<p>Hello, I plan on going to a cheap SUNY school (as im in NY) for undergrad school for Economics while minoring in Arabic. Does it matter if I go to one of these schools ratehr than a private school IF I PLAN ON ATTENDING CORNELL FOR GRAD STUDIES?</p>
<p>Your Grad School’s (or Professional School’s) rep always trumps your UG. (Keeping in mind that departmental strength may not correlate with conventional undergraduate “prestige.”)</p>
<p>BUT</p>
<p>You cannot “Plan” on attending a certain Grad School years before. Your being admitted may involve variables beyond your control.</p>
<p>@snarlatron thanks i’d like to get into the FBI so i’d like to learn arabic. ik most linguists are nativ speakers but i want to be a special agent will this work? (economics degree, arabic, french, and 2 yrs as fraud investigator?)</p>
<p>Agreed, you cannot count on getting into a grad school of Cornell’s caliber any easier than you can guarantee getting into Cornell undergrad when you are in 9th grade. It is a worthy goal and I wish you well, but it is impossible to predict what grad school you will qualify for at this point.</p>
<p>And in my experience, (different from many opinions on CC I know), people look at both your undergrad and grad schools. Plus a stronger undergrad school will help you get into a stronger grad school. That said, if you do very well at the top SUNY schools and the standardized tests you should be in good shape. </p>
<p>For PhD study in economics, you need to take many advanced math and statistics courses beyond those ordinarily required for an economics major at most colleges.</p>
<p>I don’t think an advanced econ degree is really the thing if you are targeting the FBI. Advanced econ is really an academic research degree. Accounting or computer science would be good fields for fraud detection and are both ‘critical needs’ skills. Did you read the FBI pages on critical skills for agents? Arabic yes, econ no.</p>