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<li><p>I've heard that the econ major, out of all the majors, isn't very "engaged" (other posters' words, not mine). What exactly does this mean? Are the students in it not very intellectual or academic?</p></li>
<li><p>How pre-professional is the major? I've heard a problem with students who study economics at LACs is that when they apply for a finance job, they can't answer the technical questions. If the major itself isn't pre-professional at all, are there any other services that can help with pre-professional training/advising? </p></li>
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<p>Economics is a field of study that is what the student will make of it. Are there ppl who take the minimal, even at Harvard? Sure. But it’s up to YOU to be engaged – to take the Econometrics courses, to take classes you know will ensure a solid foundation in the quantitative side (for Finance, etc.). </p>
<p>… and this holds true for any college – why you’d post this question on the Harvard forum is strange to me.</p>
<p>@T26E4 This sentiment about econ majors has been repeated a lot on the Harvard forum, with people saying “all the majors here are amazing, except for econ and engineering…” I haven’t seen this issue appearing within discussions about other schools on Harvard’s caliber (although, admittedly I’m not applying to that many schools)</p>
<p>I’d say take it with a grain of salt. I majored in Econ at Harvard’s rival – supposedly with a better Econ reputation than H – but whatever. Among my fellow majors, there were slackers. But for those who really wanted to milk the dept for great classes and preparation, no one was disappointed… I’d say a knock on the Econ dept at Harvard is more likely a knock on the general reputation of the Econ majors at Harvard as opposed to the dept itself. I stand by my earlier assertion – if you’re the sort to go after really engaging the subject matter, your fellow students and the instructors, you’ll do absolutely fine. Don’t worry how many 3.0 GPA econ majors are around you. You be the 4.0 econ student who will be on the short list of Dept honors as a senior.</p>
<p>@T26E4 ok thanks! I agree, if everyone else is slacking, at least it’ll make me look good lol</p>
<p>bump, any other opinions?</p>
<p>Robert Rubin, Ben Bernanke, Steve Ballmer and Sheryl Sandberg all did OK with their H Econ degrees. Not really sure what threads about H’s middling Ec students you’re alluding to. H widely considered to have one of the top 3-4 best graduate schools of Econ and it’s undergrad seems to be typically lumped in with Chicago, Stanford, Yale, MIT, Northwestern, Berkley undergrad depts as some of the nation’s best. Additionally, if you’re looking at H ec as a gateway to business, kids concentrating in Far Eastern Studies and Classics are about as likely to go to Goldman or McKinsey as the Ec concentrators.</p>
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<p>Grateful if you could clarify whether this information about Harvard Econ, Far Eastern Studies and Classics majors feeding Goldman and McKinsey is offered as opinion or fact. If it is fact, doubly grateful for the source</p>
<p>Three things about economics, at Harvard and pretty much everywhere else that’s remotely similar to Harvard:</p>
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<li><p>It’s a huge department, and probably the largest concentration in the college. As a result, there’s going to be some bureaucracy you wouldn’t find in a smaller department, and a lack of some of the things that lead to more engagement for undergraduate concentrators. The Classics department can have a barbecue in some faculty member’s back yard, and it probably does, with all of the faculty, grad students, undergraduate concentrators, and everyone’s kids, pets, and significant others. If the Economics department tried that, they would need a space that fit thousands of people. And it wouldn’t even foster closeness – the giant crowd would make everyone feel alienated. That doesn’t mean the Economics department is going to be completely impersonal, but it does mean you will have to find your personal niche in it, and you will never know everyone. And it means some of the people around you are going to feel disengaged.</p></li>
<li><p>One of the reasons why it’s such a large concentration is that it attracts lots of students who actually have little or no interest in economics, but think that it’s a practical concentration that will help them get a high-paying job when they graduate. Plus, students whose parents think that way, and have a lot of influence over them. Plus students who don’t know what they think, and follow the crowd for safety. So, between one thing and the other, economics classes, especially lower level ones, have a lot of people in them with little or no passion for what is being taught. They may be perfectly smart, nice people, but they don’t care much about the material. (To state the obvious, you won’t find the same dynamic in classics classes; no one is there who doesn’t really want to be there.) That can register as disengagement, and it can create something of an atmosphere of disengagement. It doesn’t mean you are going to be disengaged if you aren’t resentful about being there.</p></li>
