Econ Majors - How do you like it? Is it useful?

<p>It seems like all econ majors are those who got rejected from haas. I am somewhat interested in economics and thinking about pursing this major.</p>

<p>how useful is this major? is this a major that can get you a job right away or would i need to go to grad school?</p>

<p>Im also interested in knowing. I heard that econ is the hardest major at CAL and that econ majors practically have no time for a social life. Econ is also a GPA killer.</p>

<p>Not all econ majors are those who were rejected from Haas, some of the econ majors are also business doubles. Economics is really really practical and applicable to everyday life, it basically how people allocate scarce resources, or in other words how people make decisions. It's suuuper duper useful and practical.</p>

<p>As for econ being difficult? My hardest class so far was an econ class and some problem sets in econ can take hours and hours to do. It's fairly difficult, you have to study and prep for the tests but it's not like you'll be holed up in the library all the time. Definitely doable and not the hardest major at UCB. That would probably be chemical engineering...</p>

<p>Econ is very useful, and people who graduate majoring in Econ have excellent career prospects as well as opportunity to go to grad school. Some are people who did not get into Haas, but most are not interested in business school.</p>

<p>I am/was doing a CS + Econ double major, but I may decide to drop the Econ major because I don't find it interesting. What you've heard concerning the difficulty is inaccurate, in my opinion. Every one of my computer science classes have been significantly harder than the Econ classes I have taken so far, both in terms of workload and concept. Math 53/54 has also been more difficult (required for CS majors). It may be due to the fact that I took the Econ 100 series as opposed to 101, but my roommate, who is a mechanical engineer and currently taking econ 101a, finds that class easy as well.</p>

<p>It is not an easy major, by any means, but it is far from being among the hardest at Cal.</p>

<p>I applied for the Econ major this semester, and am taking the required Econ 100B and Stats 20 class this semester. I am trying my hardest in these classes to do well to get into the major. BUT, suppose, I don't get in. Is there any sort of appeal process to go through? Are these any successful?</p>

<p>1-10 how easy is it. 10 being the easiest.</p>

<p>Well I'm not gonna rank the difficulty on a scale, but I will give my opinion. I'm a CS and Econ double, and my Econ courses aren't near as tough as my CS courses are, but they are challenging in their own right. So no, Econ isn't the hardest major in Berkeley, not by a long shot. I find the difficulty of Econ can vary vastly among different Econ majors. There's a lot of flexibility in what you can take for upper division. The major can be made a lot easier if you take 100A/100B/140 and a couple business courses for electives, as opposed to 101A/101B/141 and stuff like Advanced Microeconomics, which would be a significantly tougher path. Of course it all depends on what your interests are and what you want to get out of the Econ major. Also note that I'm speaking of the difficulty of the material and not grading... generally most professors aren't too strict with grading.</p>

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I heard that econ is the hardest major at CAL

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<p>Really? I think plenty of the engineering students would have to emphatically disagree. </p>

<p>Let me just talk about one particular aspect of Econ. If you're an econ student and you're doing very poor grades(getting D's and F's), at least you can switch to another major in L&S. It's not that easy in the College of Engineering. If you're failing your engineering classes, you may not be able to switch to study something else because no other college wants to take you. You probably can't switch to another engineering discipline either because all of them are impacted. The bottom line is that you're forced to stay in the major in which you are doing poorly, and unsurprisingly, many of these students end up flunking out of Berkeley entirely. This is what is referred to as Berkeley's 'engineering major trap', in which you find yourself stranded in engineering and can't get out.</p>

<p>Whatever else you might say about econ, at least it doesn't trap unwilling and unhappy students within the major.</p>

<p>I would suppose you would get trapped if you were a transfer though...right?</p>

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I would suppose you would get trapped if you were a transfer though...right?

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<p>Even a transfer Econ student has far more flexibility to change majors than does a transfer engineering student.</p>