Double Majors

<p>I am a pretty qualified legacy, aka 2300 sats and a 4.33 gpa but my school is insanely competitive especially with penn legacies. I really wanna go to wharton but id rather go to sas than not go to penn at all. In SAS I am especially interested in the ppe aka political science, philosophy and economics major. Does it make sense to apply to arts and sciences and than apply for dual degree at wharton. Is it really hard to get a dual degree? Is it dumb to do business and economics? How much harder is wharton admissions than sas? Has anyone at CC double majored between sas and wharton? Thanks a lot for any feedback.</p>

<p>I was just having this doubt a couple of weeks ago ( I'm in SAS). You can search up my thread if you want, it might help. You should also contact one of the advisors at wharton. I had a really really nice lady sit down with me for about 30min to discuss this whole issue ( after which I decided against a double with wharton, and am now considering math and econ).</p>

<p>dual degree requires a very high gpa to be accepted; search elsewhere on this board for information on that process.</p>

<p>a wharton / sas econ dual degree is probably not the best idea, especially since you'd get a bs econ and a ba econ...</p>

<p>I was considering dualling Wharton and SAS for a while but decided to just stick with Wharton. It's a lot of work and it is questionable as to whether or not it actually helps you. A lot of people out of Wharton (single or dual) get similar jobs anyway, and so I'd advise only doing the dual degree if you have an actual interest in what you're studying such that it doesn't feel like an overly large burden to your schedule. </p>

<p>And yes, doing econ in SAS is a little funny if you're doing Wharton.</p>

<p>Ive heard that you do not need that high a gpa to dual degree only like a 3.75. Also i would do ppe not econ and would concentrate in political science. u can transfer some of your econ classes from wharton to the ppe so it would be about only one extra econ class</p>

<p>PPE's not really econ. It's like econ-lite. At most schools, I would say study the econ and then get an MBA somewhere in the future.</p>

<p>At penn, the PPE dept is fluffy, and the econ dept. has its priorities out of whack. Honestly, you might be best served by going to Wharton, taking the classes you want, and piecing together the econ material you want. The best economists (professors) are in wharton, the degree is an econ degree, and you can still take the classes you want. All too often I hear econ majors lamenting that the really interesting econ classes are in the marketing, management, finance, and opim departments, and that the econ department is wedded to classical econ classes that are rapidly becoming intellectually irrelevant.</p>

<p>getting a 3.75 is not that easy (especially if not in the college, but that doesn't apply to you)</p>

<p>Does anyone know what gpa you need to dual degree if u are in wharton and wanna dual degree at arts and sciences?</p>

<p>a 3.0 is sufficient.</p>

<p>
[quote]
All too often I hear econ majors lamenting that the really interesting econ classes are in the marketing, management, finance, and opim departments, and that the econ department is wedded to classical econ classes that are rapidly becoming intellectually irrelevant.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>To paraphrase Brian Griffin, "are you sure it was econ majors you were talking to, Peter? Are you sure it wasn't....NOTHING?"</p>

<p>First of all, no course that could be called "economics" is going to be offered in marketing(!), management, or OPIM. Any econ major that considers the material in those classes to be "econ classes" needs their head examined.</p>

<p>As for "classical econ classes that are rapidly becoming intellectually irrelevant," well that's a rather old epithet having tossed around for at least a century. And yet from Marx to Keynes, those crotchety old fundamentals of economics have a way of reasserting themselves. (cf. Buchholz, Todd G. "New Ideas from Dead Economists: An Introduction to Modern Economic Thought," 1989, rev. 1999)</p>

<p>Game theory in the OPIM department. Macroeconomics in the finance department. Relaxing assumptions of rationality and homogeneous populations in the marketing department. International economics and evolutionary economics in the management department.</p>

<p>The truth is that Penn offers an econ major that gives you exactly that: an econ major. It isn't a realistic study of economics, just as what has classically been labeled as economics is coming to be regarded with skepticism. If you want to study interactions in systems where we take as axioms rationality, homogeneous populations, and simple, time-independent decision models, econ may be a good major. But if you're actually interested in economics, and questioning those (mostly inaccurate) assumptions, Wharton has the classes that cover those topics. PPE/ECON game theory studies one-time games, which never occur ANYWHERE. OPIM and MKTG offer evolutionary game theory, which is a much more complex field and a much better application for the study of economics. </p>

<p>It was in my financial time series class that an econ major remarked how much more realistic the b-school classes are for economics studies. It was in my marketing probability models class that an econ major suggested THIS is the stuff econ majors should be studying. The truth is that Penn's economics is incredibly irrelevant in today's economics world, and the interesting research in economics is being done in business schools. If you want to go to ECON grad school, then the econ major is useful, but then you go to econ grad school and you study what's being taught in Wharton to undergrads.</p>

<p>I gather you haven't taken any real classes in mktg, mgmt, or opim. All of these departments offer classes with very large economics components. (For example, marketing 101).</p>

<p>I've taken MKTG-101 (Fall 2007) and don't recall anything in the way of economics.</p>

<p>If you are to pronounce Penn's economics (and by that you mean the CAS econ dept) as irrelevant, then you are pronouncing theoretical economics as a whole to be irrelevant, and with that sweeping the economics departments of every non-business school (Harvard FAS, Chicago, Princeton, Stanford, Columbia, et al) into the dustbin--a highly dubious venture, to be sure.</p>

<p>Applied economics is a wonderful and exciting field with applications far beyond the business world in which Wharton focuses its efforts. However, without being grounded in classical economic thought, such theories become increasingly difficult to relate to empirical realities as well as to each other. Exploring bounded rationality, for example, is impossible without starting from extant assumptions positing hyperrationality, etc. Perhaps this judgment is overly Socratic and it is possible to make sui generis economic theories, but I wouldn't bet on it.</p>

<p>Game theory, while fascinating (and serving as the theoretical framework for my own thesis), is as much psychology, poli-sci, and applied mathematics as it is economics. Truthfully, these fields all have some deal of overlap and perhaps one day will be synthesized into one big depressingly deterministic unified Theory of Decision or god knows what.</p>

<p>I have to disagree with mattwonder on this one. Real economics is in the Economics department, not in Wharton. The fact that econ majors are saying "this is what Econ majors should be learning" at Wharton classes only shows their ignorance regarding the subject, and it does not support the point that real economics is at Wharton.</p>

<p>And no, if you go to econ grad school you won't be learning what they teach to undergrads in Wharton at all. Actually, it is graduate students at Wharton who begin by taking the foundational courses in economics at the Econ Department.</p>

<p>I predict the fire</p>

<p>^clash of econs...lol</p>

<p>Can't we all just get along and focus on what's really important--hating Princeton?</p>

<p>What's wrong with Princeton?</p>

<p>Wow. Turn in your penn card at the door.</p>

<p>it's okay he doesn't have one</p>

<p>all actual penncard holders should know the way it is</p>

<p>Is it because of the athletics stuff or is there another reason?</p>