I have recruited for one of these companies. It is MUCH easier to get a campus interview if you have majored or minored in business, econ, math, or CS generally than a softer major. Often they will tell the recruitment office to only to allow a few slots for majors other than the preferred ones on their list. (Or they give the preferred majors first crack at the slots, and other majors can sign up once the preferred majors have filled as many as they want). So while you “can” get into these companies with a different major, the campus recruiting process is stacked against you. And I think that is ridiculous to say that business degrees, even from lower ranked schools, are frowned upon. A business major has a head start in many areas that are of interest to a client (pesky things like finance, accounting, marketing, operations, business law, etc.) Sure, great communication skills are a huge asset, and the lack of them can be a career killer. But don’t pretend that those firms aren’t looking for business skills. They like them.
“Seems like the growth areas in today’s economy are finance and health care.”
Finance means nothing if there are no actual innovations / ideas that a) have been developed and b) can be distributed / manufactured / sold. The field of finance is secondary to those things. It’s like what a legal department is to a company. Important, they have to have one, but it’s not what makes the company a company.
Finance has increased its share of business profits and the economy over the years, according to:
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/12/10/number-of-the-week-finances-share-of-economy-continues-to-grow/
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-20/how-finance-came-to-dominate-the-u-s-economy
http://www.people.hbs.edu/dscharfstein/Growth_of_Finance_JEP.pdf
Even usually conservative (in economics and business) writers are concerned:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2015/05/31/wall-street-costs-the-economy-2-of-gdp-each-year
http://www.economist.com/blogs/buttonwood/2015/02/finance-sector-and-growth
Guess I didn’t research the OP’s other threads- where did Wellesley become her school??? The precise school does not matter here. One does not need to love all of the required disciplines for one’s field- my dislike of physics would have prevented me from choosing the chemistry I liked.
OP- don’t worry. You will continue to evolve in college, your starting goals will grow with you and your father will adjust to what works for you. We need all sorts of people at all sorts of schools.
PS- not an east coaster so the myriads of LACs there don’t mean much to me. The OP has already chosen her school and presumably it will work for her.
To second @intparent, those consulting firms tend to like analytical and quantitative skills. Some majors hone those more than others.
@ucbalumnus, finance will shrink. The past does not predict the future. Healthcare will grow.
Technology and healthcare are the growth areas.
@thshadow I wouldn’t mind trying economics out though since a lot of people are saying that it’s heavily based in the maths, that worries me. For example, one of my friends really understands math/science but doesn’t click with government, psychology, languages, etc. I’m the opposite of him XD
I think that’s a question I can answer in a year. If I’m still interested in IR, then I will try hard to convince him it’s useful (example: international business, there are lots of opportunities to work for NGO’s, etc.). But if the passion wanes, then I probably will only look into economics.
@intparent I already privately messaged one of the contributors on here but my dad told me that he interviewed someone for his company (American Greetings) who majored in IR but he rejected her because she didn’t do the “tough work and the ability to think analytically that the sciences do and that international relations doesn’t.” So that comment really worries me.
Your dad is a sample of one.
“one of my friends really understands math/science but doesn’t click with government, psychology, languages, etc. I’m the opposite of him XD”
The evidence is that students who believe that understanding math is an ability, do not do well. Students who believe That understanding math takes lots of practice and effort are the best math students. So students who believe they are not good at math, do not work at it as much, and they become not good at math. If you believe it comes from working at it and you do work at it, you can be good at math. What you believe becomes reality over time.
Your dad is one person interviewing for one type of job. He is not “the world of all employers.”
However, some people can work hard at something and, at best, be slightly above average, whereas they could spend their time more efficiently doing something they’re genuinely good at.
While I think perseverance is essential, “anyone can learn anything if they put their mind to it” isn’t true in my experience.
