Hi, everyone! I got into Harvard early, and I was curious as to which concentration was more interesting - statistics or economics? I’m interested in finance (investment banking) and number analysis in general. I was intending to concentrate in economics but saw that there was a quantitative finance track in the statistics department. Any insight would be greatly appreciated!
Congratulations! Harvard students don’t have to declare a concentration until the end of their 3rd semester at the school, so you’ll have all freshman year and most of your first semester of sophomore year to shop both Econ and Stat classes and figure it out.
What @gibby said.
Even then, my suspicion is that many of the class requirements will overlap (at least the intro classes) so it will probably be easy to switch majors even later than that.
For example, I declared Biochem in my 3rd semester, but switched to Physics my 5th and still managed to graduate on time with no issues at all.
My roommate switched from Applied Math to Music his 5th semester as well, and still graduated on time.
Go to Harvard, meet with advisors from each department, take some classes. You have plenty of time to figure it out.
Imagine you’re about to enter the world’s most fancy buffet restaurant. Sure you may have the taste for mashed potatoes – but does that mean you simply bee-line over to the steam table? Maybe try out the lobster or calamari or miso soup or filet mignon?
Lots of routes can lead to IB/Finance – if this even remains a desire in 3-4 years
If you are interested in quantitative finance, you (a) will probably want some kind of graduate degree, and (b) will want to learn as much math as possible while you are an undergraduate. Therefore, math or applied math should be on your radar (and shopping list) as well. In many respects, economics and statistics are two somewhat overlapping ways to go about using mathematics. Many economics departments recommend that if you want to be a professional economist (i.e., a PhD in economics), your undergraduate major should be math, not economics, and I would be surprised if the same weren’t true for statistics, too.
That’s not to say you should concentrate in applied math, just that – as everyone else has posted – you should stay flexible with your plans and use your first year in college to try to figure out what path suits you best.