My high school is extremely competitive (ranked #34 in CA, 202 overall) and I’ve done (relatively) well in school. My interests lie mostly in STEM fields and plan to go into finance in more of a quantitative role or venture capital/private equity/investment banking/hedge fund as an analyst or trader. I’m a solid communicator with a very extroverted personality, so I guess that sets me apart from most of the STEM field. Another career that I would consider is something in data analysis or tech related. I’m an extremely analytical person with strong presentation skills so optimally I would like a major choice that suits both of those. Going to be senior next year. White male btw.
Base Stats:
GPA: 3.8 UW
ACT: 35, 10 on essay (11 on essay on the first one but 34 composite)
SAT II: Math 720, USH 750, Chem 750
APs: 4 Chem, 5 USH
Classes: All honors/AP other than Spanish 1 and 2
EC: Baseball all 3 years + volunteering 250+ hours coaching little leaguers
Youth and Govt Junior and Senior Year
Very big in working out/lifting weights; personally trained ~7-10 of my friends and co-wrote a book on beginner lifting/nutrition that is published on amazon
Paid internship at a company doing market analysis and research reports about predictive analytics for vehicles
Cost is not an issue for me with college my parents can pay out of pocket for wherever I want to go. Also, I plan on getting a graduate degree (MFin, MFE, other computational/quantitaive finance degrees, or MBA) and possibly a PhD in something related to economics like game theory, operations research, financial mathematics, etc.
My current college list looks like this:
Reach
Columbia - Operations Research/Econometrics -> ORFE program Sophomore year
Cornell - Operations Research
UPenn- Mathematical Economics
University of Chicago - Econometrics
UC Berkeley - Business/ EECS/ Applied Math
Realistic
USC- Industrial Engineering
Claremont McKenna - Dual Economics and Engineering
UCLA - Economics
University of Michigan - Economics/Industrial Engineering/ Applied Mathematics
NYU - Business (Finance)
Carnegie Mellon- Comp Sci/Business -> plan to apply to BS Comp Finance program sophmore year
Safety
UCSB - Computer Science and Financial Mathematics
University of San Diego - Industrial Engineering/ Economics/ Mathematics (Applied influence)/ Computer Science*
University of Arizona - Applied Economics/ Applied Mathematics/ Computer Science/ Industrial Engineering
CSU Long beach - Computer Science and Applied Mathematics
Majors
Econometrics
Applied Mathematics
Computer Science
Operations Research
Industrial Engineering
If anyone has any suggestions relating to colleges or majors that I should consider that would be awesome.
EDIT: Just realized I forgot to post my senior year courseload
AP Calc BC
AP Physics C
AP Lang
AP Gov
AP Micro Econ
AP Psych (self study)
AP Macro Econ (Self study)
Spanish 4 reg
You may want to look into the IEOR, ORMS, statistics, and economics (higher math option) majors at Berkeley. Business is not particularly quantitative.
Econometrics is not by itself a major, since econometrics courses are typically part of an economics major. If you want to go into quantitative economics and finance, or PhD study in economics, you may want to look through course catalogs to see which schools offer them; look at the math prerequisites for the intermediate economics and econometrics courses, and look for mathematical economics electives. Among less selective (than UCB or UCLA) schools, UCSC, UCI, and UCSD have a heavier math emphasis in their economics courses.
@IncorpXand If you’re talking about the 3-2 econ and engineering degree I’ve looked into that and it looks perfect for what I want to do, unfortunately like you said it is highly selective and thus I’ve changed it to a Low Reach (although not sure if it should be high reach).
@ucbalumnus The only reason I included business on there is the prestige of Haas (and Stern for NYU) on wall street and finance in general. I looked into the programs you mentioned and the IEOR program seems fantastic. Thanks for the heads up on econometrics, some schools I looked at had it as a more specialized program within economics and I got confused. Also, I looked into UCSD’s and UCI’s programs and it looks like they would be good low matches for me.
General Updates:
Found out Cornell has a great OR and Masters in Engineering + MBA program or just OR + Maters in Eng- looks promising
UM has an interesting major called BSE in Data Science
Switched CMU major to information systems because SCS would be hard to get a 4.0 in through sophomore year and Tepper wouldn’t offer enough mathematical or computer science rigor
Reformatted list:
High Reach
a. Columbia - Financial Economics -> ORFE
b. Cornell - OR + Masters Engineering + MBA or OR + masters in engineering
c. UPenn- Mathematical Economics
Low Reach
a. University of Chicago - Economics
b. UC Berkeley - IEOR
c. Claremont McKenna - Dual Economics and Engineering
High Match
a. UCLA - Mathematics and Economics
b. University of Michigan - Data Science
c. Carnegie Mellon- Information systems (plan to do BS computational finance sophomore year)
Low Match
a. USC- Industrial Engineering
b. UCSD - Economics and Mathematics or Mathematics and Computer Science*
c. NYU - Business (Finance)
Safety
a. UCSB - Computer Science and Financial Mathematics
b. CSU Long beach - Computer Science and Applied Mathematics
c. UA- Computer Science and Math
*Looking for some advice/input here, anyone been through or currently in either of these programs and can tell me what is involved?
Majors:
Economics
Operations Research
Industrial Engineering
Computer Science/ Computer Engineering
Data Science
Math/applied math
Tufts has a major in Quantitative Economics a major in Computer Science, a minor in Entrepreneurial Leadership and a strong Investment Club. It places people on Wall Street (The CEO of JP Morgan is a Tufts alum) You might want to think about start-ups in this sector as well…