I applied to UCSB and I think I have a fairly good chance at acceptance. But my friends older sister is an econ major there and she said that the curves in Econ classes are horrible and if you are trying to get a high GPA for Grad school you should stay away. Can anybody confirm this?
If you get accepted to UC Santa Barbara as an Econ major you are considered a pre-major status. Now if you are considering this major and you are up to the challenge then you need to go through some of the most challenging courses.(Econ 1,2,10A,100B ) and there is the 85% chance you will still not have a high enough GPA to make it through. Most students at that point end up doing sociology, psychology,stats,Chicano studies, etc. If you can find a college that accepts you into the full major not pre major that would be a better option . Advice at your own risk. Coming from an Econ admitted student -> graduated stats major '15
It’s worth looking for other schools that accept you into the full major, but I kind of doubt any UC does this. Econ is one of the most popular majors, so they put screening requirements in to limit enrollment. At UCLA, for example, they actually require you to take engineering level calculus.
I’ll add that the “85% chance you will still not have a high enough GPA to make it through” seems like an exaggeration. I think the poster means to say a lot of kids don’t make it thru, but to say that only 1 in 7 does is way too pessimistic.
Looking at the UCSB enrollment reports at http://bap.ucsb.edu/institutional.research/registration.reports/F15-STATS.pdf for this past fall, there were 263 kids in the Econ major and 604 in pre-econ. So roughly 1/2 make it thru.
This isn’t a precise calculation, anybody can take the intro Econ courses without changing to pre-econ so its likely that some kids take 1 or 2 classes and then decide Econ isn’t right for them without ever showing up in the pre-econ number above. Note there are separate numbers in the report for econ-math and econ-accounting, these numbers are straight Econ only.
UCSB has started offering a 2nd path into the major if you don’t have the GPA from those 3 required classes.
If you can’t get the GPA or pass the test on 2 tries, then Econ probably isn’t a good fit.
However to circle back to the 1st question, if you are an Econ major will you have a bad gpa due to a low curve, surprisingly enough they actually publish the average gpa numbers in http://bap.ucsb.edu/institutional.research/planning.data.book/tables/academic.unit.econ.pdf The mean (half above, half below) gpa in the actual Econ classes was about 2.7 in 2014, and the mean gpa of Econ students (eg. overall all the classes they took at UCSB) was 3.1 Make of these numbers what you wish, but to me it suggests your friend’s sister is too pessimistic.
IMHO if you have what it takes to get into grad school (whether it be for a PhD, MBA, JD) then attending UCSB or any other UC as an Econ major is not going to handicap you.
RHSclassof16. I am a parent with a student at another school who was put on probation her first semester but made the Dean’s list the next semester. Why? Simply due to the many resources at our UC’s and CSU’s including tutoring/labs,etc that are free (well included in tuition) for all students. So don’t give up on a major/career because you “think” you aren’t able to pass a certain course/courses. Take advantage of all the resources/campus help that is easily available to you. Good luck with whatever school decision you make!
iterating what others have said, it’s just not worth it. Many of my friends were forced to switch into the humanities or some other major they did not like. There is another major called “Financial Math and Statistics” which you should look into. It is less competitive, by a landslide, but the classes are a lot tougher and the material is denser. It is similar to a financial engineering major at other prestigious universities. For myself, I was originally econ and switched out because i did not want to be “another” econ major. I never took Econ 10A so I can not attest to its difficulty but it is the “make-or-break” for most people. I will be graduating in the spring as a stats major.