USC Econ or BU Business

I am a transfer student applied to USC and BU and was accepted to USC as an Econ major, and to BU as a business major with a concentration in entrepreneurship. I am having hard time deciding which school to choose.

My current college is located in SoCal so I definitely do not want to move to the East coast, but at the same moment, I also feel like the geographic and weather shouldn’t be a reason because the primary reason is obviously academics.

The reason why I am debating is because though I truly enjoyed the intro to microecon and macroecon, I heard the Econ major classes are going to be really math intensive. Especially econometrics seems like extremely hard for people who are not good at math like me. USC’s Econ major is BA, not BSc, so hopefully it won’t be as math intensive as BSc in Economics.

I took AP calculus ab back in high school but I barely passed it. That was the class I struggle the most in high school. My passion for introductory micro and macro Econ classes were really strong and these two classes were some of the classes I enjoyed the most.

BU’s business school has a good reputation, so it’s definitely an option, but I just personally like the vibe of the USC and feel like USC is more prestigious than BU in general for some reason.

If I could apply to USC as a business admin major, I’d definitely go to USC but the thing is I had not finished USC Business major prerequisite so that’s why I applied as an Econ major.

Can someone give me any advice on which school should I choose?

Ok, gonna be brutally harsh here…I think you have to get over your fear of math and do whatever it takes to get through it. It sounds like you want to go to USC 100%, but are just scared of math. It seems silly to go to your second choice school, 3000 miles away, on another coast that you don’t care if you go to, rather than just commiting to putting in the work - studying, tutoring, office hours or whatever it takes - to get through math classes. Don’t give up before you get started!

This isn’t high school. It will be harder. But you should be ready for that, you aren’t a kid anymore. You need to work harder, but will have lots of resources to help you. Worse case (or even best case), you may be able to transfer into Marshall if it is just too big a struggle - as we discussed before, it depends if you have the money, time and gpa to get in there. There’s also a ton of majors within Dornsife that are cool that are an easy transfer that use econ but less math (International Relations, etc).

Then again, a new envrionment like east coast can be a good experience, but it sounds like you aren’t interested in that aspect of it…I don’t hear you saying one positive thing about going to BU except it would be easier. When said out loud, that seems like a lame reason doesn’t it? Should a 70-80K a year education just be easy and something to just get overwith? Heck no. Push yourself, prove yourself. At the school you really want to go to.

Thanks for your honest comment. It really helped me to choose USC. Your comment made me realize that I’ve been just trying to avoid the hard part which is math.

Since you seem like a person who is really familiar with USC stuff, I want to ask additional question.

I know Econ is one of the most popular majors at Dornsife, do you know how USC Econ major is perceived when looking for jobs? One of the big reasons I want to study at USC is because of its strong alumni connection.

One of my parents’ friends graduated from USC Marshall and that person told me that USC Marshall’s connection is extremely strong, but Dornsife majors such as Econ are not as strong as Marshall, which will make it harder finding a job.
Would you say this opinion is true or not? Thanks again for your incredible help. Really appreciate it.

I don’t think it is USC Econ as much as econ as a major just isn’t as defined when it comes to job placement. If you study finance or marketing in business there is just more of a path and certain positions to look for. Econ is just a broad field of study that can be useful getting lots of jobs, their just isn’t an “econ” position at a company if that makes sense.

I’m gonna PM you some other info…