<li><p>Being a tenured economics professor at a top university is a really good deal. People beat a path to their doors to offer them large sums of money to consult on this or that, or to visit, or whatever. That’s true to some extent of every department at Harvard, but the intensity is probably greater in economics than any other field. It means that economics professors are rich and happy, but that they have somewhat less time to devote to their students, graduate and under-. And the graduate students, who are like their personal servants for periods of 3-5 years running, are always going to come first, because the relationship is more intense, and because the graduate students have more to offer in return. So building a real personal relationship with faculty takes a bit of moxie and work, and not everyone bothers with that.</p></li>
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<p>None of this distinguishes Harvard from anyplace else a Harvard-quality student is likely to be considering. Unless it’s Swarthmore or Amherst, or some other LAC, where you don’t have grad students and even large departments can still have parties.</p>
<p>Also: Economics and Finance are not the same thing. In general, finance is a teeny-weeny corner of economics. It’s perfectly possible to be an economics major anywhere and not know a lot of finance lingo. If you want to learn finance, you have to take elective courses in finance, none of which is going to be required for the major in a liberal arts program like Harvard’s. (Obviously, things are different if you are a Finance major at Wharton or some other undergraduate business school.) No one in the Economics Department at Harvard thinks it’s his or her job to train you to work at Goldman Sachs. They think – and they are right about this – that you are smart enough, and Goldman and its clients rich enough, that you and Goldman can work out your training without bothering them.</p>
<p>Also, it’s not that finance is an unsophisticated field. Really smart people spend careers on it, and sometimes win Nobel Prizes for brilliant, original work. But no one looks to newly minted college graduates for brilliant, original work. Even at places like Goldman, what newbie employees are doing is the economics equivalent of kindergarten work – something you can pick up in a few days, if not hours. Sure, lots of the people they hire already know how to do it before they start, but the companies don’t care much about that, because they know they can teach you how to do it, and they are going to have to teach everyone to do it THEIR way anyhow.</p>
<p>JHS, do your comments purport to cover college grads working at major wirehouses, investment banks, and hedge funds that are doing quant work? Are you saying Goldman can teach them the requisite math or the college grads can pick it up in a few days or hours?</p>
<p>Can’t prove it, can’t source it…it is just my opinion that the plum Wall St jobs going to newly-minted college graduates are going to those with the Math/Quantitative credentials. Mathematical Econ majors. Quantitative Finance majors. Operational Research/Financial Engineering majors (Princeton), Applied Math-Finance majors…more so than straight Econ majors or Classics majors or Far Eastern Studies majors.</p>
<p>Different answers for different things. No, quant-oriented trading firms are not teaching classics majors the math they need in a few days. They are hiring people with a lot of math, at least. I don’t think finance knowledge is required – at least not for the people I know, but they were math PhDs or ABDs with little or no exposure to finance before going to work in the industry. People doing work in support of the more traditional investment banking functions (M&A advice, underwriting, valuation, recapitalizations) need basic math knowledge, but they are not likely to be doing anything cutting edge. Lots of people who are aiming for these jobs prep for it in college, of course. However, that doesn’t mean it’s necessary.</p>
<p>I wasn’t saying that knowing how to conjugate irregular Latin verbs substitutes for strong math skills. I was saying that no one cares whether you know what a cap rate is or the difference between American and European options.</p>
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<p>I won’t belabor it. Suffice it to say we have different opinions on the job requirements and educational backgrounds for newly-minted college grads nailing the top jobs on Wall St these days. </p>
<p>I think it is the rare exception that anyone who doesn’t know what a capitalization rate, an American option, or a European option is, for example…these are such basic, simple financial market concepts…would be competitive for a top Wall St job versus a Princeton ORFE or Wharton Finance or Brown Applied Math-Finance grad.</p>
<p>Readers now have both points of view and will be able to make their own judgments.</p>