<p>How marketable is an econ major? I've heard stories about economics majors are just as competitive in the market as business majors for Investment banking, finance, Wall-street affiliated professions, etc. Is this true? </p>
<p>What about political science? Is there room for consulting? Does that pay well? </p>
<p>International Relations? Is the US State Department/Foreign Service Meritocratic enough for qualified graduates to actually procure decent-paying jobs?</p>
<p>The marketability of social science majors often depends on the school you go to. Most Ivy League schools do not offer pure business majors like accounting, finance, business administration, etc. </p>
<p>However, tons of businesses and financial firms heavily recruit from the ivy league because they are looking for the brightest people they can find. So yes, an economics major and many other social science majors at ivy leauge and other prestigious universities like Stanford, UChicago, Northwestern, etc. are just as marketable if not more so than pure business majors.</p>
<p>Jobs with the US government are probably extremely competitive because there are more people interested in pursuing the jobs then there are positions.</p>
<p>If you want to go into business, an econ major CAN be just as good as a business major. As an econ major, you typically have to take one (or two) intro course (micro or Macro or both), three intermediate courses (micro, Macro, and Econometrics), and a few electives (most schools require 1-2 math courses, usually calculus and statistics/mathematical econ). So among those electives, if you choose stuff like corporate financia, financial accounting, organizational behavior, IO etc., then you will be well equiped for any business job. On the other hand, if want to go to grad school, then probably you should take some more "main-stream" economics such as international econ, development econ, labor econ, etc.</p>
<p>If you want to grad school, then probably you should change your major to math. ;)</p>
<p>harri's got it right - It totally depends on the school. You could graduate from Harvard with an anthropology degree and still go ibanking - many do.</p>
<p>This is what many people believe: if you wanna go to grad school, knowing nothing about economics is fine but you have to take a load of math classes.</p>
<p>I think the opposite makes more sense NOWADAYS. There're 2 reasons:
1) The fact that so many people emphasize math is due to the mathematization of economics over the last few decades. Last generation of "star" economists consists of those who came up with complex mathematical models like Solow, Samuelson, Leontief, etc. This phenomenon can be explained by citing the effect of new analytical tools developed in the 70s. But the profession is going in the opposite direction now. Traditional subjects having been exhausted, young economists don't see many opportunities for breaking through. Instead, they exercise their creativity by crossing the line between economics and other social sciences (some people call this phenomenon "economics imperialism"). That's how we got stuff like behavioral economics, economics of family, of crime etc. The first star that emerged from this new practice is Gary Becker who picked the Nobel prize in 1992 (he wrote the "treatise on the family" and then got divorce :)). After Becker, we then have Steven Levitt, Caroline Hoxby, Michale Kremer, etc. The 2002 Nobel was awarded to Kahneman and Vernon Smith for testing basic economic assumption by psychological experiments. So I would say that today math is still important, but not as much as before. If you wanna be a star economist in twenty years from now, probably the way to go is to have a comprehensive knowledge of all social sciences such as law, psychology, criminology, political science, and then see if you can use tools of economics to model whatever you find appropriate.
2) The second reason is simply this: you already encoutered too much math in econ classes, you don't need more math. I double major in math and econ, and I found much of the stuff that I learnt in math classes, beside statistics and probability, to be useless for econ. Obviously you do use a little bit of opimization, real analysis but only the very basic parts of them. So it's not worth spending a whole semester taking a math class.</p>
<p>anhtrung_dang: I agree with the main thrust of your advice for an Econ major to gain wide exposure in the social sciences, but the execution of such a plan could be distasteful. Fact is, unless you are in a place like Rochester where logic and empirical accountability in the social sciences is prized, many Poli Sci courses after the introductory courses and many Sociology courses right from the start tend to be fairly opinion-driven and doctrinaire in their language and approach, with minimal grounding in reality checking. It is worth recalling the Sokal affair, in which a Physics professor managed to publish a totally garbage article in a respected academic journal of Sociology just by stringing together all the politically fashionable catch phrases of the day. So an Econ major with a respect for logical and empirical reasoning might just find his/her excursion into Poli Sci and Sociology quite painful these days.</p>
<p>anhtrung_dang: While I agree with what you said, it seems like taking this more social science oriented approach to undergrad could hit you where it hurts most - in PhD program admissions. It seems that a math major is still the easiest way to enter these programs.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Fact is, unless you are in a place like Rochester where logic and empirical accountability in the social sciences is prized, many Poli Sci courses after the introductory courses and many Sociology courses right from the start tend to be fairly opinion-driven and doctrinaire in their language and approach, with minimal grounding in reality checking.
[/quote]
I think this is a real overstatement. Most polisci programs have a strong emphasis on empirical/fact-driven analysis in upper-level courses. For sure, there are many courses in political philosophy, consitutional law, and the like, but in almost every subfield (international relations, comparative politics, American politics, public policy, etc.) the core courses heavily emphasize empirical ansalysis. You don't study public opinion or elections or Congress, for example, just by reading campaign literature and political rhetoric.</p>
<p>Undergraduate majors of economics professors at Harvard, Chicago, and MIT:</p>
<p>Economics: 35
Math: 16
Physics: 3
Business Administration: 2
Statistics: 2
History: 2
Computer Science: 2
Mechanical Engineering: 1
Electrical Engineering: 1
French Language & Literature: 1
Psychology: 1
Social Studies: 1
Far Eastern Studies: 1
Latin American Studies: 1
Operations Research: 1</p>
<p>Three of the most important factors in PhD Economics admission are GPA, GRE, and recommendation. Beside overall GPA, a high GPA in all economics courses would be looked favorably upon. An econ major prepares you for GRE quantitative well and I don't think that majoring in math would add many points (if at all). Letters of recommendation are only useful if they are from econ professors.</p>
<p>I think that it's also important to point out that certain mathematics classes are extremely important factors for admission into top graduate economics programs. I would worry more about these math classes because, based on what I've heard of the quantitative section of the GRE, they are considerably more difficult than the GRE's quantitative section. </p>
<p>Competitive applicants are expected to have taken and done well in multivariable calc., statistics (not business stats), probability, linear algebra, and real analysis. Taking these advanced mathematics classes will likely lead be close to a minor in mathematics depending on a specific school's requirements. Keep in mind that applicants generally have to have done fairly well in these classes in order to be even considered. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.econphd.net/guide.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.econphd.net/guide.htm</a></p>
<p>Graduate economics is heavily quantitative, so graduate programs want to know that they're accepting students who can handle the advanced mathematics required at the gard level.</p>
<p>I forgot to add that I definitely agree with anhtrung in the respect that having considerable knowledge of other social science disciplines would be very useful when trying to develop original insights into economics and also when applying economics to the real world. </p>
<p>However, it still remains a fact of life that graduate level economics requires heavy mathematics. From what I understand, graduate economics is highly quantitative because economists need to use math in order to develop complex systems and to demonstrate that their theories and ideas have a rigorous foundation.</p>