<p>I got accepted to both schools and
wanted to know which had a better Economics program?</p>
<p>UF’s econonomics program is ranked higher.</p>
<p>i’ve been a pretty strong proponent of UF’s economics program over FSU’s, but i’m feeling a little loose about that right now. The reason I say that is because UF’s economics department is small, and offers a more limited selection of classes than FSU offers. This puts us UF econ majors at a disadvantage. This is not, obviously, the most important thing, however. I know USF has a relatively lax program compared to UF and is much less rigorous. I cannot speak for the difficulty or quality of the classes that FSU offers, and this is a very important factor.</p>
<p>that being said, how many econ classes you take isn’t really very important. UF offers just enough so that most econ majors take pretty much all of the classes offered, and have enough credits for the major and then some. you’re only going to take so many classes. additionally, UF has better career placement and prestige. if you expect to go into the workforce, what econ classes you’ve taken are sort of irrelevent, because undergraduate econ majors don’t get the title ‘economist’ for their first job. your math and finance courses will generally get more emphasis than your econ courses. so if you want to take this path, I HIGHLY recommend UF.</p>
<p>If your goal is graduate school, however, its a closer race. the fact that FSU offers econometrics is a big advantage that FSU has over UF. i believe the professors for both schools come from top notch graduate programs and have near equal standing in terms of letters of recommendation. FSU might have an edge is this respect if it wasn’t for the fact that econ grad schools could almost care less about your background in economics. an econ phd is basically an applied math degree, and most graduate schools would take a pure math major over a pure econ major any day of the week.</p>
<p>so, trying my hardest not to be completely bias, i would say that your comfort with a school is much more important than which one has a better program in this case. if we were talking about engineering though, uf would be the obvious winner.</p>
<p>i also recommend reading through other economics threads. there are a few that go at length about different things you might be interested in.</p>
<p>That was an extremely thorough response, thank you autumn. My question for you, because it seems like you have some knowledge with Econ majors at UF, is how common is it for an undergrad to major in economics in the business school and then go on into business school at the graduate level? That and what are the differences between economics in the business school and economics in school of liberal arts? I want to go to graduate business school (I believe) and an incoming freshmen at UF. </p>
<p>Thank you very much for your help!</p>
<p>if you’re talking about something like masters of finance, accounting, or MBA: sure, its common. most MBA programs require work experience though (this holds true to business schools in general). if you’re thinking of something else, i cant really speak for it; i dont think i’ve ever heard of anyone doing another type of post-undergrad business degree. also, just to clarify, graduate econ is not generally considered a business degree, though its certainly applicable to business. it could be considered a cousin i guess.</p>
<p>if finance/mba/accounting is the goal, i’d recommend UF. we have a good finance program, and a great masters finance program. i’d also recommend the college of business, because economics majors in CLAS are not required to take any pure business classes, which would come in handy at higher levels.</p>
<p>The difference between which college you take it in has to do with nothing except flexibility. CLAS econ majors can take pretty much whatever class they want, when they want to take it, and aren’t required to take the finance/accounting classes or the gay pay-$300-to-take-a-class-on-msoffice class. this makes it easier to minor/double-major in math, a foreign language, or some other specialization you’d like. thus it is the preferred path for phd bound econ majors (see: the math minor/double major) and is convenient for those interested in international business.
despite the fact that i’m an econ major, i can promise you, i won’t know anything about how to operate a business when i graduate. its incredibly easy to avoid business classes.</p>
<p>econ majors in the business college take business calc, which is basically calc without the trig, which is nice, but is terminal (you cant move to calc3 or above from business calc). they also take basic accounting and finance classes, which are important for business work. i personally never had any interest in that stuff, so there wasnt a question of which college i’d go through, and have never really bothered to learn more about the program, so i cant say much more than that.</p>
<p>once you graduate, it really doesn’t matter which one you graduated from. from the business college, yeah you take some finance classes, but its still an economics degree, which is not meant to be technical by any means. i personally think the CLAS program is more valuable after college if you took a lot of math. this is true because you can go into things like actuarial sciences and the like much more easily than you could without a strong background in math. additionally, a strong background in math makes changing careers/directions easier.</p>
<p>i think thats most everything.</p>
<p>Autumn thanks for not showing any bias and your thorough advice.</p>
<p>I want to major in Economics to either go to graduate school or UPenn for lawschool.</p>
<p>Does id UF’s prestige evident outside the state of Florida?</p>
<p>i don’t think theres any question that UF has more ‘prestige’ outside of florida than FSU. FSU has a very good law program, but since there isn’t a pre-law major or program, its basically irrelevant (and its not like UF’s law program isn’t very well respected as well).</p>
<p>if you think you can get the background to get into UPenn, i don’t think it matters where you go. one thing you’ll realize (or rather, you probably wont) is that once you start taking classes, you’ll never worry about your school’s ‘prestige’ again. if you get a 4.0 with a rigorous course load, you can do pretty much whatever you want regardless of if you go to FSU or UF. if you end up with a 3.5, you might not even get into UPenn’s law school if you’re already an undergrad there.
grad school is similar. i’m more familiar with that process than with law school though, so i can elaborate. UF has not sent an econ major to a top 5-8 school ever, as far as i can tell from my conversations with the faculty. our faculty comes from top schools, but their letters of recommendation get you only so far. this is mostly the case because 95% of top grad programs are foreign, and isn’t a phenomena related to UF specifically. FSU likely has not sent any or many students to those schools either. so the difference-maker here is that UF simply has a higher ranked graduate program than FSU does. this is a plus, but it doesn’t necessarily carry over to their undergraduate program, but now we’re going back to issues i’ve already addressed.</p>