UCLA Business Economics major - Future plans (careers/graduate) / other comparison (Haas/Marshall) questions?

Its true, biz econ is essentially a econ major with a business orientation. UCLA even said that its not supposed to replicate an undergraduate business curriculum and that it is a tightly focused curriculum that is guided by rigorous logic/integrative prospective of econ. So, the difference between this and Haas/Marshall is that with Haas/Marshall, you get the business admin focus, which will have courses that give you a basic working knowledge of the other business functions. Some employers may ask for a more specific education as a requirement for the position, but others may just look over it and rely more on experience and skills. The jobs that are available will depend on what will be available when you graduate, but I think a possible career path is working with data or quantitative roles. Some kind of analyst position may be a potential job.

Getting into a good MBA program depends on other factors, such as the amount of work experience, GPA, GMAT score, what point you are at in your career etc. and not so much the name of your undergrad major. I know a guy that majored in electrical engineering/computer science for undergrad, worked in engineering for at least several years before going for an MBA from a very good school. I think he was moving up to a management role, so that is part of his reason to go for an MBA. So, your undergrad major isn't that much of a factor in the MBA decisions. Your chances of getting in doesn't come from your major, but your background and where you are going in your career path.

It is extremely hard to get into Berkeley after a year, let alone trying for Haas. Berkeley will probably just reject you because you aren't even considered as an upper division applicant. Haas IS an upper division program that pretty much only looks at junior transfers. If you get into Berkeley this time, you aren't going to Haas right away. You will need to do prerequisites, general ed courses and meet these minimum eligibility requirements in order to apply for Haas (http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/Undergrad/ucb_admissions.html) If you got into USC, you will be in Marshall because Marshall admits freshman directly. Haas doesn't do that.

Lastly, I think UCLA encourages Biz econ students to minor in accounting because all the elective courses for that major is pretty much accounting classes. Universities have different processes for declaring/changing a major/minor, so it kind of depends. Biz econ is a good major, but if you got into Berkeley or USC, its probably better, if you want a career in business. You learn more of everything in business from those traditional business schools than a biz econ program

Not really sure where to start.
1) For freshman admissions, no one is admitted to a Letters and Science major at UCLA or Berkeley. L&S Freshmen are admitted in an undeclared status.
2) Freshmen are not admitted to the Haas School of Business. It is strictly an upper division program. Freshman applicants who name Business as the major have no advantage in admission to Haas over any other undeclared L&S major.
3) An undergrad Business degree will not help with admission to a top tier MBA program at all. An undergrad Business degree is seen as too narrow of a focus and will actually serve as an impediment to admission to a top tier MBA program and probably as well to a top tier Law School. There is a reason Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Columbia, Northwestern, Yale and Dartmouth all have top tier Business Schools and do not offer an undergrad Business degree. In the Ivy League, only Penn offers an undergrad Business degree. Cornell's School of Agriculture offers an undergrad Applied Economics and Management major.
4) Haas does not offer an Accounting degree. It only offers a General Business degree. To take the CPA exam in California and almost every other state now requires a degree and 150 semester units. A BA or BS degree normally requires 120 semester units. The additional units can be earned as part of a Bachelors degree, a Masters degree or outside of a degree program. By the time you graduate, the educational requirements to attain the CPA license in California as opposed to sitting the CPA exam will change to require more Accounting and Business related units, which can be satisfied by completing a one year Masters in Accounting such as offered by numerous Universities including USC. The requirements to sit the CPA exam in California are 24 semester units in Accounting and 24 Business related semester units. Economics units are considered Business related and all 24 Business related units can be in Economics. As stated above, the licensing as opposed to the exam sitting educational units are changing to require additional units in Accounting, Business Ethics etc
5) An Economics degree is seen as a complement to an MBA instead of a situation where an MBA largely repeats the undegrad Business program. Engineering degrees also complement an MBA and allow an MBA to work in technology companies as he can relate to the Engineers.
6) Can see how some might prefer UCLA to Berkeley in terms of campus environment, not really sure how anyone could prefer USC to Berkeley.
7) With the exception of those with Accounting degrees, the same positions available to Business grads are available to Econ grads plus additional positions are available to Econ grads that are not available to Business grads. Undergrad Business majors are not hired for the executive track positions open to MBA grads. As already mentioned, an undergrad Econ degree can cover a lot of the educational requirements for the CPA exam if a student includes Accounting classes in the degree program.
8) Your assessment of the Business Economics major is fairly accurate. A regular Econ major is a better degree. The issue is that many of the students wishing to major in Business in the UC system are from working class Asian backgrounds and are pushed into such majors-Business, Business Econ- by parents who mean well but don't fully understand the Business environment in the US or the path to executive track positions, particularly in Finance. Haas is overwhelmingly Asian at the undergraduate level, much more so than Berkeley overall. The same is true for the undergrad Business major at Wharton though not to the same extent. Econ is the most popular major at Harvard and most Ivy Leagues and does not impede Ivy League grads from being recruited for coveted Financial Analyst positions at Investment Banks or as Consultants at Consulting firms. These are two year positions and on completion serve as the experience required to gain admission to a top tier MBA program. Many of the same firms that recruit at Ivy Leagues recruit primarily at Berkeley and Stanford on the West Coast. They do not come to Berkeley to recruit Haas undergrads; all majors are welcome.
9) No one is admitted to Haas after a year at UCLA or even Berkeley. A UCLA student wishing to be admitted to Haas would have to apply as a junior transfer to Haas. Note that the Berkeley Economics Dept has had five Professors win the Nobel Prize in Economics in the past thirty years. UCLA Economics had its first Nobel Prize winner this past year.
10) Regardless of major, a student can be competitive for the same types of positions as an Econ major if he has taken the MBA prerequisite classes: Intermediate level Micro/Macro Theory; a year of Calculus; Financial Accounting; Calculus based Statistics.

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UCLA Business Economics major - Future plans (careers/graduate) / other comparison (Haas/Marshall) questions?
Today I was accepted into UCLA with a business economics major selected. I did a lot of reading on the school and this major today and heard some things that are making me skeptical about going there. I heard that the business-econ major is essentially an econ major and is recognized as such. So, I...

If your going to do a business economics degree, i would not advise pairing it with an accounting major unless you want to do accounting work, and in that case, major in accounting. If you want to do economics id advise minoring in either finance(if you want to work in finance) or statistics/mathematics(if you want to work in data analysis.) As it comes to the three schools you've mentioned, just go to the one you think you'll be happiest in geographically/culturally/socially because college is as much about knowledge as it is about self realization.

Economics is a great major for both an MBA and Law School. Econ majors score the second highest average LSAT score just under mathematics majors. When it comes to MBA's its more about what you do outside the realm of academics for which schools you get accepted to (such as internships, jobs held, associations affiliated with, greek societies apart of.)