For economics, statistics and calculus would be useful, but you wouldn’t need to study pure math at a high level - you don’t need proof-based math, you can pick and choose the classes most applicable. In most cases, even the math-intensive economics classes would require 2 semesters of calculus (or, at most, calc BC+1 semester). Does that seem doable for you? If not, there’s a less math-intensive economics program.
What math have you taken in high school?
It uses more math than the average profession to be sure, but unless you’re planning to pursue a PhD in economics it tends to be light on advanced math. You would probably need to learn calculus, and it would certainly help to know more math than that (multivariate calculus, real analysis, programming and computation classes) to help put a lot of stuff into perspective. But the majority of applications of economics aren’t so strongly intertwined with math that you have to be a straight mathematician to understand them.
I only learned advanced economics after I already had the core of a math major course sequence finished (including real analysis). The more advanced classes provided a lot of perspective that made the economics models seem a lot more meaningful, but it would have been easy enough to learn everything without those classes. It’s more so a major where you have to be familiar with calculus than one where you have to be a master at it.
You probably won’t be a mathematician, but you probably would be reasonably capable of learning the math you need for a math-based economics sequence without too much pain.
Thing is, we shouldn’t confuse econ majors aiming toward high level analysis positions and those wanting the depth and breadth for other roles they hope to serve in, in business, govt or an NGO. And Wellesley, for many reasons, will offer academic support, if she needs it, to get through the math. I can’t imagine the cattle call you’d find at some larger universities.
And her dad may hold the purse strings. So what I believe would help her is how to position this with him, show the viability for a young woman with some ideas. But without mentioning IR, which seems to be a sore spot.
Btw, his hiring is about his dept needs. Not some universal.
RE: combining a major with an in-demand language: This is not a bad approach. Be aware that to gain fluency in the language, you’d need to take some time abroad. You could do this as a junior year abroad, go during summers, or take time after college, or all of the above. Some countries offer ways to go teach English in the host country, which pays the expenses. Japan has the JET program, for example. The point is that the more fluent you are in the language AND the culture, the better your prospects are.
Second, doing nearly any major and developing a passion in that could lead to lucrative law career, if the OP goes on to a TOP law school. That takes high grades, LSAT scores in about the top 2% range, and a passion of some sort, or a skill set. The skill set could be anything from nursing, to accounting, to an art, to an in-demand language and cultural fluency.
FWIW I agree that to be successful it’s important to if not love what you do, to at least feel some compatibility. If you’re forced to go into something, you will never have the extra verve it takes to compete with those who do love the field.
“some people can work hard at something and, at best, be slightly above average, whereas they could spend their time more efficiently doing something they’re genuinely good at.
While I think perseverance is essential, “anyone can learn anything if they put their mind to it” isn’t true in my experience.”
Ability matters some, but effort is primary. Most parents in the US do not believe this. American’s are much more likely to tell their kids, especially girls, that they are “just not good at math,” when the student struggles. That is a big mistake.
Unfortunately, the parents were no good at math, and the Elementary school teacher was not good at it either, so when a girls struggles, they tell her she probably isn’t good at it either when they should be supporting her. The girl grows up to make the same mistake with her kids. Rinse and repeat.
You know, I think anyone bright enough to get into Wellesley is bright enough to handle the kind of math they will need in a non-STEM career. We don’t need to act as though this young woman is “struggling” with math. She just isn’t math-y enough to be a STEM major, that’s all. Big deal.
I bet that woman your dad interviewed didn’t go to Wellesley. 
Also, businesses with a more international focus would find thise skills useful, especially if you took the econ focused track.
I had a lot of trouble with math, but I never had a teacher tell me I wasn’t good at it. Because I did well in every other subject, they were more likely to tell me I wasn’t trying. It probably didn’t dawn on them that I could have done better if I had been taught differently. Also, one of my sons is good at math and the other is very, very good. Maybe it would have been different if any of us had been female.
@MYOS1634 I did take AB Calc this year though got a pretty bad grade on the AP exam so I’m taking an intro to calc class over again (CALC 115, I believe?)