What should I major/minor in for the following career?

[Pat]

Depending on the school, you can major or minor in just about anything and pursue a career in marketing. Some schools allow you to major in business from the start, and some will require you to apply to the undergraduate business program during your time in college. In either case, a combination of business, marketing, and communications or psychology would be great. Everything else you listed is unnecessary and here's why.

Statistics as a subject is annoying to anybody who doesn't love it. If you want to study business and marketing, you will need to take a statistics class at some point. That course will be enough to cover anything statistical analysis you will need in a marketing career. It will be even less relevant if you want to go into advertising.

Market research (I didn't even know this was a degree) can easily be covered in most topical business or marketing classes. It's not worth a separate major.

Sociology and social sciences are both fine humanities majors, and if you can afford to pick up another major/minor then these won't hurt. However, these won't necessarily help you in a marketing career either. Take a class or two for interest, but you don't need a degree with these.

On a completely unrelated note, advertising by definition doesn't have firms; they're called agencies. Firms require a different type of organization structure that doesn't work very well with the advertising industry.

To sum up, I think you should aim to go with business and marketing (regardless of whether these two are separate majors at your school). If you can, pick up a few more classes along the way in some relevant communications or psychology topics. The most important thing about this career path is that you have to be a people-person and be willing to expand your network, be proactive, and present yourself confidently and articulately in all situations.

This career path is more about who you know and who knows you and less about what you've done, although the latter is still important. Don't just take classes in college; go for internships, side projects, part-time relevant experience, etc.

Good luck.