<p>How well does Emory's undergraduate economics program compare to other schools? Would a BA in Econ from Emory CAS be comparable to a BBA from Goizueta in terms of job prospects, salary, and admission to a graduate or MBA program?</p>
<p>The BBA wins in terms of job prospects and salary.</p>
<p>However, I understand that it may not be the best choice for someone who wants an MBA because: 1. Business schools can see a BBA and an MBA as repetitive and 2. The Business school is graded on a curve, which can make it more difficult to get a GPA that’s competitive for top MBA programs.</p>
<p>The econ department and business school have the same curve -or at least they did when I took it. Students in the econ department never really struck me as extremely bright, so the curve might be easier. </p>
<p>I think you should do the bba. It’s got better prospects by a long shot. Unless you’re a girl. Then either is fine. But where you worked matters quite a bit for mba prospects, so bba would set you up better. </p>
<p>As for grad school (like phd and a quantitative masters), then a bba or even am undergrad degree in econ might not be the way to go.</p>
<p>Thanks for the input. So say you go to Emory, and after two years apply to Goizueta. If you get rejected, would it be better to continue on at CAS (since promotion is automatic given you complete the required coursework) and major in Econ, or transfer to another roughly equally prestigious school and get a BBA?</p>
<p>If you can’t get into Goizueta, how will you get accepted as a transfer student?</p>
<p>That’s kind of what I mean; will the kind of business schools you would be able to get into be any better than just staying at Emory and majoring in Econ at CAS?</p>
<p>Which business schools would you get into? I don’t know which ones have a two year program… Unless you’re planning on just doing another 4 years as an undergraduate</p>
<p>I’m talking about transferring, or would that not even be a possibility coming from CAS?</p>
<p>I don’t understand what you’re talking about.</p>
<p>First of all, since you apply to Goizueta at the end of year 2, it might be too late to transfer by Fall year 3. By which time, you might as well stick it out as an Econ major.</p>
<p>If you don’t have the grades and ECs to get into Goizueta as an Emory underclassman, you will probably not be accepted as a transfer student into any other school that’s worth attending.</p>
<p>But IDK much about transferring in general.</p>
<p>Okay, thanks for the help. I was just curious about how different scenarios might play out. The CAS or transfer situation was just a worst-case scenario. I’ve seen stats on the acceptance rate to Goizueta from the college, and for most students getting in doesn’t seem to be too big of an issue.</p>
<p>If you don’t get into the business school, please double major with economics. Don’t just do economics alone. Before applying to the b-school, build some interests and strengths in areas outside of econ. and pre-BBA pre-reqs.</p>
<p>^ How hard is it to double-major at Emory? I know they offer a joint Economics-Math major, but I remember seeing somewhere something saying that undergraduates can only earn one degree from Emory. Are joint majors the only option?</p>
<p>It’s not terribly difficult with early planning and some AP credit.</p>
<p>You may only earn one degree from Emory (so for instance, if you did economics and the b-school, you’d still only get one degree). You may do at most two majors or one major and one minor. Joint majors (such as econ/math) count as one major, so you can do a joint major and a minor, or even two joint majors. Just note that joint majors aren’t the same double majors.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, it’s not that hard. You just do two of them and one will appear as your primary major.</p>
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<p>care to elaborate?</p>
<p>He probably thinks that many of them just do that if they don’t get in the business school or that they pursue it because Emory is not known to have a particularly rigorous econ. program. In such a case, since it is a social science that may have better than normal post-grad prospects, many people that want a more or less “challenge-free” experience may pursue it (whereas other social sciences may be pursued out of pure interest or some association with professional school prospects. Such as history and political science with law school). Typically, the better (or more bright) economics majors are double majors (often something like math/econ. joint major and something else). It’s often suspicious when you see students at Emory singly majoring in economics.</p>
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<p>Well I guess that makes more sense. No offense to him but the way he put it (and from reading his previous posts in other threads) made him sound like he is self centered, pompous, elitist, and arrogant whose first choice was not even Emory (correct me if I’m wrong but he’s a math major when Emory is really only known for Goizueta, Law, and Medical School) and the only reason he “chose” Emory was because it’s the only top 20 school that accepted him.</p>
<p>Well among who is Emory ONLY known for those things? Perhaps, people purely interested in being at a top 20 would only have those three ring a bell (because they are looking at things from a very superficial point of view not doing their research. Fortunately, this is basically now required among applicants). However, Emory (for those who actually care) is actually known for a myriad of other things at the undergraduate level and unfortunately economics (nor math, physics, and CS) isn’t one of them. English, history, chemistry, biology, neuroscience, psychology, religion, African American Studies, sociology, things of that nature. For example, I would have easily just enrolled at Georgia Tech if it weren’t for the other strengths, regardless of it being 35 and Emory 20. I hate the way this sounds, but I would agree with him that most economics (when a singular major) majors are not the least “squeamish” or most fearless of majors. In fact, because of the softness of our department, I think the threshold to join their honors society is unusually high for a social science department with a heavy quantitative emphasis (I think political science, for example, may have a lower threshold because it’s the opposite. It’s surprisingly rigorous vs. what a student generally expects from a non-quantitative social science major. I’ve taken some of the courses myself, and am quite impressed. I think the psychology major at Emory is also much more intense than psychology majors at other, even, comparable peer institutions). However, again, for single econ. majors at Emory, I have to unfortunately agree.</p>
