<p>Hi, I am trying to decide on what major to double with a B.S. Business Administration and would really like your opinions!</p>
<p>I am an undergraduate student at Berkeley, and the second majors I am considering now are EECS (Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences), Computer Science, Statistics, Applied Mathematics and Economics. I am open to minors in addition to a second major as well. The most viable minors by my opinion are EECS and Computer Science.
I intend to take a ninth semester, to take more classes for each of my majors.</p>
<p>I not only want a strong combination that will set me as strong for i-banking employment after graduation, but also as a potentially strong applicant to graduate business school. I have heard that paradoxically, business schools more and more prefer engineering and other undergraduate majors over business majors (with working experience), which is opposite of how i-banking firms would prefer to hire. </p>
<p>There are some pros and cons to each combination I am potentially interested in, and I'd like to put them out here for your consideration. </p>
<p>The EECS major is highly rigorous and has a great deal of requirements to graduate. It is packed with challenging engineering courses, and less useful (to me) requirements in the natural sciences. This is one of the most prestigious undergraduate degrees at Berkeley. However I think its many requirements will actually severely limit the scope of my education in the upper division years. Computer science is another of my interests and this is the "best" degree for it at Berkeley, but with the myriad of other requirements I will end up only being able to take a few upper division computer science classes.</p>
<p>The Computer Science major is like the EECS major, but has much fewer requirements. Taking this would allow me to take many more upper division CS classes. But I also wonder, would the prestige of EECS help me more for i-banking employment and business school applications, or my actual CS skills? How helpful would my CS degree really be towards my i-banking career? I can hardly imagine i-bankers besides quants needing a major's worth of knowledge in computer science.</p>
<p>The Statistics major is also very strong and highly prestigious. It is fairly time consuming as well, requiring me to take two upper division math or statistics classes every semester beginning junior year. I feel statistics is more applicable to i-banking and finance. This major is also a popular second major choice for aspiring i-bankers here at Berkeley, especially among the business fraternities. I am seriously considering this.</p>
<p>As for Applied Mathematics.. I don't know too much about this major yet. I feel it sounds stronger than a Statistics major, yet they do share many classes. Statistics requires you to take at least 3 upper division math courses, and 3 more electives among which are applied mathematics courses.</p>
<p>Economics, on the other hand, is what many Haas MBA candidates have recommended me to take. They say that it is most related to i-banking and finance, and would prepare me best for it. I am also very interested in this major. However I feel an Economics and Business Administration double major would appear too business oriented and not diverse enough to business schools. Considering how they especially seem to prefer people with quantitative backgrounds such as engineering or math, I have doubts on this combination's effectiveness for graduate school applications. </p>
<p>A way to circumvent this potential disadvantage though, could be to do an Economics and Business Administration double major with a minor in Computer Science. It is quite doable. I wonder if a minor's worth of CS would seem quantitative enough to business schools though. I kind of doubt it.</p>
<p>Thank you for even reading all of this! Haha it was pleasure to type and I hope I have brought up issues of interest to all aspiring i-bankers and financiers out there.
Hope to hear replies soon! =P</p>