@Chembiodad wrote: “Wall Street has become a major employer of math majors. Trying to match the outstanding success of multi-billionaire Differential Geometer…”
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@Bergermeister I agree with you about the Swarthmore comment. As an undergrad at Swarthmore or Haverford you can also take class at UPenn at the Wharton Business School. I don’t know about Swarthmore’s placement for grad school but I am sure it’s superb. I know at Haverford many students go to business school at Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, and Columbia. Also, employers are starting to hire more from Liberal Arts Colleges where the students can critically think and write. Also, many employers like an economics major because economics teaches analytical skills and critical thinking. I think the Liberal Arts College to a bigger business school is the way to go.
It really depends upon which LAC. Yes, a top 10 LAC will have good placement results, particularly for a degree seen as evidence of quantitative skill, such as econ or math. Farther down the good chain, however, things become much more murky, in my experience. There will always be jobs somewhere for nonquantitative majors from LACs such as Dickinson, but they may take longer to find.
Agree that economics majors at the top-20/25 LAC’s will likely do very well as name recognition is high for that group; once you drop to #40-60 I think it will likely be harder than attending a business program at a similarly ranked university. That said, I agree with @rman0070 's assessment in posting #22 as an Econ and Math double major at a top-ranked LAC would likely yield great results.
A math major in particular is heavily recruited by Wall St.; English majors, less so, even from good LACs. Grads from the very top schools likely will be fine on Wall St right away regardless of major. Outside of prestige conscious Wall St, there appear to be fewer management training programs in mainstream corporate America than there used to be; employees are expected to come on board fully trained from day 1 often. Perhaps the employees don’t stay as long as they used to so training makes less sense as an investment in the employee.
Ok I’m old, so maybe things have changed. I have an Econ degree from a LAC. Had trouble finding jobs and job advancement. Went back and got Masters in Accounting from UNC and now no problem finding jobs. But like I said, I’m old, lol. Graduated from undergrad in 92.
@chb088, yup you are “old”; as you know many accounting jobs have been shipped offshore and will likely be completed by machines in the future. There’s been a lot of press recently from Mark Cuban and other Silicon Valley icons about the value of a liberal arts degree in a high tech world. Agree with @roycroftmom that quants are in greatest demand on WS.
One poster made a comment that there are fewer corporate “mgmt trainee” jobs available today. That’s an area where the advantage goes to the UG B-school student. These are typically FDLPs (Financial Development Leadership Programs) and are rotational in nature. Typically 6 months to a yr and then rotate to a different function within finance. That poster made the comment that corporate america wants to see you start with knowledge and “hitting the ground running”. That’s quite true in these functions as many of the quality B- schools provide heavy technical training, financial modeling, deeper level accounting where a UG newbie can start working on cost analysis, valuation, some treasury functions, etc. on day 1. The bigger firms are known for grooming the right kids into financial leadership positions, paying for their MBA, etc. Pretty good stuff.
@rickle1, here’s a very different view from Morgan Stanley https://www.morganstanley.com/articles/wall-st-recruits-non-finance-degrees. They are not unique as I’ve also seen the same from many PE shops.
@Chembiodad yeah I’ve heard that about the decline in Accounting jobs, but I haven’t seen it. At least not for CPAs. I think there is probably a decline for lower level accountants, but if you have your CPA and Big 4 experience, you are still in demand fortunately.
@chb088, being in demand is good 
@Chembiodad , I agree that Wall Street hires from all majors and a lot of recruiting is done at prestigious LACs, partly due to longstanding relationships with those colleges and partly due to those LACs having really smart well rounded kids. No argument. They also hire tons of finance majors from lots of undergraduate B schools. Would be interesting to see a comparison.
My above post was more to do about entry level corporate jobs seeking task ready accounting and finance roles. The rotational jobs provide great exposure to several roles and are frequently filled with finance and accounting majors. Do GE, United Technologies, and Exxon/ Mobile recruit econ majors? Of course. Great companies recruit great talent and mold them. But they fill those roles with lots of business majors (and others) who already have certain skills. Outside of the elite schools, they actively recruit within business schools of large state flagships (it’s a numbers game).
While I have seen the public relations speeches put out by many employers (Steve Jobs,in particular used to do that) about how they really want well rounded liberal arts trained applicants, the reality does not seem to match the speeches. The jobs website for Apple, for example, has always been very heavily geared toward technical or business degrees demanded to apply. The Wall St firms will hire some nonquantitative graduates for the 2 year stints before MBA school from a few select Ivy schools and LAC equivalents, often those with stellar social credentials and connections in addition to academic prowess, but even that has shifted as more math majors and engineers apply to them. Had Apple been so committed to the virtues of liberal arts degrees, perhaps it could have considered actually hiring them in more than token quantities.
At my kid’s LAC, a pretty big Wall St feeder, typically all 3 summers of UG are spent doing targeted internships (and these kids are in college-sponsored programs/lunches/NYC visits/training throughout undergrad as well).
Finance isn’t my kid’s interest but she has several friends successfully walking that path including at least one who was without “stellar social credentials and connections” prior to college. The college itself has been very good at providing them, or rather, opportunities for her to make them with alumni and others.
@roycroftmom wrote:
We’re talking about places that graduate a few dozen majors a year. You could pour all of them into Google, Apple and Microsoft and it would look like a rounding error.
At my kid’s LAC, a pretty big Wall St feeder, typically all 3 summers of UG are spent doing targeted internships (and these kids are in college-sponsored programs/lunches/NYC visits/training throughout undergrad as well).
Again, I’m talking about corporate finance jobs, not Wall Street. Wall Street is dominated by recruits from around 20 schools that have a long standing history of pipeline to the street. Are there kids from other schools there? Yes, but the number is dwarfed by the top 20. If you go to a new hire class you from any Bulge Bracket (BB) bank you will see the occasional stray from X college or University of Y but you’ll see 10 kids from Wharton and 15 from Harvard with the remaining 20 rounding out the class. Been that way for a long time.
What I’m referring to is your entry level business or finance related job at company X (fortune 500). A lot of them come with the title Analyst. Most of these jobs are filled by kids with degrees in finance, accounting, supply chain management (HUGE TODAY), marketing (communications degree with a focus on advertising also works), and general business management. Yes there are econ and English majors in the mix, but the majority are business majors.
I’ll add that several leading UG B Schools are adding integrated majors that combine math, CS, stats (analytics), and business. Lehigh is a good example where you actually get a dual degree in math / engineering and business. Wake Forest has a major called Mathematical Business (housed in its business school) They and others are taking quant skills and applying them to the business setting to solve emerging problems and create new industries in the fast changing digital marketplace.
Many LACs’ econ majors are pretty quant-ey though, and the double major of econ and (or CS, stats) gets you there as well.