<p>Any info, especially from people with experience would be great. Is it challenging enough? Is it hard to stand out? Does it get boring? What would you do in a job with this major? How does it compare to engineering?</p>
<p>I'm thinking biomedical engineering or economics. I'm good at math, biology, and economics. I just do not know how to decide.</p>
<p>I did enough economics upper division course work. It is not challenging at all compared to math and physics; I would not even need to study to be anywhere within top 5% of the class. Hence with my majors are Math and Physics with a minor in economics. It does get very boring since they are not challenging enough for me at least. My professors said the work we did the the class was not very different from work we would do in real world using Eviews, Stata, RATS, ect you learn to use in the course. I would say if you are an engineer it would be way too easy. Maybe an applied math would be a better and more challenging approach unless engineering takes up all your time to get the GPA you want.</p>
<p>Thanks, that’s just the kind of response I wanted. One more question - the out of college salaries for engineering and econ are similar, but how do the salaries compare later in life?</p>
<p>The salaries for econ and engineering majors are not at all similiar. Engineering typically has a higher salary and much higher demand. The only time an Economics major typically matches or exceeds the career prospects of an engineering major is if you graduate from an Ivy League college with a high GPA.</p>
<p>Also, I think it is a serious mistake to be specifically seeking out a major that will “challenge you.” If you’re primary goal is to start a good career after graduating, the “challenge” of your major should not be a factor at all. The more challenging your coursework is, the harder it will be to maintain a high GPA, the harder it will be to do productive extracurricular activities while you are struggling to maintain that high GPA, etc…</p>
<p>Does that mean you should go for the easiest major? No. I just don’t think “challenging enough” should be a factor at all, if you’re main goal really is a good career.</p>
<p>Well don’t challenging majors like engineering lead to better jobs. Engineers make more money than most majors because you have to be smart. And with an engineering degree, you can almost do anything you want after college and you may be paid more. So I do not see why harder majors do not correlate with higher salaries/better jobs.</p>
<p>Avoid things that are challenging in life is a ridiculously bad suggestion and one that I hope anyone reading this will avoid. My former boss used to tell me, the moment you start to feel too comfortable, i.e., unchallenged, is the moment you know something isn’t right. </p>
<p>A man without a challenge to conquer might as well be dead.</p>
<p>Anyone who paid attention to economics 101 will know that there is always a trade-off with anything you do. One of the main tradeoffs of an economics degree is trading specificity- and the security/possible higher salary that goes with it- and diversity. </p>
<p>An economics major is not trained for a specific role in the way that an engineer or accountant is, but is rather ready for a wide variety of different roles in different industries. For example, at the company I work for an economics degree will prepare me to work in either our supply chain, real estate, finance, global sourcing, or risk management divisons and I would even be prepared for sales & marketing or human resources jobs there if that’s what I truly wanted. But an accountant is going to work in the accounting department and that’s pretty much his only option. An engineer is going to work in the engineering department until he decides to go back to school.</p>
<p>What an economics major often gives up for this diversity is starting salary, but numerous studies have shown that economics majors have very solid career starting salaries- comparable with accountants and finance majors- and mid-career salaries that often outperform their business counterparts.</p>
<p>Can you stand out without a PHD?</p>
<p>Yes, I agree with you there, but I thought you meant that even if the “more challenging” major did not coincide with your target career, you would still give it extra points in your consideration because it was more challenging. For example, if one wanted to go into the Finance industry, and he/she was also going to a university with a top business school, it would be silly to major in engineering or physics just because they are more “challenging,” when the person’s goal is finance and the top business school will give him an equal chance as engineering/physics. But if i am understanding you correctly now, your career goals coincide with both economics and engineering, and you are concerned about employers’ <em>perception</em> of the challenge of each major, and not its challenge to you personally. I completely agree with that.</p>
<p>Inmotion12:
The moment you start to feel an unworthy pursuit challenges you, i.e., you focus on difficulty instead of contribution and accomplishment, is the moment you know something isn’t right. </p>
<p>"“Because it’s there”
<p>Everything that Inmotion said.</p>
<p>Serious101, what on earth are you talking about? You don’t like challenges?
How are you going to answer your interviewer’s questions?</p>
<p>Are you just going to say that you will not pursue anything that’s a challenge?
