<p>A majority of econ majors say : What they've learned in 4 years of school has hardly applied towards what they do now. Comments?</p>
<p>Econ teaches a way of thought. It emphasizes efficiency and it furthermore lays a foundation for a lot of financial theory.</p>
<p>Most people in Finance are consistently applying economic fundamentals in their work.</p>
<p>I can see myself applying the skills I’ve gained throughout my statistics and econometrics courses as well(I’m considering becoming a credit analyst, a litigation consultant, or working in transfer pricing)</p>
<p>Econ is a liberal arts degree. While econ may have some slight relevance in some fields, by and large its not going to be much more useful than History or Sociology. The variants offered thru the Econ department that focus on Accounting are a different matter entirely.</p>
<p>mikemac, salary statistics disagree with your statement.
As does the testimony of a number of recruiters. It’s usually suggested that you JUSTIFY your studies if you didn’t major in something directly relevant to the position(e.g. psych, sociology).
Most of the softskills from non-quantitative majors are picked up relatively easily or are better attained through work experience and not in the classroom.</p>
<p>Technically physics, mathematics, and chemistry are liberal arts degrees as well. </p>
<p>I’m a Quantitative Economics major and am minoring in Statistics and Accounting.</p>
<p>At a good enough school, which I imagine you’re at, Quantitative Econ is pretty much an applied math degree. Math degrees are marketable to the financial industry and some others. But if you think a Chem or Physics major will find a job as much more than a glorified bottle washer you are sadly mistaken; the union card for a good job in those fields is a Phd. Talk to some grads with a just bachelor in the field.</p>
<p>Nor will a Psych or Sociology BA degree qualify you in themselves for much of anything; those are not career-track degrees in the same way that Accounting or Teaching or Engineering is. People with liberal arts degrees can find jobs, can find good ones, but the process is different than the path taken by liberal arts grads.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say it’s applied math per se. the primary difference between quant econ and bus econ here(UCI) is as follows:</p>
<p>Bus econ -1 year of general econ, 2 lower div stats courses and 2 applied econometrics courses, a bunch of business related electives. The stats and econometrics courses briefly touch on eviews</p>
<p>Quant Eco - 1 linear algebrea course, 3 courses from the quantitative track for econ, 3 upper div stats courses, 3 theory based econometrics courses, a few mathematically intensive econ electives and a few free choice econ electives. The stats and econometrics courses touch on the use of R, SAS, Stata and eviews(but don’t heavily emphasize it). </p>
<p>where I’m at, I’d say quant econ is more a cross between a statistics major and an econ major than it is an applied mathematics program. I’ve never used matlab and my ability to program is more limited than I’d like. Those are things that I’ll have to teach myself on my own if I ever have time.</p>
<p>I will say that for recruiting GPA + internship experience>major in most cases.
At this point while my knowledge and skill set is greater than most econ majors, I wish I’d majored in bus econ and had an easier time and a higher GPA.</p>