Roughly the same thing, depending on how the "major" system works.

In some schools/cases doing the major means doing all or most of the same core components of the degree that shares the same name as the major, without the extra requirements (time/credit hours, meaning electives to fill up the spaces to earn a degree).

So if I chose a BBA or BComm degree and did the (very complete) major in Finance I would have done about the same stuff (perhaps more, perhaps less, like I said depends on the system) as someone who did a BFin degree.

It is possible for two of these to exist within the same university! For example a BComm with Finance major, and a BFin. Here the difference would be that in the BComm you have to pick at least one major (Finance, Accounting, International Business, Marketing, Management etc) where the major's requirements are slightly less rigorous if you pick Finance. The BFin would also require at least one major (between "Capital Markets" or "Investment Management", and "Quantitative Finance") with stricter/marginally higher/harder requirements. All this works because in uni you attend a class with other people but you could all be doing different degrees (Commerce, Finance, Actuarial, Economics, Business Admin, Statistics, even Science or Engineering).

If the syllabus is more different then obviously BFin is more focused while BBA or BComm is broader. Understand that undergraduate Finance is on average not very demanding or in huge depth (as opposed to graduate Finance) which means it will at the very least resemble any Finance major within other degrees by quite a lot. Quantitative Finance and higher level Finance (like 3rd or 4th year stuff) is quite challenging, comparable to Actuarial and higher level Economics, or any Mathematical Economics/Mathematical Finance (which is probably even harder).

You should be fine if you can "explain" your major(s) when someone asks. The value of a degree is not always in knowledge (Business and Finance). It's more of "it has shown or alleged that I have this amount of competence, can devote this amount of commitment to achieve this amount of success in higher level studies, and have at least some notion of knowledge or intellect or industriousness". I have met people with so-called degrees that know next to nothing coming into work even where their "area of study" is concerned.

Well, first of all an MBA doesn't really always require a BA background, or even an Economics background. For example, Wharton (best business school in the world, or one of the best) has undergraduate degrees with a wide selection of majors (from sustainability to insurance and risk management to development to management and HR) but all of these are under a BS Economics degree. Surely if you studied a BS Economics majoring in (for example) insurance and risk management at Wharton, it would satisfy the academic requirements (GMAT aside) for an MBA there? Although you didn't exactly do a BA degree.

Second, a BBA majoring or specialising in Banking & Finance is just a BBA... so the argument is unnecessary.

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Added on October 10, 2012, 1:27 pmOk I see what you mean.

From what I can tell, the BFin is more focused on traditional aspects of Financial/Investment Management (i.e. Portfolios, different securities, Corporate Finance) while BBA in Banking & Finance has a few different things like banking operations & treasury mgmt, commercial banking.

This is consistent with the BA being more about BA, and Finance being about Financial Management.

However note the system is also odd because there are a lot of substitutes (equivalent courses) with different names. So they are more similar than they appear.

I would pick the Finance degree for more breadth if those bank management classes can be taken as electives. In your degree structure it's very split up, everything in their little credit hours, probably more flexibility? I don't know. British and Australian have fewer such units you can splice together.

This post has been edited by LightningFist: Oct 10 2012, 01:27 PM

I wouldn't know for sure. But I have a good idea of the overall picture. Unless you do Quantitative Finance (which essentially starts with Mathematics, and branches like Probability and Statistics), the rest of it, derivatives, corporate finance, banking, portfolio management, valuation, financial markets and instruments won't have Maths (on the assumption that they teach you formulas but do not require you to use Mathematical Finance - Maths - to derive complex models such as Black Scholes).

Those units labeled Quantitative Methods or whatever can be Maths for all I know... or they can be Stats which at that level is going to be far easier and basically not require Maths.

When I say Maths I mean university level or actual Maths (calculus: integrals, limits, real analysis and more advanced stuff) rather than simply plugging easy numbers into easy formulas like you do in Finance and low level Stats.