Picking a majorrr

[tchaikno6]

Hey AN,

So i'm probably leaning towards doing commerce at melbourne but was really undecided between whether i wanna do a major in actuarial studies or a double major in economics and finance. I was wondering if anyone can shed some light on the key difference and like the different job prospects. I enjoy maths but i'm not sure if i'll find actuarial really hard or like enjoy it?
Also does anyone know roughly how many people do each major within commerce just out of curiosity??

Thanks heaps

[extremeftw]

 Well I do economics at Monash and the two universities have very similar units so I can answer questions you have on the economics front if it helps. Actuarial is very maths intensive; I would not recommend doing it if you don't consider yourself quite competent at maths. The maths in economics is mostly just basic calc.

The size of the actuarial cohort would be much smaller than finance. Economics would be smaller than finance most likely.

[tchaikno6]

Oh so do they like stream people based on how they did in spesh and methods? i got 43 spesh and 48 methods so that should be like put me in good stead yeh?

[spectroscopy]

Id say start off doing actuarial and if you like it keep it but if it gets too hard/you fail something then you can switch out to economics/finance double major. I know alot of kids who did this, as there are a few actuarial subjects that are just really hard and a bunch of kids fail and say "fuck it im switching to eco/finance". I dare say this is one of the most common pathways for new actuarial students.

best of luck

[accoleg]

How "mathsy" are economics based subjects? I think I'm fairly weird when it comes to maths, I absolutely loved topics in further maths (i.e. statistics and financial maths), yet found myself absolutely hating certain methods topics (i.e. trig)

[extremeftw]

How "mathsy" are economics based subjects? I think I'm fairly weird when it comes to maths, I absolutely loved topics in further maths (i.e. statistics and financial maths), yet found myself absolutely hating certain methods topics (i.e. trig)

 Mostly algebra, graphical analysis, and basic calculus (mostly just taking simple derivatives). Maybe some things like Lagrangian multipliers for 2nd/3rd year (don't know when it's covered at Melbourne) microeconomics. You'll probably also do some stats units at some point. So essentially the maths is pretty applied and mostly intuitive (assuming you don't go out of your way to pick the highly mathematical units). If you did OK in methods you would be more than fine.