I am currently deciding what program of study to pursue. I would like to be on Wall Street for a few years and ultimately become an entrepreneur. I was planning to do an AB in Econ or even Politics (with a Finance certificate), but I am now strongly considering majoring in ORFE (BSE degree). While I like challenging myself intellectually, I am a bit concerned that ORFE (and the BSE program) may hurt my GPA and/or consume much more of my time than other majors. At the same time, I would also like to take some humanities or language courses. Any thoughts or advice? Thanks!
My son is a class of 2016 BSE grad but was not ORFE. I can, however, give you some information about BSE concentrators in general that may be helpful.
Overall, engineering at Princeton is very challenging in terms of the course load and content. To my knowledge, all BSE concentrators are required to have essentially the same prerequisites. Here is a link to the ORFE academic guide:
https://orfe.princeton.edu/sites/orfe.princeton.edu/files/documents/Academic%20Guide%202020.pdf
In terms of GPA, I would not expect to carry a 4.0 in any concentration at Princeton, much less as a BSE concentrator. Has it been done? Yes, but truly there is much more to college life at a school like Princeton than making perfect grades the sole focus. While grade deflation is no longer an official school policy, A’s are still not awarded liberally and work must be considered exceptional by most profs to earn one.
It is still possible to enjoy the experience and excel academically (my son was also a varsity athlete and graduated summa cum laude so I have seen it first hand) but you can certainly expect to invest a significant amount of time on your studies.
@hsgraduate2017 my son is an ORFE, class of 2020. AB in Econ / finance / politics will be easier than engineering or the natural sciences, at least for most students. On realtalk-Princeton, AB vs. BSE GPA is often discussed. I saw a chart recently posted there that showed a .2 GPA difference between engineering and social sciences. That said, most Princeton classes are rigorous.
ORFE will most likely hurt your GPA, but unless you are pre-med who cares? You can do well enough to get into grad school and have a social life. My son is very challenged by his ORFE stat class, but loved it. Top tier employers know ORFE, especially Wall Street, so a slight GPA hit isn’t a problem for internships.
You can take plenty of humanities courses including languages, especially if you have AP credits to bypass the basic engineering chem/physics reqs. Freshman year, my son took two freshman seminars (nuclear proliferation and history of ancient empires). Those, along with the required freshman writing seminar (his was on intellectual property rights and John Locke), give you plenty of variety.
Final note, it is much easier to drop from BSE to AB, rather than the reverse. So maybe try ORFE and change your mind at the end of freshman?
Good luck!
-psy
OP, go to the RealTalk-Princeton blog and you will get some good insight.
FWIW, IBs interview and hire the AB kids so you are in no way preventing yourself from working on Wall Street if you pick Econ on Pol instead of going the BSE/ORFE route. Pick what interests you the most. You will have only 8 semesters and selecting classes at Princeton is somewhat like trying to sip from a firehose - there are just so many amazing ones that it’s hard to narrow them down.
ps - psywar gives good advice (and, fun fact: his son was in my '20s RA group this past year).
Thank you, everyone, for your advice. I greatly appreciate the insight.
How does ORFE job placement with Quant fund? How about summer internships?
ORFE grad here. Since you want to work in finance and then entrepreneurship, in theory your GPA doesn’t matter for these paths (as long as it’s above 3.0 for finance), but I highly doubt that you won’t care about it when you’re actually in school. Also, if you have any interest in going to grad school, especially professional schools like law, med, and b schools, which don’t adjust for the difficulty of your major or undergrad institution (so a 3.7 in lesbian dance theory is deemed superior to a 3.5 in physics), you might want to go with an easier major to save your GPA and time (and mental well being). If I could do the Princeton experience again I’d choose a different major. You can always self-teach OR.
OR is a practical subject with many interesting applications. I think it’s worthwhile to learn it, but I didn’t like the way it was taught at Princeton. I guess the core courses aren’t fun anywhere. But at MIT, where I attended grad school, there are way more upper level courses that use OR for solving many types of interesting real world problems.