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<li>Which one will get me the most money?</li>
<li>If I do accounting, which grad school should I go to?</li>
<li>If I do finance, which grad school should I go to?</li>
<li>If I do economics, which grad school?</li>
<li>Which one out of all these will give me the most and the best job options/opportunities?</li>
<li>Which one requires the most work?</li>
<li>Most enjoyable major out of all of these?</li>
<li>Overall, which one is your favorite?</li>
<li>I heard Business School and Business major was a default and useless, but I also heard it is one of the most valuable and well paid (Ikr, what the heck?). Which one is it really? </li>
<li>Do you have to do have a job that has to do with with business if you are going to major/go to grad school in business? Like, can you still become an editor of a magazine?</li>
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<li>The major doesn’t matter, it’s what you do with it.</li>
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<p>2 & 3 & 4. Aren’t you currently choosing between undergrad schools? I remember you from the search & selection fora choosing between UPenn and Columbia. If that’s the case, it’s WAY too early for you to be making a grad school list, especially since you don’t know what you’ll major in. Besides, there are lots of different programs - for finance it matters whether you want an MBA (in which case you should go to a top business school after 3-5 years of work experience) or an MS in finance, or an MS in some other finance-related degree like math of finance. For economics, it matters what your research interests are and whether you want a PhD or an MA.</p>
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<li>Your job opportunities aren’t solely determined by your major - at least not when you are choosing between three majors like this, which are closely related - but by your skill set and experiences. And even then, your second job will be far more determined by your first job than what you did in college; your third job based upon your achievements in the first and second…so on and so forth. By the time you’re on your 3rd job your major won’t matter as much as your first two jobs.</li>
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<p>More specifically, if you want to be an accounting you probably need to major in accounting (I know accountants can technically have majored in other fields, but it seems the most straightforward route). Eventually, to be competitive for jobs you’d probably want to get certified as a CPA. A lot of the jobs you can do with an economics and finance degree will overlap, especially if you take a lot of quantitative classes in the economics major. I would also suspect that economics majors have better chances of ending up as policy analysts or consultants for government agencies, NGOs, think tanks, nonprofits, etc. in addition to the for-profit corporate analyst jobs. However, a finance major who had significant coursework in economics and some experience interning at a place like that, or assisting a professor in research related to that, could probably also get those jobs. “Best” is subjective - it depends. Overall my general opinion is that an economics major with solid quant classes gives you the most flexibility, but really, it’s going to be a personal opinion.</p>
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<li><p>Depends entirely on the university you attend</p></li>
<li><p>Purely personal. Some people like the more conventional classwork of accounting while others like the hybrid social science/mathy aspect of economics. Only you can answer that for yourself.</p></li>
<li><p>If I personally had to choose from the three choices you are giving me, I would major in economics and minor in finance. I’m a social scientist and economics is, at its core, a social science. I have a personal interest in behavioral economics (the study of how and why people make economic decisions, basically). But that’s just my choice, based on my personality and personal likes and dislikes.</p></li>
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<p>If I were choosing between all of the majors offered at Wharton, I’d double-major in behavioral economics and statistics. At Columbia, perhaps economics and statistics.</p>
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<li>That’s because a) generalizations suck and b) business school and a business major are two different things. An undergraduate business major (i.e., BA or BS in business administration) does have a reputation as kind of a “light” major - as in, not very rigorous, not very difficult, kind of fluffy. Some people perceive it as too fluffy for real work while others value the business prep it gives you. It also depends on where you go - majoring in business at Wharton is obviously very different from majoring in business at Georgia State University, for example. But then again, economics majors at Ivy League schools have access to much the same kinds of Wall Street jobs that business majors at Wharton do. You can study the more liberal arts-type economics at the CAS, or you can study behavioral economics or business economics at Wharton.</li>
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<p>Also what you do in college counts, too. A business major with some statistical/quantitative analysis skills and summer internship experience is valuable. A business major who only took the required classes and partied instead of interning or working isn’t really that valuable.</p>
<p>When people say “business school” they are usually referring to MBA programs. MBA programs can be both valuable and well-paid, or useless, depending on where you go and what you do. For example, it’s generally not a good idea to get an MBA without any work experience - no one wants to hire a manager who’s never worked. For another, MBA holders from top schools (Wharton, Stanford, Michigan) often start out around $120-150K per year base pay (depending on what they choose to do), which makes their very expensive degrees worth it. But MBA holders from low-ranked or unranked programs may average $50-70K, which isn’t enough enough to pay back the loans. </p>
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<li>No, of course not. You can get an MBA and join the Peace Corps. You can major in business and decide to become an artist, if you want. And yeah, you could still become the editor of a magazine. The caveat, of course, is that an MBA from a top school is very expensive - could be upwards of $120,000 over two years - and you’ll need to make the salary to pay that back. So most people take a job that will enable them to pay that back.</li>
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