Glut of Econ majors

[Anonymous]

I think it's pretty well known that there is a very good correlation between the amount of math taken in school (h.s. and college+) and salary/income. This is especially true for women. Jobs with quantitative skill requirements pay better. Because it's usually more able to be demonstrated factually and objectively what is being produced or supported by the work: code, engineered products, accounting services, business management metrics, sales profit, etc. Many fields are wonderful but the work product is subjectively valued so wages are held back by that.

Also, frankly, we still have gender differences (however it arises) in quant training at the most advanced levels. There is a bit of a flavor of badly undervaluing jobs that do important but more qualitative work (K-12 education being the best example) because there aren't weed-out quant courses gatekeeping the profession.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a difference in a BA and a BS in Economics. A BS is much harder and regarded more highly. So, they aren't all going for the BS, I assure you!

Also, there are comparatively fewer kids who major in econ (or finance, or accounting, or anything specific), as opposed to just "business." Those (business administration type) are the degrees I would be concerned about. They mean little in the competitive marketplace.

This, and the combination of BS Economics with some higher math classes during college yields the kind of student which Quants seek.

Quants seek math major and math/physics PhDs at MIT. At least at the HFs I have 20+ years experience in. Econ can get a financial analyst or IB position, but we don't let them touch quant research or trade

Newbie who has never taken a physics class in my life - why is physics so desired for quant jobs/hedge funds?

The idea is that physics is a lot of math, including a lot of applied math modeling, and people find themselves with a PhD and no job prospects. But this is all partly mythology. When it does happen, pedigree is key, and still more tap on the shoulder than degree X opens the door.

https://ww2.aip.org/statistics/whos-hiring-physics-phds

Above PP...please consult this. Few Physics PhDs go into academia or physics itself. That's why people say there are no job prospects...they mean no prospects to be professors/academic physicists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think it's pretty well known that there is a very good correlation between the amount of math taken in school (h.s. and college+) and salary/income. This is especially true for women. Jobs with quantitative skill requirements pay better. Because it's usually more able to be demonstrated factually and objectively what is being produced or supported by the work: code, engineered products, accounting services, business management metrics, sales profit, etc. Many fields are wonderful but the work product is subjectively valued so wages are held back by that.

Also, frankly, we still have gender differences (however it arises) in quant training at the most advanced levels. There is a bit of a flavor of badly undervaluing jobs that do important but more qualitative work (K-12 education being the best example) because there aren't weed-out quant courses gatekeeping the profession.

There are no weed out courses in the quant profession. There are weed out interviews.
Talent is king.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All these hoity-toity econ majors. The reality is that econ is the easy degree for mediocre/students without any passions to find jobs. That's it. It could've been stats or cs, but those require the scary word-MATH-so, instead, people major in Econ. Any liberal arts college grad has the social skills to get through a finance position. These are all students smart enough to get through the wacky college admissions process and land on top; that's hard to do without persuasive qualities.

Tell me more about these mediocre students getting into Williams

Sure. They have no passions or real drive beyond the push from their parents. Some of them are recruited and got a massive boost to get into the college. They never actually had to think for themselves, so they need to make the cushy decision of a medium-difficulty major, so they don't need to work much at anything. It's a sellout major for a reason. It's lazy.

So the kids who spend enough time playing their sport to get recruited to a NESAC and managed to get near perfect grades? Sounds like a lazy kid to me

What? Exactly zero of the lax bros, rowers and baseball players from our Big3 had “near-perfect” grades. All mid-pack. But as described well by others, their gentlemen’s B- average doesn’t matter when it’s time to make bank on Wall St. Because sportball!

Will concede the female rower and cross country recruits were just as likely to have high GPAs and brains as anyone else. Maybe the male cross country guys too.

