<p>I want to major in math and economics in college. I want to hopefully someday land a position as an investment banker or hedge fund manager, or even in the distant future a CFO or CEO if I make it big. Is Columbia particularly strong in this area?</p>
<p>Yes. Columbia is definitely a major player in economics. Traditionally, the strongest programs in econ have been Harvard, Chicago, MIT, Princeton and Stanford. Columbia may not be in that lofty company, since it is a relative newcomer to the scene. But Columbia’s econ is arguably as strong, if not slightly stronger than Yale’s.</p>
<p>Very intriguingly, both Columbia and NYU have amazing math (as well as econ) programs. This may possibly be due (in part) to their NYC location.</p>
<p>Not to mention columbia has the joint major mathematics-economics, which ill be participating in :)</p>
<p>Surprise for you: you don’t need an econ or math degree to be an investment banker or hedge fund manager.</p>
<p>Columbia’s econ dept is exceptional, perhaps even top 5 in recent years. 10-15 years ago the econ department was great but only top 15, in the last 5-7 years there’s been some amazing new hires a few nobel prize winners and some great research (rankings still lag however). While you do not need to be econ math to get an i-banking of HF job, it is one of the best majors you can have on your resume. If I could redo college, I’d probably be an Econ-math, econ-OR or Econ-Stat major (was in SEAS). I took a ton of econ classes and loved studying it, some amazing profs teach the econ core (gulati, sala-i-martin, elmes). Econ-math majors tend to be very smart and very successful with getting jobs.</p>
<p>also Karot, I miss you sista</p>