Hey everyone, I’m a rising senior who is interested in applying EA to Chicago in the upcoming fall. I understand that on of Chicago’s best programs is their economics program and math/business programs in general. I was wondering what an Economics major would entail? What is the course load like (is there a lot of heavy math? Math is definitely not my fave). What is economics like in general? I would just like to get to know one of UChicago’s best programs as something I would potentially go for if (by some miracle!) I get accepted. Thanks! 
You should visit the department and discuss with them.
- Economics is not the same thing as business. The University of Chicago has a world-renowned Economics Department and a highly-ranked graduate-level business school, and there is a certain amount of overlap and a lot of communication between them. Undergraduates are allowed to take a handful of courses in the business school, but the University of Chicago does not offer an undergraduate Business major. And in general the university is opposed to the idea that undergraduates should be studying business skills. Institutionally, its philosophy is that the best undergraduate preparation for a business career would be to learn the core skills that are used in analyzing and solving business problems and to immerse yourself in one of the academic disciplines from which business people borrow their analytic models. Those fields include Economics, but also Psychology, Sociology, Applied Math, Statistics, History, Philosophy, Public Policy, and others.
- What actual economists do is very, very "math heavy." The more serious about becoming economists Economics majors are, the more math they study. But Economics is a very popular major almost everywhere, and the vast majority of Economics majors have no interest whatsoever in becoming economists. So pretty much every Economics department has multiple paths through their undergraduate programs, some of which are very math-oriented and others not so much. That's true of Chicago, too . . . except what Chicago considers "math-lite" is a lot heavier on the math than you would find in the equivalent courses of peer colleges. And some of the subfields of Economics that are most obviously useful in business -- like finance -- tend to be especially math-heavy.
- Here is the Chicago course catalog description of the Economics major: http://collegecatalog.uchicago.edu/thecollege/economics/ If you want to know what the Economics major is like at Chicago, you should read it carefully and thoughtfully, and also maybe compare it to the equivalent catalog entries for Economics at other colleges in which you are interested.
Thanks @JHS ! I will also look into other majors at UChicago, maybe not Economics for me. It seems like a really great school regardless.