Hi everyone. I know this is a similar question to what has been asked before, but my question is purely on the rigor of both programs.
I am a first year at Emory for reference. I’m interested in both subjects. I am almost done with the prebusiness requirements and up until now, I was set on going to the bschool for finance. I was also taking premed classes but I wasn’t sure if it was for me so I was planning on dropping the premed track to focus on finance alone.
But now i’m reconsidering this decision. Recently I found out that I really am interested in premed. Because I am set on premed now, I am wondering if I should switch to the economics major. I heard it is much lighter in course load and easier in rigor compared to finance. The career outlooks provided by the emory econ department also look good in case I don’t get into med school.
Which major would be easier to fit in premed classes? I like both majors and I’ve kept up my gpa for bschool prereqs and econ major courses. I just dont want to switch to economics only for it to be the same rigor as finance (when finance has more prestige at Emory than econ)
@luckyluckduck : What did people mean that “it’s easier in rigor than finance”? I am willing to bet that upper division economics courses use more calculus and challenging math than many finance classes, AND that there are more low average courses that need to be curved upwards to fit whatever distribution in econ. B-school students DO have more courses per semester on average, but that doesn’t mean they are harder necessarily. I feel like people throw this “rigor” word around loosely and we don’t know if they are talking about grading or cognitive complexity/intellectual demands of the courses and the two need not always go hand in hand. The b-school can give a conceptually easy course where the averages are high and then force it to fit a distribution that awards lower grades vs. the standard scale so that they can claim: “Look, we’re rigorous”.
Easier instructors in econ. do something similar by moving the A cutoff higher, basically requiring a student to be perfect to earn it because they know they aren’t trying to challenge students, so they use the grading scale to manufacture the appearance of rigor to the dept. I mean, I would ask the people you ask what they meant, or have a finance or upper division econ. person show you coursework. Both are doable for pre-health, but at least econ. has a decent health economics concentration with a few electives in that area in case you wanna learn something more relevant for pre-health or more “practical”.
Also, don’t talk about how finance has more “prestige” than economics at Emory. I don’t think that is what ultimately matters. You will still have to do internships and stuff on top of your pre-med stuff (courses, volunteering, shadowing, maybe even research in econ. or something) to fully activate those majors so that you can yield optimal employment outcomes. GBS has a much stronger and more focused career center/services apparatus than economics gets through ECAS (it seems that currently the QTM dept is best at leveraging ECAS’s career center and also has its own networking and career development apparatus that is more robust than econ’s). That is the main differentiator. I doubt employers have some difference in their gut feeling about an applicant from either. On average, I expect the finance major to have more internships and experiences marketable to finance firms because GBS pushes them to do that more and because the career services helps them land those internships and better preps them for interviews (case and otherwise).
It is a difference in infrastructure, not this vague prestige thing (consulting placement and other placement is very strong from GBS because of the infrastructure. It doesn’t seem to be just some halo effects for GBS majors. The culture, curriculum, co-curricular opps, and career services there actually works to prep students to apply successfully to whatever. Emory is not an old enough elite for anything from it to have a huge halo effect. Either your major/experiences created by Emory helps you or it doesn’t. Emory ain’t Harvard, Yale, or whatever, and even those prepare extremely well in addition to the halos they have). You need to figure out if you know how to make whatever infrastructure econ. and the career center has, work for you if you choose to go the econ. route.
Also, what pre-health STEM cores have you taken, and with who (the instructor) did you take them? I would be very wary of you having to “fit in” the STEM courses, but only being able to take the easiest instructors for them.
You should choose the major that would allow you to choose the BEST (which often means more of the “good” type of rigor that preps for MCAT style prompts) instructors and still do well. Will likely hurt you long term. Be very careful.
I remember when I visited Emory with my son three years ago that we attended the Goizueta Business School presentation and they did say something about a most recent grad attending medical school.
Finance is a popular and strong major at GBS. Some of the core courses in the business school do require a lot of time investment and are graded on a curve with a maximum number of A, A-, B+, and B. My advice would be to take what interests you the most because if you don’t like what you’re studying, it will hurt you in other courses. The good news is that you are a freshman and have another several months to decide whether to apply to the business school. Talk to pre-business advisors in the mean time.