Which one is better. At Cornell I would be doing Industrial and Labor Relations and at Berkeley applied math and econ. Which is better in terms of getting into better graduate schools and job prospects.
Thank you,
It depends on what your objectives are. At Berkeley I believe you are describing a liberal arts degree, which is completely non-specific but you can steer towards a wide variety of objectives.The ILR curriculum is more focused than that. And it also sounds more focused than that to others. One can do as well with an ILR degree, but in a narrower range of fields, typically.
If you wanted to get a job in Human Resources, ILR would be “better”, that’s a no-brainer. If you want to go to graduate school in social sciences, either will work. Though to the degree you’re interest is in something relating to labor, ILR will give you great specific preparation. If your goal is to seek employment or graduate work directly related to mathematics or mathematical economics, a liberal art curriculum such as LSA is likely better. Having said that though. on the Cornell subforum there is a poster whose kid graduated from ILR but took lots mof math & computer courses along the way, and is now on a Wall Street firm’s trading floor. In my day that would be the pretty rare ILR person. Perhaps it’s more common now. But evidently it’s at least possible, to some reasonable extent. And good results are possible .
In the end, good results will almost always depend on you.
Traditionally what ILR was known for , besides HR, was producing future lawyers.
Something like 1/3 of some its classes went to law school. The proportion may be off, but it was pretty high. With the recent contraction in legal market hiring, with basically only T-14 law school grads and top of class at Fordham et al getting jobs, I imagine those numbers are down somewhat now.
Which one costs more? What type of jobs and where?
Also, math and econ at Cal would be no joke.
That’s great information but isn’t Berkeley’s reputation at least academic-vise better than Cornell’s.
Huh? No. Cornell’s an Ivy. Cal is arguably an Ivy-equivalent (probably the only public that is) and generally has better grad programs (though Cornell is no slouch either), but for undergrad, Cal certainly isn’t significantly better.
For Wall Street, I’d say Cornell has the edge (at Cal, you’d really need to get in to Haas) while for the Bay Area, I’d say Cal has a slight edge (Cornell would be strong too though).
So basically, go with the cheaper one or off of fit and where you want to work after graduation.