Economics in CAS and Stern?

miaceves
Tue, 27 Mar 2012 22:12:38 +0000

I think the decision mainly depends on whether or not you want to work in a business related field.

The CAS Econ department is much more rigorous than the one in Stern. This year’s Nobel Prize winner for Economics is a CAS faculty member and CAS Econ department is top ten in the world (or at least top 20). But a lot of people assume that Stern’s econ program is better just because Stern is such a good business school. That some of my friends thought Thomas Sargent was a Stern teacher goes to show what a big misconception it is.

If you want to work for the government, go into the academic world, get a research position, or get a PhD/graduate degree then you should definitely go to CAS. You won’t have to deal with ignorant people thinking economics and business are almost the same thing, or that economics is a useless/the easy/secundary major.

But if you want to work in the business world, then choose Stern’s econ program. The major is geared towards business applications, you’ll get exposure to other fields like accounting and marketing with the core business courses, econ classes are relatively undemanding and it’ll be really easy to double major (you need less credits to major in econ). Not to mention that Stern has more prestige, you’ll have more networking opportunities, and it’s competitive curve will prepare you to deal with the cutthroat “real” world.

If you want to go into business but you’re worried about not getting into Stern and apply to CAS Econ instead, then you obviously won’t get the same opportunities (Stern is a top business school for a reason), but if you take some business classes in Stern, then you should be fine. Most employees don’t care if it’s CAS or Stern as long as it’s NYU, and the recruiting process is almost the same (though I don’t know for sure). As I see it, the only real downside would be Sternies looking down on you and having to deal with people assuming that you’re in CAS because you didn’t get into Stern (which will be true anyway).