<p>Economics is my passion and I would love to pursue a career in it. At Berkeley, and I was wondering if after 4 years, I would be able to find a decent job with a ba in economics.</p>
<p>HOWEVER,
at UT, the price is half the cost of Berkeley (25K vs 50K per year), but the economics program is not as distinguished.</p>
<p>I don’t know, but to me (even as much as I love economics), the major seems unpractical in the real world. I don’t want to invest in an extremely good (and extremely expensive) education if it’s not going to pay off. At UT, even if I find it difficult to find a job, I could always get an MBA, with some of the money i didn’t use for Berkeley.</p>
<p>So should I take the risk with Berkeley for 4 years or play it safe with UT and then get an MBA at another school (even though this will take longer)?</p>
<p>OR should I go to Berkeley, work for a little bit, and then get my MBA?</p>
<p>UT’s Econ program is not shabby by any means. Their PhD program is something like 25th…Mainly, they have a strong set of classes, last time I checked it was all the way to Cal 3 and two different forecasting courses. I’m just saying, it’s vary quantitative and a student can really prove themself. </p>
<p>The best part I found was there were a few financial market classes classes in the Econ department as well as they have a Business Economics option that allows 5 classes inside McCombs, I think its Acct 1 & 2 and three upper-level finance courses…</p>
<p>You will find Austin ranked in the top 10 of many of these types of lists.</p>
<p>I would love to live in the area of California where Berkeley is located, but let’s face it: The California economy is in absolute shambles right now. It’s gotten so bad that a large minority of the state’s counties want to break off and form their own state. </p>
<p>This decision is yours alone, but I feel very lucky to be in a city like Austin right now.</p>
<p>By the way, if you truly have a “passion” for economics then you should be researching phd programs. A bachelors degree will only get you a low paying research assistant job, and if you ever want to move up beyond that you’ll need an advanced degree. Econ phds from top 50 programs make a ton of money in consulting and policy think-tanks. Top 25 econ phds make great money working for top universities. If you go into consulting or IB straight out of undergrad you will be working 60-100 hour weeks your first half-decade out of school. Econ phds go straight into senior associate/consulting positions or into assistant professorships, where they still have to produce, but the hours of work are usually in the 40 hour range, which is amazing considering the starting salary is >100K.</p>