Hi guys,
I’m doing a finance major at Drexel
http://catalog.drexel.edu/undergraduate/collegeofbusiness/finance/#degreerequirementstext
and I might have enough units to add a minor. In addition, the graduate programs I’m considering are:
MBA, MS Econ/Applied Econ, MSF, MFE, MPP/MPA. The requirements for MFE and MS in applied econ programs seem to be the most stringent, often requiring some sort of knowledge of programming or data science or upper level economics. I’m thinking that maybe a good way to kill 2 stones with 1 bird would be to minor in something that might make me look more prepared for graduate programs but that brings me to my first question. I know jobs don’t care much about a minor per-say, but do graduate admissions people consider minors as adding value? For example, if I was applying to a MFE, do you think having done a Data Science minor would give me a small edge against some other applicants?
Data Science Minor for reference:
http://catalog.drexel.edu/undergraduate/collegeofcomputingandinformatics/datascience/#minortext
So for context, when people say that minors don’t matter for jobs, what we mean is that the simple fact that you completed a minor doesn’t matter. But the minor itself (or, more appropriately, the classes you took and the skills you learned in the minor) can be tremendously helpful in getting a job and/or getting into graduate school, and this is a case in which it definitely would be.
Much of the statistical analysis that you would do in an economics program and as an economic analyst would be done via programming in statistical software and/or programs like SQL, and having a data science minor would be an excellent supplement to your economics major given your interests.
To the above point, it’ll certainly give you an edge over other applicants who didn’t take any data science/statistics/programming classes in college. But let’s say that your college didn’t have a minor and you just took a few classes - or let’s say that instead of completing the formal minor you decided to just take some of the classes but not all, and maybe substituted a few that were more interesting to you. That would work too! That’s what it means when people say that having a minor in and of itself doesn’t matter.
So yes, go ahead and minor in data science if you want!
I gotcha.
I guess the reason I’m looking into the minor specifically is because I figure Drexel put together a comprehensive introduction to Data Science, and hopefully it’d make me relatively prepared for jobs, or the graduate applications. Worst case scenario of course I could simply take a few courses here and there.