<p>What's the difference between the two? I know CU's Financial Econ is a fairly new program, so for a job in i-banking or a hedge fund, what are the benefits of either major?</p>
<p>Financial engineering gives you the basics of quantitative analysis (not that this means its easy at all) and prepares you for becoming a quant. Financial econ is more relevant if you want to do ibanking, but remember people do ibanking from all different majors - it definitely will look nice and help, but it doesn’t really open any opportunities unique to it.
Also keep in mind that a job in finance doesn’t necessarily have to be ibanking. There are better and worse jobs in finance out there.</p>
<p>Also remember that financial engineering is a minor, not a major and is extremely competitive to get into (I think its only around 20/year).</p>
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<p>wrong, financial eng is a concentration within operations research and is considered a major. you don’t have to major in something else if you are financial engineering, in fact it’s probably impossible to do so given the number of requirements.</p>
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<p>for i-banking major is not so important, financial econ would be easier to have a higher gpa, and you would get some slack for a slightly lower gpa in financial engineering / operations research. Hedge funds would look more favorably on a financial engineering major, a quant hedge fund might simply exclude non-quant majors, and would definitely regard financial engineering very highly.</p>
<p>bottom line: fin econ and fin eng have virtually nothing to do with one another and are actually very different majors though the titles make them sound similar. fin engineering is very heavy on programming, statistics, optimization and just plain calculus. fin econ is easier, little stat, no programming, lots of econ classes, electives in company valuation and management, can be quite qualitative if you choose it to be. Go with what you are most passionate about, keeping in mind that you might never make it to the financial engineering major (operations research isn’t too far off), and also that fin econ is considerably easier.</p>