<p>Hi everyone, I'm freshman, and I have a little confusion in choosing my major. I'm considering double major in math and econ. But I have to be very realistic about my major. I have little experience. So do you think my double major is appropriate? I mean do they go well with each other? Thank you so much.</p>
<p>If you’re a freshman, don’t worry about double majoring yet - it may be psychological, but it’s much easier to do something when you don’t think you NEED to do it. So you could declare an econ major next year, take higher math courses as well, and decide junior year that you do want to get that math major. But if you decide one major is enough, you won’t need to go through any red tape to undeclare a major. For now, take econ and math courses along with a language course and a couple of random electives (get some distribution courses out of the way), and see where your path takes you.</p>
<p>If you like math, and really like statistics, consider an Actuary degree.</p>
<p>BTW: Very few freshmen in college have much experience in anything.</p>
<p>Math + economics (two majors, or major in one plus minor or courses in the other) is often a route taken to economics graduate school, finance jobs, or (with additional statistics and other courses) actuarial jobs.</p>
<p>Thank you! Actually I like business, too. But I don;t know if I should double in business administration and math? Do you think math/econ is better or math/business?</p>
<p>Math/business would be better. Take all the accounting/finance classes you can. Take a few computer programming classes too. Lots of people can do programming. Lots of people can do finance. Few can do both.</p>
<p>In your math, emphasize statistics. That will help you most with finance.</p>
<p>I have a similar inquiry that I posted in the Business Majors, but it fell off the radar. I’m still interested in thoughts:</p>
<p>I’m looking at a couple different programs at the same school to get into the accounting field. One is a BS in Business Administration - Acct concentration and the other is a BA in Economics - Acct concentration.</p>
<p>Both end up giving me the same amount of units (50-55 quarter units) in Acct, but the BA in Econ is heavily laden with econ courses in lieu of all the Management, Finance, or Marketing courses offered within the BS BusAdmin program.</p>
<p>So my inquiry is, will those BusAdmin courses (management, intro finance and marketing) be beneficial to me, or will the Econ courses prove to be better in Acct? And what about the difference in one being a BS vs a BA? I’m leaning towards the Econ program because I find Econ a little more interesting than management or marketing, and for the jobs I’m applying to they only require a certain amount of Acct credits (or sometimes a closely related field like econ or business-related) that both degrees would end up giving me.</p>
<p>I’m not looking to do the B4 or take the CPA exams ASAP or anything - just want to work in the industry for a bit before making any more moves. Each program accounts for ~190 quarter units, so I will need to gain 30-35 more for CPA exam eligibility for either one.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the suggestions and insights.</p>
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<p>What are the jobs?</p>
<p>Mostly thinking about Federal agencies - IRS, SEC . . . already work their now so it would be easier to secure a job there than it would to jump out to the private sector right away, IMO.</p>
<p>I asked a co-worker about it yesterday and he explained, in summary, that for gov’t it doesn’t matter either way so long as you meet the eligibility requirements. The training you receive after hire is often adequate to fill you in on anything business related other than accounting that you hadn’t already picked up on. He mentioned the only thing that might be left out is management training (in the form of leadership training) and you often have to pick that up on your own.</p>
<p>He suggested that Econ (or any other science-like pairing with Acct) would be good if you were trying to get into a specific industry. For example, if you were a Biology+Accounting major you could apply to somewhere like Genentech and may stand out since you may have an advantage when leading a project since you’d know the business aspect of running a project, but you may also understand the subject matter that goes into that specific project. In contrast he explained that the B4 will not care that you have a Biology degree. They would say, “Great, you know biology. We don’t really care because we don’t do biology here.”</p>
<p>Overall, he said to go for the one that would play more on my strengths to obtain a higher GPA unless there was a specific skill I wanted to pursue to make me better suited for other things. He also suggested that taking the mix of finance, marketing, etc may show me an opportunity to do something else if I find enough interest in it as minds can change.</p>
<p>He warned about possible differences of the degrees coming from different schools within a college (i.e. School of Business vs School of Arts and Sciences), but I later double checked and both programs actually fall under a School of Business.</p>
<p>Anyway, this is making me lean more towards the Business Admin program now.</p>
<p>Oh sorry, can I ask one more question? What’s the difference between double majors MATH/ECONS and APPLIED MATH SCIENCE/ECONS? Thanks.</p>
<p>Math sounds like a reputable program, while “applied math science” sounds like some weird thing your school invented for people who couldn’t handle an actual math major. I can’t tell you what the difference actually is, because “applied math science” is not at all a common major, but everyone who looks at your degree will be thinking that.</p>
<p>I mean what major is more beneficial? I saw in course requirement of my school’s applied math science , and I’ll have to study math, physics, chem, and computer science, even econs. While math major only consists of math courses.</p>
<p>The math major is more beneficial, because people will see it and assume that you are competent at math. If I see someone with a degree in applied math science, I have absolutely no idea what that says about their skills, and there will be a little doubt in the back of my head saying “it means they failed at some other math or science major”.</p>
<p>“The training you receive after hire is often adequate to fill you in on anything business related other than accounting” - BINGO</p>
<p>That’s why Accounting is what you should be learning in school.</p>
<p>“Mostly thinking about Federal agencies - IRS, SEC . . . already work their now so it would be easier to secure a job there than it would to jump out to the private sector right away, IMO.”</p>
<p>Not “high math” type fields. If you are set on math, then focus on statistics. That will be most helpful.</p>
<p>After accounting, next think about finance. Both will help you in the “business” part of jobs.</p>
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<p>This isn’t necessarily true.</p>
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<li><p>Regarding “understanding business,” it’s nearly impossible to understand business when you are coming right out of college. No matter how many classes and internships you’ve done, you still have not had real business exposure. By that, I mean that you have, most likely, not had the experience of acting on behalf of a client and knowing that your performance affects the client in a very real way. Further, there is no way in the world that you would run a project before getting real world experience. You can be a superstar in a management concentration, but that doesn’t mean the slightest thing before you have a couple years of experience under your belt.</p></li>
<li><p>Regarding “we don’t do biology here,” that is both true an untrue at the same time. Sure, having a biology degree will not directly help you to perform duties as an accountant, BUT the lab experience you’ve gotten might go to back up an assertion that you are detail oriented. In my experience, very few businesses require specific skills learned during undergraduate, and very few undergraduate majors teach specific skills (obviously, an engineer at ExxonMobil probably studied engineering, and a nurse at your local hospital certainly studied nursing). For most jobs, what is important is that you can demonstrate that you are teachable - nobody expects you to have experience or actual skills, but they expect that you can eventually understand the job. For example, I am a consultant who works heavily in online database design and application development, but I studied political science in college with a German minor. My coworkers studied everything from bioengineering to math to accounting to business. Once you get into the working world, though, your major is entirely meaningless since you need to learn a much more specific set of skills. Where that person was correct was that your major won’t help you get more money; while you can use your experience in the major to show why you would be able to do the job in question, don’t expect to say, “I studied biology, so you should pay me more than the kid who messed around in a communication major.” It will never work haha</p></li>
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Not defending, just clarifying: I think that’s what he meant; like that employer might be thinking down the road a bit in the potential to have a project manager who would have a mix of business and the business in which they work.</p>
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Same as above. I took it as you won’t have an advantage at B4 just because you also majored in a science or any other major. Kind of like the example of, “Hey, I have a Biology degree and some of your clients are in the bio market, so I would be a much better fit than someone without!” No, I know that’s not exactly how it would be going. I understand you can do anything and it’s mostly about how you market the skills you learned from what you did, and I think he is also aware of this.</p>