<p>Which major do big companies prefer when choosing an employee?</p>
<p>Ex) insurance companies, banks, private equity companies, etc.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/other-college-majors/257006-economics-business-major.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/other-college-majors/257006-economics-business-major.html</a></p>
<p>If the university you are attending has an economics degree and a business degree, go with the business degree (more recruiting).</p>
<p>I agree. Economics is a fine major, but if your university offers a business program, chances are it is harder to get into the business program and recruiters spend more time talking to business students.</p>
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<p>Where is this true?</p>
<p>Every school that I have heard of^</p>
<p>^pretty much</p>
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<p>I majored in economics and I had no problems with recruitment whatsoever. More recruiting does not necessarily mean better recruiting… more often than not it means a lot more, less prestigious companies will be in the mix.</p>
<p>I didn’t like accounting and finance was too narrow focused and vocational for me… so I went with economics. I do not regret it at all. I feel like my career aspirations are more broad because of it, whereas finance gives more depth. I plan on getting a MBA down the road eventually anyway and I’d rather have it matched up with an economics degree.</p>
<p>Economics teaches you how to think.</p>
<p>Ok, but if you came into college with the ability to think, you might as well go with finance, because at most universities, mine included, the additional companies that recruit the business majors are the most prestigious ones. Where did you go?</p>
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<p>Life is never that cut and dry and besides, you misunderstood me. </p>
<p>When I said economics teaches you how to think, I meant it teaches you problem solving skills in the sense of knowing what the possible solutions are to each possible course of action, and I don’t mean that in the numbers crunching sense. Economics is a very popular undergraduate degree for those with JDs and MBAs. It teaches you how to think logically. With economics + MBA you get everything in a BBA program plus everything from the economics field.</p>
<p>Finance gets you ready for careers in finance and some accounting jobs. They are two separate fields altogether.</p>
<p>I was competitive for about 85% of the finance jobs available at my school’s career center plus I also had a ton of jobs in government and other private sectors available to me in which they had a preference for academic degrees. I wasn’t at a disadvantage at all. The only jobs I couldn’t go after were purely accounting jobs or jobs that wanted a strong accounting background, which I didn’t have an interest in anyway.</p>
<p>The reason there is so much overlap between finance and economics is because both degrees are quantitative. Frankly, for a lot of the financial analyst positions, a lot of the big companies don’t give a **** which one you have because they are going to train you anyway. Capital One even required you to take a pre-employment test showing your quantitative skills regardless of what degree you have. They just want someone who has quantitative skills and you can get that with either major.</p>
<p>I had a high GPA and I interviewed with quite a few prestigious companies alongside finance majors and I had an advantage over a lot of the finance majors with low GPAs and poor interviewing skills. The problem with my particular school (and one of the reasons why I didn’t major in finance there) is that there were quite a few kids in the finance program who thought that having a finance degree was enough so they didn’t really care about busting their butts for good grades and learning how to interview properly or write a good resume. I even knew one girl who had a good GPA in finance but she couldn’t find a job because she had no social skills or resume experience. Having a degree is only one part of the puzzle to a complete package… you can’t rely on it totally because as a finance major, you’re still competing against other finance majors.</p>
<p>A lot of what I say has a lot to do with what school you go to as well. I went to a top 75 national university which had a top 40 economics program. I had an advantage in recruiting over finance majors from smaller, regional schools. On the flip side, finance majors from Wharton are going to have a HUGE recruitment advantage but economics majors from other Ivies (which don’t have an undergrad business program) have huge recruitment as well. Where you go to school at is probably more important than which major you pick.</p>
<p>So basically, I don’t quite get what you are trying to say about “go with finance instead of economics” because economics majors are NOT limited to just finance careers, although they are an option. Economics is a separate field and it’s not a poor man’s alternative to finance.</p>
<p>I don’t regret going into economics.</p>
<p>P.S., if you have good, relevant work experience before you graduate from college, that also helps a lot.</p>
<p>That doesn’t change the fact that at most schools, the business program is harder to get into and is more heavily recruited.</p>
<p>I’m not saying economics majors are screwed, because they are definitely one of the most recruited majors for business jobs outside of the business school, but the fact is that if you know you want to do business, you’re better off in the business school.</p>
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<p>Regardless of what the OP said, it doesn’t matter what the recruitment is for business schools because economics is an entirely separate field. You might as well be comparing the recruitment of engineering programs to business. Economics majors might have opportunities that overlap with finance (as I said above, both being quantitative), but economics is still a different field. It’s usually not even in the business department because it’s a social science.</p>
<p>Besides, what do you mean by “most schools?” What are the parameters here? Top 100? Top 75? Top 50? Only schools with both programs? Where is your data on recruitment for “most” schools? Not that it matters anyway, see below.</p>
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<p>Actually, that’s not quite correct. If you want to get a MBA down the road, you’re probably better off with an economics degree than a BBA with a MBA. The BBA was originally created as a shortcut to the MBA anyway (although it doesn’t have the prestige).</p>
<p>But for the most part, I agree with you. But I didn’t go into economics so I could pursue corporate finance jobs. Neither did any of my friends from my economics classes. If you want a finance job, then major in finance. I didn’t want a finance job per se; that’s why I majored in economics.</p>