Major Decision

I’m currently a freshman at a target school not majoring in business. I want to eventually work at a HF/PE fund, and do banking first but I’m also thinking about potentially trying to work at a quant fund. I’m looking at potentially majoring in one of the following combinations.

Financial Math and CS:
Pros:
- More quant focused while still leaving banking to PE path open

Cons:
- Difficult as hell
- GPA would probably suffer (probably close to a 3.3)

Econ and CS
Pros:
- Easier than Math
- might be more applicable to PE work? (Could be totally off on this)
- could have a social life and decent GPA (guesstimate is about a 3.5)
- might still be able to do quant (also not sure on this. Would appreciate any feedback)

Cons:
- Econ seems less applicable to Quant HF

Business and CS
Pros:
- top 5 undergrad business school
- easier than math or Econ
- could have a social life and very solid GPA

Cons:
- have to apply to business school and might not get in (25% cross campus transfer acceptance rate)
- less applicable to potential quant roles

I’m more interested in opinions on Econ vs Math, since I probably won’t be able to do business. I know I want to do CS, since I believe it’s only going to become more useful and I actually enjoy it a fair bit so far. Any feedback is appreciated.

 
Most Helpful

I did Econ at a top-tier undergrad business school. Econ is a waste of fucking time, it's all theoretical academics rather than practical applications. Sure, it helped me get finance interviews, but over 4 years I didn't look at a single income statement in traditional coursework.

If I was smart enough, I would've done Math/CS in a heartbeat. Recruiters, particularly quant, cum their pants over Math/CS people. Smartest kid I met in college was a Math/Econ major and had FT offers out of college with 2 BB IBD's, 1 PE analyt offer, and a quant trader gig out in Cali with some fund. I haven't stayed in touch so I don't remember what he took or where he is now.

In my opinion, the pecking order for you should be: Math, Business (Finance), Econ

 

The GPA “leeway” question is interesting and I’m not 100% sure. From my understanding though, it’s more of an box-checker and would be the last determinant (considering all candidate GPAs meet a threshold of 3.5+). 
 

Also you go to a target. Your 3.5 math/cs is going to beat a non-target 3.9 finance. Best of luck tho and god bless for even having the baseline intelligence to realistically consider that path.

 

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