4 Years for Econ/Stat Double Major Vs. 3 Year Econ Major

Hey guys,

I know that there are plenty of posts asking for advice on double majors, but hopefully my situation is unique enough to warrant a new post. I'm a junior in economics at Penn State University Park with a 3.3 GPA that I think I can reasonably raise to a 3.4 by the end of the year. I'm on track to graduate as a junior this spring, but I'm concerned about my GPA being on the low end for wall street and each of the firms I've talked to have said that I need to apply for full-time positions rather than internships as I don't have a year of college left.

My freshman GPA was really bad (like my cumulative GPA could easily be at least .1-.2 higher) and I've been on a decent upward slope since, but I'm also concerned by the overall strength of my resume. I don't have any work experience (probably would've been best to have gotten some before now, but I've been fortunate enough that I haven't needed to work in high school or college) and I haven't had any internships given that I was a sophomore the past summer and I chose to stay at UP to take some classes.

With all of that considered, I'm questioning whether it would be worth staying for my fourth year, rather than graduating a year early, to also pick up a degree in Stat along with the Econ. After just taking 2 more classes over this coming summer, I'd be able to graduate on time. Although summer classes would complicate getting a junior year internship, I could still finally get some work experience at a local bank to put on my resume at the same time and I don't have an internship lined up right now, anyway. PSU's econ program isn't math intensive at all and I didn't do very well on the little bit of math that I did have to take because I was an irresponsible freshman (stupidly paid the price in GPA but had some fun, met people, learned a lot of lessons, you know how it goes). I think that besides getting the degree in stat, having another year to continue boosting my GPA, finishing with a high Stat GPA, and proving my ability in math by getting better grades in higher level classes (besides the higher level Stats, I'd also be taking Calc II, Calc II, and Matrices which aren't required for econ) would get me much better prospects for a job on wall street, or potentially business school, than graduating a year early with a subpar GPA in Econ at PSU.

Do you guys think that it would be worth staying a 4th year for a stat degree? I think that it would give me a good shot at redemption and the extra math seems to be reasonably important. Luckily, I'm also in-state so I'm not getting completely shafted on tuition although the apartment prices are definitely up there. Either way, I'm not in a horrible situation, just want to make sure that it doesn't seem like a waste of a year that could otherwise be used to start working my way up at a smaller firm, likely outside of NYC, and to really network. I know that I kind of just wrote a novel here, so a big thanks ahead of time to anyone who takes the time to read it and offer any kind of advice or input. I know that a lot of you guys are busy as hell and have a million other things to do, so I really do appreciate your time.

 

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