<p>How important is college major in the big picture? Does it really matter in the end?</p>
<p>Try looking at <em>College Majors Handbook</em> by Neeta Fogg, Paul Harrington, and Thomas Harrington for a glimpse of past experiences of different majors. What happens to various majors in a future economy is still anyone’s guess, though, and past trajectories may not be completely relevant. </p>
<p>I did advise my own daughter to hedge her bets with a double major or major and minor, including one technical area and one non-technical area, and to learn another language and acquire good computer skills while in college.</p>
<p>Many students seem to be taking certificate programs after college these days, from community college vocational programs to accounting to pre-med, if a major that seemed to haven adequate or even great job prospects freshman year did not exactly pan out.</p>
<p>It depends on what you want to do post undergrad. As a couple of examples, if you want to go into engineering/Computer Science then yes, the major is important. If you want to go on to law school, it’s not so important.</p>
<p>Thank you for the responses.</p>
<p>I was thinking whether an economics degree with an MBA from UC/state universities would be significantly different than say, an enginnering degree with/without the MBA when finding jobs in the finance/consulting/corporate world. Is it better to have an engineering degree with lower grades or an economics/business economics degree with significantly better grades in the big picture?</p>
<p>Thank you.</p>
<p>Also, what does it take to get into a top MBA?</p>
<p>Keep in mind that many, if not most, college applicants will change their major before they get their degree. Do not worry much about post graduate plans until you are on campus, in college. Once you begin college it is much easier to learn about options with different majors and the resources are there for the questions you have.</p>
<p>It seems a bit silly to get an engineering degree if you don’t plan on doing engineering work. They’re very difficult degrees that equip students with highly specialized skills, so that they can then be engineers who pull down enviable salaries. If you want to work in corporate finance, then economics will suit you better. It’s much better in terms of getting a good job to have a high GPA than to have a low GPA in a field not really relevant to what you’ll be doing. And you don’t need to get your MBA right away, in fact they will probably require that you work first, in which case you’ll want a major that’s semi-relevant to business and a strong GPA so you can attract jobs and internships.</p>
<p>There is another thread going with a person with lower (3.0) grades from Wharton facing job search difficulties. When you were in HS the advice for getting into a good college was to take the hardest curriculum possible while maintaining the highest grades you can achieve. The same applies going from college to work or an MBA. There is no magic formula. Engineering and finance are very different courses. MBAs come from all kinds of majors. Going to the MBA level requires excellent grades and excellent test scores. </p>
<p>Don’t try to select a major based on what you think is going to be the “best” job in 4 years. 4 years ago looked very different from now in the economy. It will look different again in 4 years.</p>
<p>Actually, Smithie may be a little wrong on that. Some companies (especially manufacturing companies) have management which is largely composed of people with engineering training. And venture capital firms, which invest in lots of engineering-driven companies, value people with substantive expertise in the appropriate types of engineering/biotech/computer science. (And becoming a patent lawyer actually requires an engineering degree.) So there are non-engineering career paths where an engineering degree may be preferable to an economics degree. But those are exceptions to the rule that generally it doesn’t matter, and you should do what will excite you most and inspire you to do well.</p>
<p>I believe grades are less important to business school admissions than to most other types of professional school, certainly medicine and law. That’s because non-academic experience and performance is much, much more important. Good grades never hurt, of course, but you won’t be frozen out of business school because you got a 3.2 average in an engineering program.</p>
<p>As others said, your major matters depending on what you want to do.</p>
<p>I advise my kids to consider the following when picking a major
- Something you are interested in. That would make the 4 years in college and a possible career for years to come much more enjoyable.
- Something you are good at. Much easier to get ahead if you are good at it.</p>
<p>Many students change major because once they take the intro courses, they figure out that they find them boring or too hard.</p>
<p>I believe the number one degree held by CEOs of Fortune 500 companies is in engineering. </p>
<p>An analysis of salary earned 5 years after graduation between a 2.8 GPA and a 3.8 found almost no difference.</p>
<p>While “engineering” is the single largest major of S&P 500 CEOs, if you add up business type majors (business, econ and acctg) they have 50% more. <a href=“http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2009/08/20/sp-500-ceos-engineers-stay-at-the-top/[/url]”>http://engineering.curiouscatblog.net/2009/08/20/sp-500-ceos-engineers-stay-at-the-top/</a></p>
<p>
While this is true, I would guess that most of those people worked as engineers at the beginning of their careers.</p>
<p>Spoken by a manager, who used to be an engineer. And I work with a bunch of patent lawyers, virtually all of whom worked as engineers for some period of time.</p>
<p>IMHO, don’t study engineering unless you want to actually work as an engineer, for at least a while.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the responses.</p>
<p>I feel that although I enjoy enginnering classes, I think that I will like economics/buisiness more and will probably do better in those classes. Ultimately, I want to have a corporate job in the finance/consulting/management position and pursue a top MBA program.</p>
<p>I was under the assumption that an engineering majors have an edge in these fields and may have an easier time landing a job in the corporate world.</p>
<p>Would an economics degree from a UC be a good preparation for a top MBA program? What would I need to do to get into a top program?</p>
<p>Last I looked over 20% of Fortune 500 CEOs have engineering degrees. More than any single undergrad major.</p>
<p>Back in the '70s my husband got an economics degree from Stanford. Then went to UCLA to get an MBA. Worked as an accountant for a year and decided it wasn’t for him. So he went back to San Jose State and got his teaching credential. Has taught h.s. math for the past 29 years. No, he’s never made the money he could have earned with that MBA…but he’s happy and not stressed. And only has to drive 2 miles to work. :)</p>
<p>It can be very difficult to predict how the job market will shape up years down the line for particular skill sets, or how anyone will react to a particular job once they are in it 24/7.</p>
<p>I know lots of people who went back for a second degree or certification if they realized that what they had prepared for was not working out the way they had expected. Also many who shrugged their shoulders and went into the family business after all, or used family connections to get an entry-level job that did not necessarily require college degree at a parent’s company.</p>
<p>This is less of an option nowadays it seems as students emerge from college deeply in debt and family business are often struggling to stay afloat. Some do manage to get certificates from community colleges, though, or go for an MS though is that it is easier for engineers or individuals with majors in physical sciences who are competent in English to change direction a few years down the road than for those whose majors were light in technical and quantitative courses.</p>
<p>I have advised my own daughter to pick a major based on her interests and then use her remaining electives to develop specific skills such as writing, computer literacy, and fluency in a foreign language, or to take on a second major or a minor. This is probably much easier to do within four years outside of an undergrad engineering curriculum, though.</p>