<p>Hi brekels,</p>
<p>If you go with the business route, you have four options, three at Penn and one at Duke:</p>
<p>1.) A business degree from Penn. Technically this will be a BS in Economics, but it's understood that you will be taking classes in specific areas such as branding, marketing, etc.</p>
<p>2.) A generally useful degree from Penn, with application to fields in business. This might be an AB in Economics - a more traditional Economics background, full of macro and micro and metrics and whatnot. Alternatively, you could do math, or policy, or any of a number of other business-relevant fields. (Notice that I did not say business-related; there are many fields which are not DESIGNED to have anything to do with business but are nonetheless useful.)</p>
<p>3.) A hybrid of 1 and 2 - be a math major while taking plenty of classes at Wharton, for example.</p>
<p>4.) Come to Duke and study a business-relevant field. Economics here at Duke - I'm a major - is not geared towards a specific career. Instead, it is geared towards teaching you basic principles of resource management and quantification. Very useful business skills - you will see that by far, most of our students are employed in areas like finance, consulting, and management. We also have strong math, public policy, and engineering departments from which the business world recruits heavily. (Yes, I did say engineering - they like people who understand numbers and quantities, even if they've never studied money per se.)</p>
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<p>They are all good options, but if I had to put them in order, I would rank them 4, 1, 2, 3.</p>
<p>Here's my logic:
2>3 because frankly taking classes with Wharton kids is going to be killer. These kids study this sort of thing all day long, and the classes in Wharton are dramatically grade-deflated relative to CAS classes. They'll have a field day with you.</p>
<p>1>2 - and this one I am very unsure of - because when push comes to shove, the job recruiters know you're in the second tier at Penn when it comes to business if you're not a Wharton kid. Now, CAS preserves many more options - but the point is that from a business-job related perspective, Wharton will clearly open more doors.</p>
<p>Why do I believe 4 is your best option? I believe that 4 is better than 1 because you are not yet sure you're going into business, and it preserves options for you. Furthermore, I'm an advocate of a strong general education. Nobody knows how the business world is going to change over the next ten years - but the core economic principles that govern the world are going to stay constant. This is why businessmen all got caught up in the dot-com boom while economists (think Greenspan's "irrational exuberance") were hesitant at first, then just confused, and finally vindicated. An economics degree will serve you well in the business world ("seeing the big picture"), while preserving other options. For the record, I'm an economics major on my way to medical school.</p>
<p>So, then, why 4 over 2? Because for practical job considerations, Duke econ majors (or policy majors or whatever) are the top of their class, while Penn's CAS kids are the second tier at Penn.</p>
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<p>I hope I've communicated that I think 4, 1, and 2 are all very close, while I believe that 3 is an inferior option. In order to confirm this, though, you'll want to talk to some CAS kids at Penn - I might have a completely wrong understanding of how CAS kids are graded in Wharton classes.</p>
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<p>Finally, I want to emphasize that the hands-on training from Wharton - while valuable - is not quite as valuable as it might seem.</p>
<p>Goldman Sachs, etc all recruit heavily from Duke Econ majors, yes, but also from Duke engineers.</p>
<p>Why would finance groups recruit engineers?</p>
<p>Here's the key: They're going to give you all the tangible skills you need anyway. Consulting groups will basically run you through their own mini-business school for two months up in Vermont (I believe, for Mercer) anyway, no matter what you learned in college.</p>
<p>They don't care if you learned any practical skills in college - in fact, they prefer that you not, so that they don't have to "un-train" you before retraining you in their own systems!</p>
<p>This is why investment units love our electrical engineers - because our EE's have proven that they can think quantitatively. They might not have any tangible skills, but employers love 'em anyway.</p>
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<p>So here's my sum recommendation:</p>
<p>Come to Duke. If you choose to go into business, you will be very competitive. Wharton kids will be more competitive, don't get me wrong, but the majority of Duke kids go into business jobs after school and excel at them. I think Duke is better than CAS for this option. I won't lie to you - Wharton kids are at an advantage here. But I don't think it's an insurmountable one, as the engineers example demonstrates.</p>
<p>If you choose not to go into business, then ... well, Wharton will have been a wonderful education in something you don't want to do. Duke and CAS are both wonderful here.</p>
<p>So you see, for business, W>D>>CAS. But For non-business, D=CAS>>W. Add them up, and you get that Duke comes out on top. Still, it's a very close call either way.</p>
<p>As before, congratulations on a wonderful dilemma.</p>