this is seriously important even to get a bare-minimum job paying a living wage.</p>
<p>Good luck. It is a sad society humans have created, where we use capitalism as a basis of society, and then proceed to make it this much a struggle to even earn a living wage.</p>
<p>Thank you for the advice. I believe that I am very high energy and I have a great personality. I know that Marketing would land me in a sales job straight out most likely & I am fine with that… I mean I have to be. As far as CIS, I heard that CS AND CE graduates would be put in front of me due to their strong background in mathematics. I don’t know anymore. I try so hard with my math. I guess I will just try harder. I am going to transfer to a Cal State. Fullerton or Long Beach preferably. They are average schools I suppose. So you are saying that Marketing has more job prospects (although not true Marketing jobs) than CIS? Thank you.</p>
<p>GoalsOriented, it’s not hard to get a job that earns a living wage. It’s hard to get your dream job straight out of college, though, especially if you have a sense of entitlement.</p>
<p>thousand:
Yes, both CS and CE candidates would have an advantage - that is why I mentioned CE too. Of course you should try hard, but if you just cannot fully comprehend advanced mathematics (nothing wrong with that if you are trying), you cannot rely on that. But with marketing, statistics is more far more important than “regular” mathematics, and some people “get” one despite not getting the other. Maybe you will have better luck with statistics if you have not yet taken that?</p>
<p>Overall, I do believe that marketing has more entry-level job prospects if you have the necessary attributes for sales. Why? Because low-paid jobs such as sales are the biggest part of the “job recovery,” and the entry-level qualifications are much lower than IT jobs (as a CIS major, you are strictly looking at IT jobs, not any of the other jobs that CS/CE can also get).</p>
<p>However, it is still a tough situation either way. Check the career center statistics of the school you are going to transfer to, and see how CIS and Marketing stacks up against each other. Be weary of the numbers though, colleges can and will get “creative” with them. Once you are admitted (you probably need to be a student to see), go into the career center’s job board and see who is recruiting, what kind of jobs they are recruiting for, what majors they are recruiting, and what other qualifications they require.</p>
<p>And once again, check out the CIS curriculum and syallbi for each course, and attempt to figure out if the curriculum is highly technical, despite not being highly mathematical. If a highly technical curriculum is not even available to students who wish to voluntarily take it, then you already know it is a waste of time/money. Anything CIS that focuses on theory is bad. Any good course will heavily focus on technical / practical hands-on work, with any necessary theory integrated into that. You want actual in-demand technologies you can list on your resume as “intermediate” or higher proficiency.</p>
<p>Dreburden:
It has been four months already.</p>
<p>I have an IS degree. I agree to check into the program. At my school the IS folks and CS folks were in the same programming and database classes. </p>
<p>Many IS majors went on to become developers. We had two is tracks… Development and Support. Even as a support major we learned assembly language. You don’t want to graduate with an IS degree and not have working knowledge of IS terms.</p>
<p>That’s not to say that if you got an IS degree you couldn’t get a sales job. People often do not work in the field they went to school for. </p>
<p>I actually worked in my companies sales dept for four years before moving to IT. Made me a perfect candidate for my position because I knew a ton about the usability of our software and expanded on that when I started working on the behind the scenes stuff.</p>
<p>Take classes in both and see what you like better. Don’t be afraid to minor in the other. If you do marketing it might be good to see if they have a business analytics minor available.</p>
<p>Sent from my DROID BIONIC using CC</p>
<p>Thanks you all for the advice and input. @Goals, I have not taken statistics yet and my favorite professor who actually made math fun for me teaches it at my CC, so I am looking forward to taking it with her. Who knows? I may actually enjoy statistics like you said. I actually enjoy math WHEN I GET IT. I only hate it when I get frustrated, but math can be enjoyable to me when I understand it. Marketing seems more interesting to me and I think it will fit my personality. I also am not some unrealistic entitled person who believes that I will get my dream job after college. I expect to start from the bottom. Like I said… I know how it feels to be poor. As the first person to attend college in my family, I just want to get a degree and earn a living. I don’t need luxury and expect to be an executive upon graduation. </p>
<p>Advice please… Do you guys think I should TRY to give the more quantitative business majors a chance? Am I counting myself out too soon? Or should I just stay away from math all together? I am actually enjoying my accounting class and my professor wants me to sign up for this Accounting Internship for minorities at Denver University and Howard. I also was looking at Finance and what it is all about and it seems interesting to me (I know that is weird because most people find Accounting and Finance boring) but not me… It’s just the math that scares me. I know I come off indecisive and that is because I am. Should I stick with a Marketing concentration or TRY something like Finance and switch back to Marketing if I fail? Ever since you mentioned how CE AND CS get the advantage over CIS and how hard it is to even get in the door… & also how it is kind of limiting yourself to ONLY one type of job route… I have counted that out and dumped CIS. It is basically go all for Marketing or give the more quantitative ones I shot? Accounting math isn’t hard anyway I just don’t want to limit myself to an ACCOUNTANT ONLY. Which is why I was thinking Finance but the math scares me… I don’t know guys…</p>
<p>A lot of the math in those is done by computers. You just need a teacher that can explain it in a way you understand. Once you have the concept you’d do fine in both. Do the schools you’re looking at have an analytics minor? It sounds like you might like that. It’s like analyzing data to make business decisions. Would go perfect with is or marketing. We have a whole analytics team at work.</p>
