<p>perception is always going to be king here. so concoll and skraylor can of course disagree even if they were in the same class.</p>
<p>my opinion of econ at columbia - it is very good, very highly sought after, but probably gears you closer toward wall street than toward further graduate study. not a fault of columbia, but it is easier to be high minded when you don’t live down the street from the financial capital of the world.</p>
<p>most of the material you will learn will be new for most folks. so don’t worry if you have no exposure. but probably the most important thing for being econ is how good you are at math. the better you are and the better you are able to apply concepts, the easier it will be.</p>
<p>in terms of a good major to get a jobs - well think about college as a time to develop skill sets. econ and any financial literacy training you can have will open up doors in the wall-street/consulting world. but there are a host of other things you can do that will help you in getting a job. your language training, maybe exposure to other sciences, your communication skills. they all become relevant. so econ is good because it is pretty clear to see the connection between a high paying job on wall street and the major, but also think about the fact that you need more than just econ (like you need more than just SAT scores) to stand out in the job market.</p>
<p>i didn’t find the 2 econ classes i took to be very hard, or curved hard, but they were intro. also there are a number of econ joint majors worth thinking about (with math, stats, polisci, philosophy) and some students also do economic history that gives you other skills and maybe more interesting classes.</p>