What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

     Do you want to climb a ladder to success? An economics major will help you get your foot on the first rung of the career ladder for fields like law, business, public policy, as well as graduate work in economics and related disciplines. And while you learn skills that will help you in your career, you also learn to see the world around you much more clearly. Don’t know which career is right for you? An economics major is a great way to keep your options open—to maximize your career choices. That’s one of the reasons why economics has become the most popular major at places like Harvard, Stanford and Princeton, and why so many more students are now exploring economics at Ohio State. We won’t kid you—an economics major is one of the most challenging majors on campus. It’s difficult, but highly respected by both employers and admissions boards. For good students willing to work hard to maximize career choices, economics can’t be beat.

Law School, Anyone?

     Virtually every major American law school now has at least one economist on its permanent staff. Why? It’s because economics has proven to be a remarkably powerful tool for understanding the impact of legal rules, as well as where those rules come from. Economics is all about choices, and law, after all, consists of rules about how those choices should be made. Law & Economics is a natural marriage, so natural that we now offer a special honors course on the subject: H271. But don’t take our word for it. The director of admissions at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall Law School says that economics is a great major since the “logical reasoning and analytical skills” it provides are critical to legal studies. The data back him up. Economics majors have earned a higher average score on the LSAT compared to students taking any of other common pre-law majors.

Why Not a Captain of Industry? How about a Master of the Universe?

     You can get an undergraduate major in economics without taking business courses in subjects like accounting, marketing, and business or personal finance. The Department of Economics is located in the College of Arts and Sciences, not in the College of Business. But if you want to study business, particularly if you want to pursue an MBA, economics is a great way to go. “The best people are more frequently taking economics as their major than they were a decade or so ago … It shows they have the intellectual fire in the belly to perform well in an MBA program.” Who said this? The director of admissions at the Yale School of Management. Whether you want a career in finance or industry, economics can give you the reasoning skills to get you started.