I’m a low/middle income, mixed race (black and white) junior in Las Vegas interested in a career relating to both finance and politics (3.8UW, 4.3W, 9 APs, 7 Honors, 5 College Classes, 1320 PSAT). Right now, my top schools are Columbia, NYU, Lehigh University, and American University, but I’m still researching. I’m wondering whether I should major in political science or finance (based on acceptance rates, job opportunities, and average salary). I would say I have more extracurriculars relating to politics, but I’m not sure if majoring in political science would be helpful since I don’t plan on going to law school. I’m open to any school suggestions or advice on majors. I plan on minoring in the topic I don’t plan to major in.
EC’s won’t matter as far as which type. What’s the end goal career wise.
Perhaps you can do a major minor or double major.
Finance will have better outcomes but if it doesn’t match your goal it’s not relevant.
Oh and Columbia offers a financial Econ major but not finance major undergrad. Big difference. So if wanting finance, find another.
What’s your highest math ?
Good luck.
American doesn’t admit by major. You’d probably have a decent chance at AU but they are very big on demonstrated interest so make sure you’re opening emails, attending if there is something they’re doing near you etc.
NYU - fair difference in Stern (business/finance) and CAS (politics) admit rates. Your SAT is a little low for nyu especially for Stern, but I think they’re test optional at the moment. (Edit: rereading I see this is psat and you’re a junior, so you may have a different score by the time you apply)
Not familiar with the others.
For what it’s worth I work in investment management (a smaller group within a very large and well known firm) and it so happens that 2 out of the current 4 entry level associates in our team have politics or IR majors. (The other 2 are finance and economics.)
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OP doesn’t want to go to law school.
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My son is a freshman at Lehigh and is a finance major right now. He chose them because of their outcomes especially in the finance world. I know their business program and connections in NYC are very strong. I think you may be a little more marketable with a degree in finance vs a degree in Poli sci. My son is also interested in politics and may have aspirations to run for office in the future but finance is his passion.
Oooh. U r right. Said I don’t want to go. Usually people put in when they want to go. Thx for the catch.ill remove the last 3 paragraphs.
You might be interested in a Public Policy (or similar) major. They are generally more applied and a little less theoretical than Political Science. It is inherently interdisciplinary, and often pretty quantitative, and I think usually would be a good combination with something like a Finance, Econ, or Data Science minor, or indeed double major.
Here is an example at William & Mary, an excellent school for this and they are really good for combining things as well:
Maryland has a very well-regarded School of Public Policy with an undergraduate major:
Pitt is yet another example you might want to check out:
If you might be interested in smaller colleges, this is a popular major at Gettysburg, and it is actually set up as a double major:
https://www.gettysburg.edu/academic-programs/public-policy/
The Policy Studies major at Syracuse (Maxwell) would be another similar option:
I note the Maxwell School is generally considered one of the top public affairs schools in the US.
And in fact another such school is the O’Neill School at Indiana. You in fact could consider their Public Affairs major–public affairs takes you a little more to the political side of things than the policy side, but still in an applied context:
Arizona State would be yet another good options–you can do a Public Policy concentration inside of their Public Affairs major:
https://sgpp.arizona.edu/bs-public-affairs-formerly-public-management-policy
Just some ideas, but I am thinking these sorts of majors might be a little more what you are looking for than Political Science, and again often combine well with other things you might be interested in doing.
I do not think that this matters. If your ECs show that you work well with others and can spend some focused time on productive activities, that is a good thing. My ECs for example had nothing at all to do with my eventual major, and it was not a problem at all in university admissions (nor any other way). Generally speaking it is common for a student’s ECs to be unrelated to their major.
I have two initial reactions on this. My first reaction is that you can figure this out after you are a semester or a year into university and have had a chance to try a bit of both. My other reaction is that there is probably more that you can do with a degree in finance.
I was a math major in university. I have been told that math majors sometimes go into finance (I went a different way with my career – math is useful for quite a few different things). This makes me wonder if a finance major takes a certain amount of math. If so this is probably a good thing since math is useful in a number of areas. It does make me wonder about asking about how you are doing in math classes. I will also point out that to me math is an area where jumping ahead is usually a bad idea, and learning each subject well before you go on to the next subject is usually a good idea.
I wonder the same thing. Of course you can major in a lot of different subjects and go to law school.
These two are a reach with a 3.8 unweighted GPA. I am not as familiar with American or Lehigh. Make sure that you also apply to safeties. You are in a WICHE/WUE state, so you could consider the various WUE schools as one thing to consider, and Nevada does have good public universities.
When I think of finance and politics, a career like like real estate economics comes to mind. That’s what my S18 ended up in with a Public Affairs major, where he focused on urban policy. He now works (as a consultant) on very political issues associated with urban redevelopment.
But I will say that he found the major to be full of math-phobic students who thought economics (let alone math-econ) was too hard. There were options to do more quantitative classes, but you had to seek them out (or double major). Big data analysis (eg analyzing zoning issues using R) was also optional but highly valuable.
Don’t ignore UNLV as a safety. Their partnership with Brookings is great and gives preferential access to the most prestigious think tank in DC:
https://www.unlv.edu/brookingsmtnwest
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I was a math major. In graduate school I took one single course that was not a math course. It was econometrics (ie, quantitative economics). I liked it a lot. There is a lot of math in econometrics. Even as a math major the course had me spending a Saturday afternoon reviewing linear algebra, and making sure that I was comfortable and had a good intuitive feel for various matrix operations. At the time I got to understand linear algebra better specifically because I had to in order to handle econometrics.
However, to me it seems like economics can be largely a matter of one opinion versus another opinion. When you get into quantitative economics you have something that can actually be tested against real data and real world experience. To me econometrics is well worth studying, and is something that you can’t study without at least some ability in mathematics. I also can see how this might relate to both finance and political science.
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I don’t disagree with anything you’ve posted.
But I will add (datapoint of one) the very best econometricians I ever hired had a BS in geology. So agree that the fundamental mathyness/modeling/comfort level manipulating large datasets and sophisticated and predictive analysis is what’s important… and the nomenclature is less. Organizations which hire high end math people know what they are looking for. This guy had created a model while an undergrad which basically explained and predicted tail-end geological events (think of what’s supposed to be a mild earthquake which turns out to be something much more intense and life-threatening) which had everyone who interviewed him buzzing. Nobody needed their hand held while they did the mental leap from a geological event to a market crash…and nobody was bothered by the fact that they guy knew nothing about finance.
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I will admit this is purely second hand, so take this for what it is worth (meaning little) . . .
What I have heard is that Public Policy at least can be more mathy than Public Affairs. Doesn’t necessarily have to be, but to the extent Public Policy is more about actual policy formation versus the process of getting proposals enacted (or indeed people elected, and so on), and given how large data sets are becoming important inputs to policy formation across more and more areas, understanding how to work with such data is perhaps becoming more important to policy analysts and such.
Assuming this is even remotely correct, it might imply a quant sort favoring Public Policy, or at least Public Affairs with a Public Policy concentration. But that likely depends on the curriculum details, elective options, and so on.
And even then, I am sure a really serious quant sort might want to combine Public Policy with something that is much more inherently mathy. On the theory above, Data Science might be a really good choice.
But so could a reasonably quant-heavy Finance program.
Anyway, just some things for the OP to consider. In the end, I would definitely suggest looking past labels, and digging into what a given major at a given college really involves in terms of required courses, elective courses, possible tracks/concentrations, potential combined minors and majors, and so on.