I really want to get into the whole marketing/advertising/PR field (which is competitive, I know) but I’ve frequently been told not to major in Marketing because other majors can still get jobs in that field (also internships matter more than major.)
Anyway, I’m pretty sure I want to get an MBA and I know how competitive it is and how important GPA is, so I at first wanted to double major in Econ & Psych because I thought I could do better in that than in Finance (which would be in the undergrad business school). However, I just looked at my school’s official 2014-2015 registrar and finance has a higher average undergraduate gpa than economics & psych. econ is 3.02, psych is 3.09, and finance is 3.29. So what would be better to get into marketing? A major in finance or double major in econ/psych? (also I realize that just because the average GPA is higher doesn’t mean I am guaranteed to do better in Finance). Thanks for the help!
What do you see yourself doing, more specifically? What are your best subjects? Which school are you talking about?
Forget economics, it’s too theoretical and broad. English/comm might be good for PR. Advertising might require English/comm, business skills, graphic arts, etc. For marketing, with MBA/grad school in mind, some combination of psychology, statistics, CS, certain business minors. But it depends on the answers to those questions above.
I don’t think it matters; you can go into marketing with econ and psych or with finance. What matters are the internships you do in college and how you parlay your knowledge. For what it’s worth, I know several psychology majors (and one psychology/economics double major) who are in marketing right now.
Also even at top MBA programs, GPA is less important than your work experience. The middle 50% of accepted students into the class of 2016 at Yale SOM, for example, had between a 3.17 and a 3.87 GPA - the median was a 3.56. So yes, you need good grades, but they don’t need to be super-high-tippy-top grades. (In fact, to stand out you need to develop leadership experiences and do internships and jobs, so your grades probably won’t be the highest of the high in college.)