<p>Sent from my DROID BIONIC using CC</p>
<p>@Fendergirl… Analytics? I am looking at the academics at all of my options and I do not see it. Does it go under different titles? I am sure it may be called something else. I want to look into it. Basically I want a major that can be practical and get me a job where I can make a living (does not have to be making 100k or even 70k a year) I am looking at 40k starting as realistic. I want something that does not limit me to ONE field (which is why I think I am going to rule out CIS/MIS and Accounting)… Basically my options left are Marketing and Finance. Both seem interesting to me after lots of research. I just need a great math tutor and to focus more. I will look into the Analytics thing though. I will ask more about that. I need advice though. Should I accept that math is hard for me and focus on Marketing or should I try to make it in Finance first?</p>
<p>Finance is going to have more complex math than Accounting, but much less complex than Computer Science. In terms of workload (non-mathematical), once you reach Intermediate Accounting, Accounting becomes more intensive than Finance. Sometimes Engineers with high GPAs take Intermediate Accounting as an elective and struggle with it. Accounting is not as hard as Engineering, but Intermediate is so dense it can sometimes bring even them down lol. That doesn’t mean it will be that hard for you - just be ready for a lot of studying.</p>
<p>However, if you are just as “ok” with Accounting as you are with Finance, and the only reason you have not decided on Accounting is because of being afraid of being an Accountant all your life, then you should go ahead and pick Accounting over Finance. Unless you go to a top school, just like the CS / CE advantage over CIS / IS / MIS / IT, Accounting majors have the advantage over Finance majors (especially at average schools) when it comes to just about every job out there, even Finance jobs. On top of that, even if you start as an Accountant, you can relatively easily move to other related fields after you gain Accounting experience.</p>
<p>As for analytics, you might also try looking for “Business Intelligence.” Also, one thing to keep in mind about Sales/Marketing is 40k is not going to be anywhere near a “sure thing” with an entry-level sales career. I know someone who graduated with a degree in Marketing from a top 10 (undergraduate-level) business school with at least basic honors (so not a bad GPA), had experience working for the school’s marketing department, and was not able to get a true marketing job. She took a sales job, and including commissions, she only made around 35k her first year, but she quickly made increasingly more over the next few years.</p>
<p>Like fendergirl said, the math only truly matters in the coursework. If you can get through it and still keep your overall and major GPA at the very least above 3.0, you should not let the math interfere with your choice of major, even if you make Cs in the math courses. In the real-world, as long as you generally understand what is going on, the math is automated. That may not be the case with some serious CS / CE jobs (or serious quantitative finance jobs, which are almost impossible to get outside a top school), but if you ended up doing CS / CE, you could always avoid those specific jobs anyway.</p>
<p>Goals and Fende thank you so much. I really appreciate your advice and help. I enjoy Accounting but my only fear is being limited to being an Accountant. I don’t know if I want to do that forever and I don’t even know if I want to be a CPA and I heard Accounting isn’t worth much without a license. I can handle getting a C or B in my math classes so I am not near as worried as I was before. I think what I am going to do with this new information you gave me is focus on a quantitative business major like Accounting… Although I don’t think I want to be an Accountant and if it doesn’t work out then I will let Marketing be my second choice/last resort. So as for the minor. I don’t know. I am in California and I am looking at the CSU’s I do not see Business Intelligence or Analytics. I see “Decision Sciences”… I will keep looking. I had a great conversation with my Accounting professor and she told me that getting a job in Business is about your reputation and character. She said your degree/communication can get you in the door but your character and work ethic will keep you there. She is also encouraging me to do the Accounting internship although I told her I don’t want to be an Accountant. She said she thinks I may change my mind. Idk we’ll see.</p>
<p>Decision science is probably similar. What classes are in there?</p>
<p>Sent from my DROID BIONIC using CC</p>
<p>I am usually in the Science or Engineering threads because I was a Math/CS major (undergrad) and Engineering (for M.S) and currently on year 24 as a software engineer. To be SAFE as far as CIS or MIS, you need to know that MOST software jobs are related to the manipulation, the distribution and the storage/retrieval of DATA. To break that down academically…</p>
<p>Manipulation = Programming and Analytics
Distribution = Networking
Storage/Retrieval = Databases</p>
<p>So I am saying…do not really attempt to walk out that MIS/CIS program without taking some programming courses, a computer network course and a database course.</p>
<p>Make room for those 9 to 12 credits anyway you can.</p>
<p>Thanks for the further input GLOBAL. If I would choose CIS I would keep that in mind. I have saved all these responses for future reference. I would make sure to get those courses… However I think I have my mind made up not to do CIS or MIS anymore. I really think I would enjoy Marketing. I have no issue startin in sales. Once again. I am just looking to make a living for myself after school. Don’t need luxury and don’t expect a dream job right off the bat. If I were to be HONEST with myself… I know that Accounting is interesting but isn’t something I would want to do for the rest of my life. I don’t mind learning it but I don’t want to be an Accountant. I am more creative and I have a lot of ideas. I don’t know I think I will choose Marketing. I know I might get bad prospects but I have to choose a major that I will do well in and not a major that I would have to pull C’s out the ass to pass the math courses.</p>