<p>BTW, aluminum is certainly not that way in person 
. Sometimes what appears harsh in words on this forum, is not as harsh when you can actually look at Emory and see what it’s actual strengths and weaknesses are. As far as I’m concerned, I find the pre-prof. strength stereotype to be kind of untrue based upon my observations. I believe that pre-law is excellent (but not because we have a solid law school, but because the majors that most pre-laws pursue at Emory are really good), pre-med is not great (though, if you’re not pre-med, the science instruction is great because you don’t have to constantly take mickey mouse science courses and instructors), and BBA is primarily good for job placement (which is I guess what it’s made for) and not really the stimulating academic environment that you can find elsewhere in the college. Again, this is based upon my experiences and observations. And Aluminum’s experiences inform his opinions regardless of how crass they come off. I can be very harsh on Emory too, but it’s because I know it can be better in areas that it only pretends to be good at, and can make the areas that actually are excellent shine a bit more than they are now. Based upon where I see the richest academic experiences coming from, Emory should not be overly known for the pre-professions, but more so for the liberal arts that could indeed assist in the pursuit of the pre-professions (it seems as if many who pursue less stereotypical majors than those associated with their professional school of interest are often very successful and develop skills that those who take the “prescribed” pathway don’t get to as much. There is a reason an English major who was also successful in pre-med core science courses scores well on the MCAT. A person doing this path at Emory is asking for success and it has nothing to do with Emory having a good “pre-med program”). The strong liberal arts departments (of which there are many) are far under marketed.</p>
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<p>Let’s not kid ourselves now. Chances are, when you ask people what their majors are, they will answer either, they are pre Med, pre Law, or BBA. </p>
<p>Also, that’s what Emory is good at, according to the rankings.</p>
<p>And many of those at other elite schools such as Harvard will say that they are pre-law, pre-med, or pre-Investment banking (despite the fact that Harvard has no BBA and nor do several other elite schools with a student body obsessed with that option). Welcome to small elite private schools who have tons of parents who are wealthy and/or are in these professions themselves.
Also, people will say their major first and then express whether they are pre-professional or not lol. And I would actually posit that less students are entering Emory decidedly in favor of a pre-prof. track and even if they are, they don’t necessarily know which it is. Now among the pre-profs, the pre-meds and pre-BBAs are most confident starting from freshman year (however, now-a-days a surprising amount of freshmen starting in the sciences will flat out not be interested in pre-med or the other tracks. They’re just doing some stuff). Students seem to more or less find their ways toward pre-law and a significant portion of those in the humanities and social sciences will go to graduate school or work for various organizations afterwards (if not start their own organization). </p>
<p>Also, the rankings say that our law school is good, the med. school is good, the business school is good. You know what’s just as good, several of Laney’s Graduate School programs (such as the departments I mentioned and several biological science fields), the nursing school, the public health school (this is the highest ranked professional school), and the Theology School. Oh, and you know what else, the Undergraduate entity is ranked in the top 20! The undergraduate entity only encompasses the nursing school, b-school, and ECAS. Pre-med and pre-law are not ranked by such agencies (however, some interesting rankings have ranked us high for a place to be for writers. Gee, that may explain why many people will come here and happily study English with no particular direction in mind at first). I believe you are conflating the rankings of prof. schools with undergrad. Their is no relationship (despite the folks who do apply to these private schools based upon the idea that there must be a relationship as many do to Emory. The fact that Emory’s pre-med success rate trails Hopkins by 10+% despite having a similar quality student body and the same amount of pre-meds kind of tells you that many make this mistake. Pre-med at Emory and quality of health related prof. schools are not related. The quality of those schools vs. the relative quality of the UG experience of many of those pursuing them is night and day!) And again, all the other elite schools are good at those things too. </p>
<p>By your logic, this is why many top students choose all top private schools, and not just Emory. And that logic with that claim is supported by data. There are, for example, some smaller or same sized peer institutions with more pre-professionals per those 3 categories than Emory has (for example, Harvard and Hopkins may have more pre-meds along some other schools. I think I saw some data some months ago that suggested so. Plenty of places have more pre-laws and I also believe that many BBA programs have a larger enrollment than ours) so this isn’t unusual. It’s relatively difficult to explain the large chunk of people who fall outside of those 3 spheres (especially at the beginning) if they didn’t think these schools were good at anything else.</p>