West Point Major

Generally Finance and Economics are listed as top undergraduate majors, perhaps accounting. I would lean to those over the more general Business Administration. You will serve time in the Army after graduation and enter your chosed civ career field with 4 to 5 years of military experience. You might have a chance to pursue a MBA (although probably part time and not at top tier school) while on active duty. Have you closely researched the math requirements for the econ degree? The fact you were accepted to a service academy shows you are "no slouch" academically and can handle stressful situations, so probably you can handle the course work. Should ECON be too challenging what options will you have to change majors down the road?

Personally if I had to choose between the two I would say economics would be better for ib I just don’t believe business management would prepare u for the ib as well as concepts you would pick up in Econ. Again personal opinion.

go with Econ. IMO it’s much more interesting and you can go through most of it with only basic partial differentiation and integration. And honestly going through the pain of doing the math will make you much more confident in the future

I had Cs and Ds in all my math classes prior to college and picked Econ. Had a great teacher for one of my classes and he just explained the math really well, after that, it seemed pretty easy. I would go for Econ, it is an interesting major and you can definitely pick up on the math along the way.

Don’t think there any ‘quant’ skills to learn in Econ. I don’t mean to say it’s not hard, quantitative, or interesting to learn, but I really don’t think there’s application in the quant skills you learn in that classroom environment. There’s going to be some crossover, yes, but I’d caution you to think less of how you’ll be able to apply what you learn haha. For Econ knowledge and interesting stuff there’s nothing preventing you from getting a minor or taking Econ classes for fun with a business major. Something to think about :)

econs a bitch and you're prob gonna be very busy with other stuff. honestly dont think econ vs bus mgmt. will play much of a difference compared to a 3.3gpa vs. 3.7gpa. advanced micro econ classes weighed my gpa down.

congrats on getting into west point

Was in your exact shoes a little bit ago (am now out). Do Econ. The course is great at USMA and has the best teachers. And when you do get out and decide to either work right away/go to school/try and do banking, it is a solid foundation as opposed to a degree that has "business" in it. It'll suck taking micro/macro but just take comfort in the fact that if I can pass, so can you. Your focus now should be on taking the best courses and getting your commission. Focus on the things you can control, not stuff that may or may not happen in a decade.

I graduated from West Point and am currently attending a top business school. I definitely recommend majoring in Management. You should get your MBA after your military service, otherwise you’ll start IB as a 27 year-old analyst with zero finance skills. The MBA program you get into will dictate your exit opportunities, not your undergrad major. And believe me you’ll forget 99% of the shit you learned at the Academy by the time you transition. As a veteran, business schools will look closely at two things - your GMAT and GPA. Majoring in Economics over Management will make little to no difference. Economics isn’t a hard major, but your GPA will probably be higher if you major in Management. PM me if you wanna chat more

I'm a USMA Old Grad that did 5 years active duty as a combat arms officer then MBA at top B school (USNWR #1 at the time) that did ~10 years IB up to MD/Industry Group Head and then moved to PE as an MD for about ~10 years and still going. I have a son at USMA who's open minded about serving long term but wants to preserve the option of going into finance (hence me trolling WSO again).  As many have said, MBA admissions officers seem to love USMA grads.  If I had not gone to USMA I don't think there is any way I would have gotten into the top schools.  My experience is a bit dated, but  my 0.02 is that major is probably not super critical as long as it is a quantitative sounding major - engineering, econ, mathematics etc and your class rank was pretty high, say top 10 or 20% and you smoke the GMAT.  I was a Systems Engineering Major and I think it served me well as it blends a bit of quantitative with decision sciences, however, I think the Academy's Econ program has evolved a lot over the last 25+ years with a lot of finance depth and I were doing it again, would pick that.   

Cadets - if you want to do five and fly and transition into finance, you should get a top MBA. Admission committees don't really care that much about your major, your GPA matters more than your major so focus on getting good grades. That said though, your major is something that will stay on your resume for the rest of your career, so a bachelors in economics or business management is a good bet. They're both relatively easy majors at West Point, and since SOSH and DFL have a lot of overlap in electives you could double major in economics and a foreign language and do a semester abroad, definitely something I wish I would've done. Engineering is respected anywhere, but it's definitely harder and more time consuming, and none of the curriculum really translates into finance. 

Focus on being a good officer after you graduate, get a 700+ GMAT score during your lieutenant years - then get your MBA at a top school and crush it in the business world.