<p>So I just wanted to make a couple points on this topic. My qualifications are that I work at the Duke career center helping students with their resumes, which has given me a fairly good insight into the banking industry's standards as far as recruiting goes. I'm also currently performing an internship in investment banking myself. Just for the sake of full disclosure, I'm an engineering major, but my minor (econ) and E.C.'s tend to be more related to investing/finance.</p>
<p>The plain facts are that yes, most firms will implement a fairly rigid (but certainly not etched in stone) GPA cutoff for the sake of making early round interview decisions. From what I've seen this seems to lie somewhere around a 3.5 for quant majors such as math, egr, physics, compsci, and to an extent economics. The bar is (justifiably) higher for other majors, ballpark estimate around a 3.7-3.8 but it will of course vary by firm. So that's that, nothing too original there.</p>
<p>Since it appears I'm addressing this post to an incoming freshman, though, I'd argue there's no need to get ahead of yourself. Hardly any incoming freshmen have any clue as to what type of career they want to pursue, and so naturally fewer still are set on investment banking from day 1. My strong opinion is that you need to orient your years as an underclassmen studying subjects you genuinely enjoy, REGARDLESS of your early IB aspirations. If after a couple years you find you have taken (and enjoyed) more biology and religion courses than econ courses, sure you may be at a slight disadvantage when it's time to apply for a finance internship, BUT SHOULDN'T IT ALSO TELLING YOU SOMETHING?? Regardless of whether you stay on the finance track throughout college or not, I can absolutely promise you that your world will explode with new ideas and possibilities (mine certainly did...and I'm by no means set on a finance-related career, just trying it out. Heck, next I'm going to Chile for a year to work on a Latin American studies certificate...Duke is great with curricula flexibility!), and there's just no reason in the world to cater completely to your young and impressionable ideas of what Wall Street may or may not actually be. Having an open mind is the best advice I can give... get ready to absorb a lot over the next 4 years, and you'll end up in a good place.</p>
<p>This may be more than you were asking for, but I think it would be a shame to haphazardly choose a major for reasons other than self fufillment. Econ and math share a common toolkit (calculus), but other than that they are very different subjects and generally pursued by different types of students. If at the end of say, your junior year, you are truly passionate about finance, there are plenty of ways to demonstrate to employers that this is the case other than your major. Firms are always looking to diversify, so you may actually find yourself at an ADVANTAGE if you take a different acadmic route, so long as you do it well and with intensity. The truth is that the core amount of finance knowledge finance firms expect you to have coming in isn't all THAT much, certainly not so much that you can't become completely competent after a summer internship or self-study. A lot of what they look for is practical knowledge and interpersonal skills, too. Stay up with current events, teach yourself advanced Excel concepts, maybe even dabble with some VBA programming or learn what Bloomberg does. Those are just some simple examples of things that aren't really taught in ANY major, but have proven invaluable in my so-called "real world" experience up to this point.</p>