But absolutely not the bros who chase balls around.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:For example for Harvard grads, https://collegescorecard.ed.gov/school/?166027-Harvard-University

Econ grads and Applied Math grads make about the same, 160K-170K

"The median annual earnings of individuals that received federal student aid and began college at this institution 10 years ago"

I don't know how accurate that is for small school. Many majors have graduate in counts by don't have any income data at all, presumably because not enough students in that major got Federal aid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Berkeley Econ is #4. U VA is #30. You can quibble a bit but clearly there is a huge gap.
https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-humanities-schools/economics-rankings

The gap between BA and BS is larger than the gap between schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, the truth really is that being an Econ major is a social signal, just like going to Williams, or even going to any college at all.

Any major that feeds to the Street means a chance at some of the highest paid entry level jobs in America.

What else do you really want to know?

A chance at some of the most miserable soul-destroying jobs in America…

Any job can be. Unlikely to be the view for most at least from econ majors coming out of Williams.

At least they can make money! What job ISN'T soul sucking in this country??
I'm thrilled I spent decades in a soul sucking job - made BANK and now don't work at age 50. Doesn't feel too soul sucking as I type this from Europe, where I will be this month.

Therapy isn't soul sucking.

A lot of tech jobs are fun or casual and easy.

Teaching and nursing are hit and miss.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a difference in a BA and a BS in Economics. A BS is much harder and regarded more highly. So, they aren't all going for the BS, I assure you!

Also, there are comparatively fewer kids who major in econ (or finance, or accounting, or anything specific), as opposed to just "business." Those (business administration type) are the degrees I would be concerned about. They mean little in the competitive marketplace.

This, and the combination of BS Economics with some higher math classes during college yields the kind of student which Quants seek.

Quants seek math major and math/physics PhDs at MIT. At least at the HFs I have 20+ years experience in. Econ can get a financial analyst or IB position, but we don't let them touch quant research or trade

Newbie who has never taken a physics class in my life - why is physics so desired for quant jobs/hedge funds?

The idea is that physics is a lot of math, including a lot of applied math modeling, and people find themselves with a PhD and no job prospects. But this is all partly mythology. When it does happen, pedigree is key, and still more tap on the shoulder than degree X opens the door.

https://ww2.aip.org/statistics/whos-hiring-physics-phds

Above PP...please consult this. Few Physics PhDs go into academia or physics itself. That's why people say there are no job prospects...they mean no prospects to be professors/academic physicists.

That was implied in my post, I'm plenty familiar, thanks. It does happen, but mostly this is fairytale. Smarts or not, it's a hard pivot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is a difference in a BA and a BS in Economics. A BS is much harder and regarded more highly. So, they aren't all going for the BS, I assure you!

Also, there are comparatively fewer kids who major in econ (or finance, or accounting, or anything specific), as opposed to just "business." Those (business administration type) are the degrees I would be concerned about. They mean little in the competitive marketplace.

This, and the combination of BS Economics with some higher math classes during college yields the kind of student which Quants seek.

Quants seek math major and math/physics PhDs at MIT. At least at the HFs I have 20+ years experience in. Econ can get a financial analyst or IB position, but we don't let them touch quant research or trade

Newbie who has never taken a physics class in my life - why is physics so desired for quant jobs/hedge funds?

The idea is that physics is a lot of math, including a lot of applied math modeling, and people find themselves with a PhD and no job prospects. But this is all partly mythology. When it does happen, pedigree is key, and still more tap on the shoulder than degree X opens the door.

https://ww2.aip.org/statistics/whos-hiring-physics-phds

Above PP...please consult this. Few Physics PhDs go into academia or physics itself. That's why people say there are no job prospects...they mean no prospects to be professors/academic physicists.

That was implied in my post, I'm plenty familiar, thanks. It does happen, but mostly this is fairytale. Smarts or not, it's a hard pivot.

