<p>I am a sophomore at Emory, and I am interested in majoring in Econ. I feel that although Emory is quite a prestigious school overall, the econ program is not well ranked. And I am afraid that recent cuts in Emory's economics phd program will negatively affect the undergrad econ programs, as it may cause us to lose good professors. I also did some research on Emory's econ program, and some people said that Emory does not really want to support its econ programs. So what are your opinions on Emory's undergrad econ degree? Is it worth it to study econ at all? Is the econ department at Emory any good?</p>
<p>It depends…I would make sure that you major or concentrate in something in addition to it though (if you plan to go work after graduation). It’ll be fine if you have grad. school plans though. I mean, I think it’s kind of rare that students (even at schools w/good econ. programs) don’t focus on another focus/skill-set to make them more flexible and competitive for various types of workplaces. Lots of people at Emory do econ. and math for example (and I’m sure this is common at many other places. I imagine CS would also help open up some options). If you plan on going into the world of finance, the degree itself won’t do much. You like, anyone else will need to use the knowledge gained to go get experience before graduation. Again, unless you’re going straight to grad. school, hardly no economic program will be worth much w/o getting hands on experience in your area of interest (it would probably be better to even get plenty of experience even if going into academia, and definitely if you are interested in an MBA). I honestly don’t think the degree alone will hurt you (no matter how lame the program may get), but it by itself may not help too much more than your knowledge. Find some outlets (I guess other than the b-school) to apply the knowledge from it early on.</p>
<p>Thanks for your reply Bernie12.</p>
<p>I am interested in studying CS as well, but CS department in Emory is not good either, so I am reluctant to do Econ + CS. Originally I want to do only Econ major + CS minor, so that I do not get overwhelmed by the workload, do you think doing that will be sufficient to make me highly employable? And can you list other useful subjects to major/minor along with Econ? Thanks!</p>
<p>They don’t need to be good or reputable depts at Emory. They simply need to provide you w/a respectable skillset to be employable. You will get it from those depts. BTW, despite CS not being reputable, I have a friend who is doing his tenure at Georgia Tech for the 3/2 program (he’s done w/Emory) and he actually said he preferred the way most Emory CS professors handled teaching the courses in that they were less memorization oriented than comparable classes at Tech. He said that his experience in Matlab at Tech sucked vs. CS 170/171 for example. And he made A’s in all of them, so he wasn’t just lashing out because of grades. Also, since CS is small, if you are agressive enough, they often try to look out for students and provide them some oppurtunities (or at least info. on) to use the skills. I would start getting close to faculty members and ask how you can obtain awesome internships or EC opps.</p>
<p>Overall, reputation of the school matters more than reputation of a certain department (generalization, but good enough at the undergrad level), so I wouldn’t worry about an econ major being weak at Emory being the reason to avoid it.</p>
<p>But, for a phd in econ, an undergrad econ major isn’t nearly as useful as you’d think.
Math would work way, way better.</p>
<p>For a job right out of college (but I’m not sure about career advancement/or how much the courses actually teach you), an econ degree and some courses in finance/accounting seem to be really helpful at Emory. The BSchool does whatever it does pretty well, I guess (although, as I’ve always said, a BBA is kinda a dumb degree imo).</p>
<p>I’d also recommend taking a couple courses in CS. 170 and 171 teach java. 255 teaches assembler and C. Which are all really helpful. 170 and 255 aren’t difficult, but 171 kind of is. Knowing programming languages makes you much more marketable.</p>
<p>Edit: After actually reading the past posts, yea CS, math and accounting/finance courses are good to look into to combine with an econ background. Matlab, java, C, finance background and assembler knowledge are very helpful in a job search. The truth is: so little people understand the nuances of these things that it doesn’t matter where you got your degree/knowledge… all that matters is that you have it and you can contribute to the company. Some places, like BCG or Bain or Sachs can afford to pare down applicants with those kind of skills and very rarely hire from Emory(since Emory has a weak econ program), but there are plenty of really nice places (deloitte, pwc, and I think Oliver Wyman) do hire from Emory.
Can’t really give more advice without knowing your goals.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advices!</p>
<p>Right now I am thinking about doing double major with Econ/Math (joint major) and CS major. My goal is to get into any decent paying job, because I am not too picky about which field to go into (which is why I wanted to do Econ), and my CS major would hopefully make me even more employable. So do you think this is a good plan? And do you think a CS major is necessary or is CS minor good enough already?</p>
<p>Thank you in advance!</p>
<p>Just take as many CS classes as you can (even if a minor, you can still take them beyond completion of the requirements).</p>
<p>That’s not a good goal.
Coming from someone who had pretty much the exact same goal until the beginning of last semester.
CS is not fun if you don’t like it (I didn’t like it, and I still did it and it was hell and my gpa paid the price).
Also, I wouldn’t do the joint degree. All the advice I’ve gotten from upperclassmen and grad school students is that it doesn’t go into depth in either math or econ (to this day, I don’t understand completely why it is offered).</p>
<p>I think you should go ahead with a math and econ major and complete the requirements for a CS minor. Although your degree won’t say CS minor, you’ll have the skills that are super helpful (matlab, java, C, etc) and you can chuck them on your resume. On top of the math/econ degree.</p>
<p>I’d do the minor requirements early because if you like CS, then you can just drop the math goal (or double in econ/cs with math minor if you really wanted to). And if you don’t like CS, you can stop after CS 255 (not enough for a minor but better than nothing) and continue iwth the math and econ double (not joint) major knowing you can always take two extra classes to finish the cs minor if you decide to.</p>
<p>I’ve been trying to wean myself off CC lately because 99% of the thread are rehashes of what’s already been answered and the rest usually annoy me for no reason. So you’ll have to PM me if you need me.</p>
<p>Listen to Bernie. He knows the school (especially sciences and psych) as well as any of the other students on here. I pretty much only deal with math and econ and bschool and cs questions since I pretty much always agree with Bernie on the sciences.</p>
<p>There’s also a joint math/CS degree, if you find you really like CS.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice! Right now, after hearing these advices, and having given some consideration, I think I want to major in Econ and Math, and then take courses equivalent to a CS minor.</p>
<p>So the question is if I finish the undergrad, and I want to go to get a masters degree to complement my Econ and Math BS to help increase my employment opportunities, what should I study? Which degree should I get: Econ, MBA, Math, CS, Engineering, or others, or any of the above?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>Whichever one you can do best in. However, honestly, if you are considering engineering, you should maybe look into that now. As in, you need to consider the 3/2 program and get information about it as soon as possible. In addition, usually, masters or doctorate programs in engineering usually would like to see the same courses that B.S.E’s had to take before jumping into their engineering coursework. This means you should probably take physics (C-based) and chemistry in addition to the upperdivision math courses that you likely already have (or are going to get).</p>