Hi all,
I’m currently a freshman at Tulane who’s majoring in econ (school liberal arts) and finance (bschool). I was pretty sure about my majors until I took (am taking) my first B school course this year, Financial Accounting which makes me want to jump off of a cliff. Also the aholes at this school seem to be all finance majors for some reason. I’m rather attracted to the quantitative side of economics so I was considering switching my Finance major with either math/engineering/comp sci. I’m not a big fan of pure math and the school doesn’t offer a applied math major so thats kinda iffy. Taking an engineering is going to need a lot of more classes like physics and whatnot. The Comp Sci department at this school is pretty small and they offer a coordinate major so I’m interested in that. I’d like to end up in tech doing something economics related or at a VC. My concern is that the STEM degrees are probably way harder than finance and I’m a bit worried for my GPA. I made a 3.88 first semester but there were no real “hard” courses. I also came in with a buttload of AP credits so if I wanted to I could graduate with an Econ degree in 4/5 more semesters. At the moment I’m taking Intermediate Macro, Intermediate Micro, Calc III, Financial Accounting.
Your thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.
You can just major in economics and take additional math and statistics courses of interest and relevance (e.g. 3050, 3070, 3080, 3090, 4060), as well as the more mathematical economics courses (e.g. 4410). Financial economics courses (e.g. 4240) may be of interest to you as well. Taking the introductory sequence of CS courses (1500, 1600, 2300, 2170, 2200) can be generally useful in many areas, although Tulane’s CS departments more advanced level courses are mainly in theory, artificial intelligence, and graphics, rather than more widely applicable topics like operating systems, networks, databases, etc…
I am of the opinion that you shouldn’t let worries about your GPA put you off from studying something that you actually like and that has the potential to keep you in good jobs. There’s nothing wrong with getting a 3.0-3.4 - in fact, most employers don’t actually ask or care about your GPA. (The top ones like VC firms might, but if you have a 3.3-3.5+, you should be okay.)
Anyway, just because Tulane doesn’t explicitly offer an applied math major doesn’t mean you can’t specifically take classes in applied math there. Perusing Tulane’s mathematics website I see
2240 Introduction to Applied Mathematics
3000 Computational Problem Solving
3070 Introduction to Probability
3080 Introduction to Statistical Inference
3130 Special Topics: Mathematical Theory of Information
3310 Scientific Computing
4520 Mathematical Foundations of Computer Security
4470 Analytical Methods of Applied Mathematics
There are also classes that are pretty central to an applied math major, like ordinary differential equations and real analysis. Honestly, you could probably do an informal concentration in statistics if you like - the building blocks are there, and you might be able to round it out with some graduate-level classes from the biostatistics department (the concepts are the same, only the application is different).
Computer science is another good major to combine with economics, especially if you know already you’d like to end up in tech doing something economics related (although you can do that without a CS major, too). Or you could minor in engineering science.