It's generally difficult to become a quant. But, a ton of the quant traders are math/physics phds. It's just preferable to econ, who have decent but not precise math ability.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All these hoity-toity econ majors. The reality is that econ is the easy degree for mediocre/students without any passions to find jobs. That's it. It could've been stats or cs, but those require the scary word-MATH-so, instead, people major in Econ. Any liberal arts college grad has the social skills to get through a finance position. These are all students smart enough to get through the wacky college admissions process and land on top; that's hard to do without persuasive qualities.

Tell me more about these mediocre students getting into Williams

Sure. They have no passions or real drive beyond the push from their parents. Some of them are recruited and got a massive boost to get into the college. They never actually had to think for themselves, so they need to make the cushy decision of a medium-difficulty major, so they don't need to work much at anything. It's a sellout major for a reason. It's lazy.

So the kids who spend enough time playing their sport to get recruited to a NESAC and managed to get near perfect grades? Sounds like a lazy kid to me

What? Exactly zero of the lax bros, rowers and baseball players from our Big3 had “near-perfect” grades. All mid-pack. But as described well by others, their gentlemen’s B- average doesn’t matter when it’s time to make bank on Wall St. Because sportball!

Will concede the female rower and cross country recruits were just as likely to have high GPAs and brains as anyone else. Maybe the male cross country guys too.

But absolutely not the bros who chase balls around.

Stay mad, nerd. 😂😂😂

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think it's pretty well known that there is a very good correlation between the amount of math taken in school (h.s. and college+) and salary/income. This is especially true for women. Jobs with quantitative skill requirements pay better. Because it's usually more able to be demonstrated factually and objectively what is being produced or supported by the work: code, engineered products, accounting services, business management metrics, sales profit, etc. Many fields are wonderful but the work product is subjectively valued so wages are held back by that.

Also, frankly, we still have gender differences (however it arises) in quant training at the most advanced levels. There is a bit of a flavor of badly undervaluing jobs that do important but more qualitative work (K-12 education being the best example) because there aren't weed-out quant courses gatekeeping the profession.

There are no weed out courses in the quant profession. There are weed out interviews.
Talent is king.

PP. I should have been more clear. Wasn't meaning Finance Quant. Just the professions that tend to be quantitative skill-based, like Physics, Engineering, etc. Plenty of those have weed out courses. B.S. in Economics doesn't usually but if there's a choice of BA or BS at a school, the tracking is usually suggestive of the candidate's quant skill interests and abilities. So you kind of weed yourself out. I know this because I have a BA Econ and I realized after graduation that I shorted myself on quant classes so I paid to take 3 extra classes in mathematical economics so I could feel I had the appropriate training for the job I held. Never ended up needing it though. I had settled on Econ as my major somewhat late in the game after dumping a Business/Psychology dual major. So my course progression and options were suboptimal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, the truth really is that being an Econ major is a social signal, just like going to Williams, or even going to any college at all.

Any major that feeds to the Street means a chance at some of the highest paid entry level jobs in America.

What else do you really want to know?

A chance at some of the most miserable soul-destroying jobs in America…

Any job can be. Unlikely to be the view for most at least from econ majors coming out of Williams.

At least they can make money! What job ISN'T soul sucking in this country??
I'm thrilled I spent decades in a soul sucking job - made BANK and now don't work at age 50. Doesn't feel too soul sucking as I type this from Europe, where I will be this month.

Therapy isn't soul sucking.

A lot of tech jobs are fun or casual and easy.

Teaching and nursing are hit and miss.

Hahaha, do you have any good friends who are therapists? Ask them how uplifting their jobs are.

[Anonymous]

Very funny people need to bring in physics or applied math or 'quant job" tying to degrade econ.

[Anonymous]

Saying NESCAC athletes are equally academically qualified as their non-athlete peers is comical. 92 of the 104 "distinction" (top 25%) graduates from Amherst this year were non-athletes, and only one played a helmet sport.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Very funny people need to bring in physics or applied math or 'quant job" tying to degrade econ.

No one discussing quant is degrading econ. They are just telling the truth that you likely will not qualify for a quant job without a higher level math-based major