<p>For anyone who is familiar with business/ arts and sciences, I would appreciate the answers to these questions :)</p>
<p>If I were to major in Economics and/or Mathematics at Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences, how would my future job prospects be? (I hear that an "arts" degree is seen as inferior to other, more rigorous departments such as engineering)</p>
<p>I also have an interest in business. If I wanted to go to a business graduate school afterwards, would I be way behind the undergrads who went to a business undergrad school?</p>
<p>Graduate schools don’t usually care what your degree is in as long as you’ve completed some basic foundation courses. Each grad school will usually tell you exactly what they are looking for. As an example, U Penn’s Wharton School says this to applicants: “There are no specific majors or courses required for the MBA. However, a strong grounding in quantitative areas is important. Calculus and statistics are excellent foundation courses for an MBA.”</p>
<p>I’ve heard for grad school grades, test scores, and work experience are most important, not college prestige or major. Keeping the first component In mind, good grades may be hard to achieve </p>
<p>@mommyrocks, the thing is that my parents are concerned that business grad schools will reject me because they say I will be inferior to applicants who went to business undergrad schools. Are they right, or should I feel confident going to CAS for my undergrad? </p>
<p>You should feel confident. If you show them the requirements of U Penn and other top business grad schools, and how they all say it doesn’t matter what your undergrad major is, then they will probably understand finally. Maybe a concern of theirs is really that you will lose interest in business and not pursue the graduate business degree if you study something else for your bachelor’s, and you would want to assure them of your interest. One of my wealthiest friends is a CFO of an international company and on her way to becoming a CEO, and her bachelor’s was in French. After that she satisfied requirements to become an accountant, and went from there to a job auditing businesses in France, using both her French and accounting skills, and onward and upward. You’ll be fine. The “arts” degrees that are suffering in the job market now are not math and economics, but rather straight humanities like history or something. Math skills are in very high demand across many industries and at all major corporations (computational modeling is used in decision-making), and economics, especially econometrics, is a solid related field as well. Both would be a great foundation for graduate studies in business.</p>
<p>The only Ivy League schools that offer undergraduate business majors are Cornell and University of Pa. So obviously top business grad schools must accept students that do not have business undergraduate majors.</p>
<p>My D1 is a Cornell ILR major with a minor in IT. She is a derivative trader in the investment banking division of a top bank. She did not need a business major or graduate degree to get this job. A young man her age that she is directly working with was a physics major from Princeton. All of the pepos she works with are from top schools and had high GPA’s. Major did not matter, as long as it was not something obviously unrelated or easy. </p>
<p>I agree those are not valid concerns. Harvard and Yale grads get into MBA programs regularly and they don’t have business majors. Of course they will have worked first. College of Arts and Sciences degrees are not considered inferior by anyone expect maybe high school students, apparently. Cornell itself, for instance, reports no difference in quality of offers for CS students in CAS vs. Engineering. Cornell also has very good information about majors and outcomes on the website you could be reviewing. They have info in A&S Career Services and also when you look under the majors. Math majors have a wide variety of outcomes and many work in business and finance. Here is the page for Econ
<a href=“http://www.economics.cornell.edu/undergraduate-program/information-current-students/career-resources”>http://www.economics.cornell.edu/undergraduate-program/information-current-students/career-resources</a></p>
<p>Why would you want two business degrees? Many UG business schools are less rigorous than arts and science (math, science majors). Cornell’s A&S is more selective than other Cornell schools. My daughter double majored in math and econ. Her GPA was just north of 3.5 and she had many interviews with IBs, whereas students in AEM were expected to have higher GPAs to be competitive. My daughter took classes within AEM and Hotel when she couldn’t take them in A&S (conflict of schedule), and she consistently found them to be easier. </p>
<p>The hardest course my daughter took was an Art History course, but it was one of her favorite courses. She also minor in Women’s Studies. She got a much broader (better) education in A&S than if she had in AEM, even though she always knew she wanted to work in finance. In speaking with many of our family and friends in finance, they also encouraged her to major in math &econ rather than business. They said it’s better to get an MBA later after few years of experience. </p>
<p>Just a side note, most recruited athletes are in AEM and that’s why ED for AEM is so competitive. You can figure out why they are in AEM and not in Engineering or other schools. Not to say those athletes are not qualified, but they often have less time to study due to their commitment to their sports.</p>
I guess my original assumptions were definitely inaccurate.</p>