<p>like three hours of good studying a day? good as in absorbing everything and not a quick skim or lookover?</p>
<p>Accounting is not hard per se. I think that some professors just make it more difficult than it has to be. Tax can be complicated because of all these different rules that change every single year and all these different scenarios where you have to understand fine distinctions as to where you apply said rules.</p>
<p>It seems like lots of people have this idea that you have to be good at math for economics and accounting, which is a gross misconception. Accounting is really about organizing information, making sure numbers, financials, etc are presented in accordance with rules, etc. When you boil down to it all, economics is a social science that studies, given that there are limited resources, how people respond to incentives, to policies, etc (it’s not, as many believe, about personal finance!). The “math” involved is really just the statistical tests used to quantify and back up your observations of the world. </p>
<p>Personally, I don’t find economics all that difficult and rather fascinating if you have a good professor, but good gosh I’ve had a lot of econ classes taught in a dulllllllllll and insipid manner. Some of them (esp 11, 101, 102… mcdevitt style) felt like glorified LD math classes that one would expect to find from a classroom setting in Asia. You know, dry lectures where the professor basically tells you how to solve a numerical problem, and you do nothing but practice your numerical problem sets. Zzzz!</p>
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</p>
<p>lol…so true… I don’t know why everyone here raves about how good of a prof he is. I’m glad I didn’t have to take him for 101 and 102.</p>
<p>OP -</p>
<p>“business” is a very broad term. It can mean:</p>
<ul>
<li>Ibank</li>
<li>consulting firm</li>
<li>accounting firm</li>
<li>finance function in a company</li>
<li>sales/marketing function in a company</li>
<li>accounting function in a company</li>
<li>starting and running your own business (services, product distribution, import, etc.)</li>
</ul>
<p>Your future success in business has very little to do with others, where you went to school, or your major (with some specialist functional exceptions), and everything to do with your ability to do whatever you do just a little better than the next person. Therefore, a person hiring a person out of undergrad will probably train the new employee in their new position. So what does an interviewer look for? 1) competence 2) likeability, 3) motivation.</p>
<p>11, 101 and 102 is basic so that it must be about number and calculation. In addition, I don’t think one can be good economist without decent sense in numbers and calculation!!! many people I know including me got A in 11 and 101 with mc devitt and spent only 1.5 days in total ( less than 20 hours)</p>
<p>For Mgmt class, it really depend. I spent about 15 hours in “total” for Klein class 127B and got an A, while spent more than 50+ hours and got C in Gardner 127A !!! (took them in the same quarter). so yeah, depends if you “fit” with the instructor’s style, both exam and teaching style. I would say mgmt class is not hard, if you is even a little be hard working, 3.5 is reachable.</p>
<p>posted already, couldn’t delete</p>
<p>Amen on the styles, haha. I spent so much time on Klein’s 127b class and did horribly. I did an all nighter and blanked out during the midterm, but felt his final was not that hard. Gardner’s 127A class though was really easy. I only studied the day before and did well (I had another midterm and final on both days of her 127A class so I studied for the other class much much more).</p>
<p>s_dragon, no one said that an econ prof can’t talk about numbers and calculations. That’s ridiculous. What I’m saying is that McDevitt’s classes are SO overrated; all he does is tell you how to solve problems in his lecture. Ho hum. It’s almost like people think he’s so great because he’s not bumbling with incoherency like some of the other econ profs. By comparison, Kahn’s lectures are AMAZING and incredibly thought provoking. Even when he goes into the nitty gritty details of the econometrics involved in designing an experiment to derive the effect of gasoline price on demand for fuel efficient vehicles, for example, it doesn’t SOUND at all like he’s merely explaining a quantitative scenario. They are miles and miles apart, in completely different leagues. People who rave about McDevitt have no idea. </p>
<p>And I don’t know what your point is about lots of people getting A’s in McDevitt’s class. Lots of people also get A’s in Ozler’s and Murphy’s classes. Please, their classes were an agony to sit through.</p>
<p>Alterna: 
it’s like we are opposite with each other in term of effort and result for 127A and B with Klein and Gardner haha.
The Cheese Cake: What I said was that Mc Devitt classes weren’t hard. And I didn’t give opinion about if he lectures well or not. From his 11 and 101, I agree his lecture was very theoretical, but I am not sure about his other classes.</p>
<p>NO! you would probably make more at USC due to the huge networking.</p>
<p>I have two questions regarding business, economics, and accounting majors/minors.
Is the life of an accountant really as bad as the forums make it out to be? It seems like any accountant wanting to get somewhere undergoes years of miserable hours and an unhappy job situation?</p>
<p>More importantly though, how are ones opporturtunities out of college different (for better or worse) between getting a business degree form USC’s marshall and a business-economics degree from UCLA?
Basically, how is the business-economics major different from that of business?</p>
<p>Well, the life of an accountant you hear on these forums may be from the big firms and yes it gets pretty bad. Most people have the intention of going into a firm and leaving within a couple years. The hours suck for certain service lines and because you work so many hours, your pay per hour basically sucks. If you don’t want such bad hours, find an accounting job that isnt related to audit or tax. Do A/R, A/P, reconciliations, etc. </p>
<p>The way I think is that most business related jobs from a big firm will suck. A lot of hours will be demanded of you so basically any big firm you go to will be the same. Abandon all hope of normal 40 hour work weeks all year round!</p>
<p>I can only speak for accounting, but I would say USC gets recruited a bit more than UCLA. Their program is not only a major, but they have other majors that allow them to be more appealing to the smaller service lines of accounting firms.</p>
<p>Business economics isn’t really business - it helps you prepare for your graduate degree in business by introducing you to the basics. A bachelor’s in business enables you to hit the job market as soon as you graduate. </p>
<p>USC is well-renowned for its undergraduate business program and alumni network. Most Trojans automatically get some sort of internship and low corporate position, just because they go to USC. I’m sure UCLA has its perks too, but not as widely known as USC’s.</p>
<p>bright_eyes wrote: “USC is well-renowned for its undergraduate business program and alumni network”</p>
<p>That’s ancient history. Go find out how many of the Marshall schools undergrads had jobs lined up by the time they graduated last May. Or how many of this year’s grads have jobs.</p>
<p>s_dragon: haha, I know where you’re coming from. I must have been in a slightly foul mood when I wrote that shpeal. </p>
<p>stylar: Let me give you an example of how a business economics education here differs from a “business” curriculum at USC. I have a friend who knew that he wanted to go into real estate finance. When he was going through recruitment, he told me that the USC kids had an advantage over him because they had a lot of practice for the cases in their classes. Because UCLA’s bizecon curriculum is predominantly comprised of econ classes, he had to go out of his way to prepare and practice on his own. But the good news is that he did just fine and got a job in the field.</p>
<p>Choosing which type of degree you want isn’t an exact science. The example I just gave you dealt with a specific field, and my friend was fairly certain that was what he wanted to get into. But for those people who just have a fairly vague idea that they want to go into “business” because they may or may not want to do something “business-y” (very vague…) … the jury’s still out. One example: I have a family friend who was the CFO at several Silicon Valley companies that have gone public. In the context of where he’s at, he much prefers applicants to have something other than a generic BA in business admin (like communications, engineering or what not… yes, even dealing with financial positions) and then get an MBA. So whether or not going through an undergrad business admin program will give you an edge is fairly contextual and dependent on a lot of things (like exactly what industry you want to get into, etc).</p>
<p>And yes, the life of an accountant in a big public firm is really that bad.</p>
<p>you know where I came from ? haha, I remember I talked to you last year, and you still owe me a post about the Econ Department!!! :D</p>