I’m a current undergraduate student majoring in economics. It’s a smaller major and I’m looking to double or minor in something. I was considering a) double majoring in international relations. This option might be a bit difficult as I will have to fit in a term abroad as a requirement, and I’m already in my second year. I was also considering b) minoring in managerial economics (other students in my major are doing this as man econ is geared more towards finance than the regular econ) and double or minoring in Chinese as well.
tl;dr: option a) double major econ and intl relations. option b) econ major, managerial econ minor, chinese major or minor
Why do you have to double major in anything? I think if you can’t think of anything clearly compelling to double major in - either by your own interests or what you think is complementary to your desired career - then just majoring in economics is totally fine. You could take some classes in international relations if you want.
@juillet The econ major here is low in units. I could graduate early, but I’d rather add on something useful
@foolish I have heard that. Unfortunately, I’m not at all interested in taking computer science courses.
I’m mainly wondering if Intl Relations would help at all getting a job after college when paired with econ. If not, I would go the econ/man.econ/chinese route as the coursework is of more interest to me.
Do what interests you - easy decision. A minor is not really going to make a big difference in anything so minor in something you enjoy (my daughter is an econ/math major with a history minor because she enjoyed taking history classes.)
If a minor doesn’t give any benefit later on, I can scrap that idea. The problem is, I’m interested in both international relations and Chinese, so I’m having trouble deciding which to go with. Which, do you think, would be the more beneficial major paired with an econ major? (I am sticking with econ because it is also an interest of mine, but I won’t be going for a PhD in it later)
I’d say plan B is more beneficial. There are lots of perks to knowing a foreign language, especially one that’s spoken in the largest economy in the world.
I don’t think that a double major in IR will necessarily help you get a job later. It may; it may not; it’s difficult to tell. BUT I will say that I think Chinese will be more beneficial because that’s a tangible skill.
IR requires language courses, so I was going to take the Chinese language courses either way, but with IR would not be taking the Chinese history/culture courses.
econ major+math minor+good internship+social skills=many job offers
get a high math gpa and put it on your resume. it will signal to employers that you are smart
You guys are really swaying me on this even with the minimal reasons given. If I minor in math, does the “minors are not important” still apply? Is it helpful in getting a job, or is it only useful for those going into graduate school for economics? I’m not so great with math, and I already went through calculus, but it was the easier series for non-math/engineer/etc. students, so I’d have to take calculus again but the harder series. Also, I’m not confident I could get a good math gpa.
No, the advice for a math or stats minor was assuming you liked math and were good at it. The jobs you would get would be mathematical in nature so if you are not really interested in quantitative analyses for a career you probably should not do math or stats. But those minors do lead to good number-crunching jobs.