<p>What are some special things about Economics at Cornell? (eg. Is it particularly strong in certain areas? Math-intensive?)</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>It doesn’t requirement many classes as a major and it’s known to be on the theoretical side. You’ll commonly find people having another major along with Economics (government, math, near eastern studies, etc.).</p>
<p>Very broad selection of courses offered, including business courses offered in AEM [Dyson].</p>
<p>The Economics major in and of itself is pretty standard compared to most other schools. I think the only school that will give you a truly unique Economics education is UChicago at the undergraduate level. As Islander4 said, it’s pretty theoretical. Overall I thought the professors were good. The math requirement depends what you take. Technically the major only requires Calc I, but that’s insufficient if you want to do anything beyond the undergraduate level in Econ. Calc II is required for some of the other courses, including the advanced Econometrics sequence. You’ll touch on Calc III in some courses, but at a very basic level, and Calc III definitely isn’t required to learn the material (the classes will teach you what you need to know). </p>
<p>What I see as the true strength of Cornell isn’t the Department itself, but that the Economics major definitely lends itself to flexibility. If you are really into finance/investment banking, you have more than enough room in your schedule to take AEM courses from a top undergrad business school. If you have an interest in labor, you can take classes from the ILR school and the top labor economists in the country. If you want to go for your PhD, you can take classes from a world class math department and take more advanced undergraduate classes. I ended up doing Economics and Government, with minors in International Relations and German. Not many schools will let you do that.</p>
<p>And how difficult was the economics major compared to other majors in CAS and about how many hours a day did u spend studying/working and how many hours a day did you have classes.?</p>
<p>Economics is at the same time pretty easy and somewhat difficult. Of the social sciences, it’s the most rigorous. Classes are usually curved to a B+/B. Depending on the course, raw scores on exams are frequently in the 60-80% range. That said, the body of knowledge you have to know is not large. Memorizing the basic theories in a given class isn’t all that time consuming, it’s all about your ability to apply the knowledge on exams.</p>
<p>In terms of hours per week, it’s definitely on the low end, simply because it’s all about your ability to apply what you know, not read hundreds of pages. The average workload per week in addition to classes probably amounts to 2-3 hours a week, significantly more when you have exams, but that’s only 2-3 times per semester.</p>
<p>I did a Government major as well and while those classes required a lot more reading and time, the classes were also “easier” in that writing a good paper or taking an exam wasn’t nearly as intellectually taxing as Econ.</p>
<p>Econ is probably the most intellectually difficult of the non-hard sciences/Engineering, but requires little work because it’s mostly about your ability to apply your knowledge, not do a lot of reading or complete excessively long problem sets.</p>
<p>And did you take AP Economics in high school? If you did, how different was AP Econ from freshman economics courses at Cornell University?</p>
<p>I did take AP Econ, but I used the credit to place into higher level Econ, so I never took the freshman intro courses. I think I was well-prepared for the 300-level courses with my AP background. I had quite a few friends take intro at Cornell and the intensity depends on the instructor (at least from what I can tell when they asked me to help them). My impression is that if you take an intro class with a professor from the Econ department (versus say AEM or PAM or whoever sometimes teaches them), the class will be more intense because they will want you to know more for upper level classes. Intro econ seems to mostly be lecture-optional since the notes are online and I think the class uses online software for the weekly problem sets.</p>
<p>Intro econ really does depend on the instructor. All of them have stuff online, but all are different in teaching ability and the type of assignments they give outside of class. Most people just want to get 1110-1120 out of the way.</p>
<p>My advice as a Cornell Econ Alum: Don’t major in Econ. This major sucks and you don’t get to learn any practical skill-set related to any jobs, unlike finance, accounting, engineering, or computer science. Heck, you don’t get to learn much about economy at all.</p>
<p>In addition, some of the worst professors I had at Cornell are all from Econ department.</p>
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<p>And that’s why we have AEM and Comp Sci majors.</p>
<p>Is there anyone out there who enjoyed being an Economics. major at Cornell U?</p>
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<p>Not anyone that I know of. If you want to major in Econ, try to major in AEM and take accounting, too. That will give you more marketability to employers and will be more practical knowledge. Econ just tries to teach you how to ‘think theoretically’, which is a load of BS.</p>
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<p>It’s a shame Comp Science is too difficult of major for people without strong math and programming background. It is a great major, and if you do well you will end up with a 100k software job at Google/IBM/Microsoft.</p>
<p>I wanted to try CS major, but got scared away. My buddy tried to switch to CS major from Political Science so he could get a good job after graduation. He got like 1.5 GPA that semester and almost flunked out of Cornell after switching to CS. I would bet CS or xome of the Engineering majors are about 10 times more difficult than AEM or Econ majors.</p>
<p>Engineers at Cornell tend to be more advanced in math than most other university applicants. That’s likely because they came from schools with stronger math curricula and a greater selection of math courses.</p>
<p>Goud, there are many who enjoy being econ majors at Cornell. In fact, econ is the most popular major in CAS. Also, Cornell has recently materially expanded the econ department.</p>
<p>The econ dept now includes labor economists from ILR, as well as senior faculty from the Johnson Graduate School of Management, AEM, and PAM.</p>
<p>Everyone I knew in the major enjoyed it. I know people who used Econ to be pre-law, pre-med, go into finance, do consulting, etc. I definitely recommend pairing Econ with something else depending on your interests, and Cornell allows that. For example, if you are pre-law, pair Econ with Govt. Interested in banking? Combine Econ with CS or Math (with a healthy sampling of AEM classes). I’m working in policy analysis now so Econ is good for that and I paired it with Govt. </p>
<p>Believe it or not, when looking for jobs Economics is really flexible/desirable. Learning skills such as those from AEM is overrated. Any entry level job will have you to through a job training program anyway. Economics is valuable (and data backs this up) because employers know you’ve been taught how to think critically. </p>
<p>As for the professors, while none of them were my all-time favorite professors at Cornell, I did think most of them were quite good. I only had one who I really didn’t like.</p>
<p>nice thing about majoring in accounting is that you have much wider range of potential job options, compared to someone who just majored in econ.</p>
<p>With a background in accounting/finance, you can try banking/consulting/trading. If that fails, you have the backup option of working for Big4 in audit. Accounting is a highly-sought after skill-set. (much more so than ‘critical thinking skills’ that econ major teaches)</p>
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<p>Some of the smartest people I’ve met ever were all undoubtedly from engineering and Computer Science majors at Cornell. There were a lot of smart people in other majors as well, including Econ. However, I would venture to guess that you almost have to be smart just to pass it in CS, physics, or some of tougher engineering majors. In humanities/ Econ/ AEM, you can be of very average intelligence and pull decent grades with proper work ethic.</p>
<p>also, regardless of their math capabilities, engineering or CS majors just had very demanding and difficult curriculum. Not to mention harsh curves/grading.</p>