University of Chicago Economics Major
Current senior year analyst at a BB who graduated from UC a few years ago. Between assisting with summer analyst recruiting and seeing a few posts on UChicago economics, I thought I'd offer my 2 cents. Particularly responding to a few posters espousing the idea that you can "easily" get a high GPA in the Econ major, putting in "minimal effort". Take this how you like:
My firm is well aware of the new Business Economics Major, and we're automatically more wary of the GPA listed (auto adjust by -0.1). To those unfamiliar: the newly offered business economics track is significantly easier, due to the types of students drawn to the major (athletes, etc.), and the less math-heavy content of the courses themselves. Underclassmen at UC: don't cheat yourself, finish the real sequence. It does make a difference come recruiting.
I would encourage those of you handling recruiting at your own firms to clarify whether candidates majored in the traditional "empirical sequence" or new "business economics" track, regardless of what's listed on their resume. Have had a few issues about this come up already this current cycle.
As someone who goes there, the bizecon track lets you take classes at Booth, which are much more applicable to banking than regular econ, and not to mention, just as difficult considering they're taught at the graduate level. Plus, with recruiting being so early, people barely take any major classes before applying anyway. Mostly it's just core classes
This is a pretty insane claim, since you recruit usually near the end of second year, when real econ majors have taken Calc 3, Math 195, (usually Math 196 and/or stat 234 as well), and the entire Econ 200 sequence. In contrast, business econ kids have taken intro macro / micro, no high level math, and things like financial accounting (which, despite being Booth classes are offered in undergraduate versions specifically for Bizecon kids) and perhaps 1 - or at most 2 - 'hard' Booth classes (which, as an econ major who takes those Booth classes to supplement my knowledge of finance, are certainly not as hard / time consuming as the analysis sequence).
I'll gladly give you that business econ is going to be more applicable to banking/finance than regular econ, but to say that they're the same difficulty by recruiting time because "all you have taken are core classes" is completely wrong lol. Also it is pretty easy for a real econ major to just take Corp Fin or Financial Statement Analysis in their own time, which is all you really will have done as a biznomics major come recruiting anyways. Biznomics should not be able to call itself economics.