Advanced Studies combinations? (1 Viewer)

[quickoats]

Since adding Advanced Studies to a degree allows you to complete a second major from any faculty in the Shared Pool, what's the difference between completing a degree with the same majors, but a different name?

I am interested in the Business Analytics, Econometrics, Financial Maths and Statistics, and Data Science majors, but am unsure about whether I should apply for a B Com/AdvSt, B Ec/AdvSt, B Sc/AdvSt, or B A/AdvSt degree, since I can complete various combinations of the above fields in any of the degrees. What are the advantages/disadvantages to each, or are they pretty much just the same?

Any advice is much appreciated!

 

[sida1049]

The difference isn't very large. The majors are more important than the degree name. For example, if you want to, you can do an honours in economics from B. Economics, B. Commerce or even B. Arts.

That said, the main factor you should consider is the compulsory units for each degree. For example, while each degree requires 12 credit points of Open Learning Environment units (basically small electives), B. Commerce on top of that requires students to do 24cp of "professional development" units like 'Accounting, Business and Society'. I'm not sure about you, but this sounds like a big disadvantage to me, as with B. Arts/AdvSt or B. Sci/AdvSt I could have instead used those 24cp on a major (a major requires 48cp!) instead, and any leftovers I could reserve for interesting electives that might interest me (e.g. philosophy, comp sci, whatever you like).

For your interests, I would personally recommend B. Sci/AdvSt, simply because that science requires you to take 12cp of junior maths, which is necessary for a Financial Mathematics and Statistics major anyway, so you have least amount of compulsory units and maximum choice.

To comment on your majors:

• I personally think that a Financial Mathematics and Statistics major renders your econometrics major obsolete, especially if you decide to compute your financial maths/stats major with a good amount of statistics units. I also personally find statistics to be more interesting and mathematically rigorous than econometrics units, so there's that as well.
• A data science major will probably overlap with a financial maths/stats units to some degree. A data science + financial maths/stats major is almost like a stats major with minors in maths and comp sci. I personally recommend thinking about majoring/minoring in comp sci if you haven't already (you can actually take some comp sci units as a part of your data science major).
• I might be a bit biased here, but business analytics is easily dwarfed by any of the three other majors. The "analytics" part of business analytics is dumbed-down stats, and a student good enough to do real stats is definitely good enough to pick up the "business" side of things on their own.

Hope this helps.