Social science major - go for Stats minor or mix of financy classes?

Hello all,

I am in a Psychology program at U of I. I have been doing nonstop business research for the last several months, and am now looking at S&T with the chance of going into HF eventually.

I HAVE used the search function, but haven't found answers to this question in particular:

I know it is possible to get where I want to go without a finance/econ/math/business/engineering degree, but in order to increase my chances, would it behoove me more to get a Stat major, or just take financial/economic classes? Or do something totally different?

Thanks!

3 Comments
 

I did econ/stats. I noticed a fair number of the older interviewers really respect stats because when they were in school programs like SAS, STATA, R, ect. were not around or not very strong. Thus they still feel it takes a whole lot to be very good at stats when in reality you don't get to the very advanced proofs and hand done work mostly till grad school.

So stats isn't bad. From what I hear though I bet applied math would be better for S/T. However, I've never had any experience in S/T so take that point carefully if you want.

"If you want to succeed in this life, you need to understand that duty comes before rights and that responsibility precedes opportunity."
 

The trade-off between more psych courses and stats/econ courses is what's relevant here. If you're majoring in psych because it's interesting, and stats makes you grit your teeth, that's kind of a tough choice. If you're interested in possibly going to grad school for psych, they will likely look favorably on a solid stats background so the more stats the better.

Generally speaking, I think stats > econ/finance, but you should try and have at least a couple econ or finance classes if possible. Majoring in stats would be best, IMHO, but I think you'd be fine taking as many stats/math courses as possible with a psych major.

 

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