Should I go for the joint degree?
A little bit about myself:
sophomore, 3.9 GPA from top 10 target, going to intern at a VC for the summer with the goal of getting a BB internship in HK next summer.
My dilemma:
My school offers this BA/MA joint degree, with the BA being whatever you want to study (in my case, economics), and the MA being international relations (the IR department at my school is also consistently ranked top 10). If I go this route, I will have to finish all my BA requirements in three years (which is hard, but definitely doable), and devote my entire senior year to the MA (which will culminate in a MA thesis). Knowing how intensive the MA is, my GPA for the MA program likely won't be as high as a 3.9, but it won't be too low either. I anticipate finishing my BA degree with ~3.9 GPA with or without doing the joint degree program.
International relations is something that's always interested me academically, but not something that I'm thinking about making a career out of at this point in my life (maybe potentially down the road). I will be double majoring in econ and poli sci if I don't go with the BA/MA joint degree route. Given my career aspirations (right now, that's getting my foot into BB IBD), is this route worth pursuing? How will such a selective, but non-finance-related joint degree be viewed by future employers when I put it on my resume in my BB applications?
Thanks in advance for all the opinions!
Unless you're risking significant harm to your GPA then do it.
Bump. Anyone else?
come on..no one?
That actually sounds awesome - I did a major (language) that would not really help me too much in finding an IB job in addition to a "more practical" one just because I enjoyed it. If you are doing it all in four years, you wake up in the morning and you feel like you have to do it because you enjoy it, you think your GPA will be fine, and you can't imagine not doing it - then do it.
Sounds like it will be hard... so just make sure it is something you really want to do and you are not going to hate your life until you graduate and never have time for friends/things outside of academics.
I would say (my opinion as a guy who is ABOUT to start in IB), because no one really cares that I doubled majored, a good portion of people won't care if you do your double major or the BA/MA. So do what you want, work hard, and network more than anything else.
Thanks for the advice Forrest! Falls in line with the thoughts I'm currently having.
An additional question for all: as someone who wants to do finance/business cross borders/continents down the road (namely, America and Asia), will the IR degree be looked favorably upon? Just to be clear, the IR degree has four specializations: IR theory (international security), international political economy and development, regional studies and nationalism, and human rights/international law.
Academically, I'm mostly interested in the first two.
bump...
You must go to JHU? Tufts?
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