I will honestly be surprised if you get a job after graduation with that kind of thinking.</p>
<p>sp1212:
I guess you are the type of person that respects someone like Bill Gates more than Martin Luther King Jr. Bill Gates has accomplished the challenge of becoming the world’s richest man, only in recent years trading that spot back and forth with another man. But for what grand purpose? The purpose of the challenge was only the sake of becoming the richest man on Earth.</p>
<p>Then there is someone like Martin Luther King Jr. He organized massive demonstrations and rallies of thousands of people across the country in the face of massive prejudice and violence. And what was the purpose here? Was it simply the challenge of breaking civil rights event attendance records? Was he focused on trying to make it into the Guinness Book of World Records for the number of supporters one individual can get to turn out to events? No, he had a purpose, one that was in fact so challenging that he was never able to accomplish it, and knowing full well of the danger, ending up dying for it.</p>
<p>If you guys want to waste your lives seeking out meaningless “challenges” to accomplish as if you were playing some PC or Console game racking up “Achievement Points,” go right ahead. I on the other hand, in both my professional career and person life, will seek out the most meaningful tasks to accomplish, rather than simply the most challenging, and as the most meaningful are often the most challenging, I will end up encountering both anyway.</p>
<p>Twins127, “Engineers make more money than most majors because you have to be smart. And with an engineering degree, you can almost do anything you want after college and you may be paid more. So I do not see why harder majors do not correlate with higher salaries/better jobs.”</p>
<p>If you go into engineering, it does not mean that you are smart, or will become smart because of majoring in it. If you do not have a passion for engineering, you will not be able to succeed, and will get a very low GPA. </p>
<p>Who told you that a person with engineering degree can do anything? Any person can do anything: it just depends on different factors, such as connections, appearance, grades, etc. Even, a person with High School diploma may be more successful than a person with engin. degree. </p>
<p>However, I agree with your last statement about correlation between hard majors and higher salaries. It happens probably because less people tend to choose hard majors, which keeps the supply low, but the demand for professionals high. Subsequently, those people are rewarded better.</p>
<p>Serious101, "Also, I think it is a serious mistake to be specifically seeking out a major that will “challenge you.” If you’re primary goal is to start a good career after graduating, the “challenge” of your major should not be a factor at all. The more challenging your coursework is, the harder it will be to maintain a high GPA, the harder it will be to do productive extracurricular activities while you are struggling to maintain that high GPA, etc…</p>
<p>Does that mean you should go for the easiest major? No. I just don’t think “challenging enough” should be a factor at all, if you’re main goal really is a good career. "</p>
<p>Response: </p>
<p>I totally agree with you. Guys, he does not say to choose the easiest major or the hardest one. What he means is that everyone suppose to pick a major based on his/her interests. It is a mistake to think that a harder major will 100% give you more opportunities–it is not always true. </p>
<p>Inmotion12 and sp1212, I understand your concerns, but he did not mean that.</p>
<p>The only type of engineering I’m interested in is biomedical engineering. I am really good at math and biology and I like both, so this seems like a good fit for me. But I am worried that I won’t like lab work, etc. , so I was asking what the advantages of an economics degree were (I like economics and am good at it also). I am a hard worker, so I am not worried about grades much, and both my parents were engineers. I was leaning toward engineering and still am based on these posts.</p>
<p>An economics degree isn’t valued as highly as a business degree, generally. The truth is economics is such a popular major without much rigorous quantitative training that it doesn’t specialize you for anything.</p>
<p>You can choose to make it more difficult by taking a lot of math and graduate econ courses, but if you have no plans to enter grad school, there would be no need to do this.</p>
<p>^ Business is also very popular and I would not consider any undergraduate work really specializing, since graduate work is where the real details come out.</p>
<p>Economics has a pretty high starting salary, right? Why?</p>
<p>“The truth is economics is such a popular major without much rigorous quantitative training that it doesn’t specialize you for anything.”</p>
<p>Not my Economics degree. Lots of quantitative training if anything it specializes me to work for the FED or the BLS. I also can work as a quant in large trading firms and option houses.</p>
<p>"Economics has a pretty high starting salary, right? Why? "</p>
<p>Survey’s usually show economic majors having high salaries because most of those people graduated with an economics degree from an ivy league or high ranking school. If you go to a state university then it is better to get into the business school and major in accounting or finance. The advice I’ve received from other people on this site is if you go to a top 25 school then major in economics, if not then major in accounting or finance.</p>