Undergraduate Business Schools
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Anonymous
Maybe so, but the best students are looking to become future CEOs' not CFO's LOL |
Anonymous
When you say Finance is a better major than Econ, let's distinguish between finance for dummies vs real quant finance. The former is what IB'ers, PE and VC do, anyone with decent high school arithmetic skills can understand financial statements and build Excel models which is why history majors from Ivy schools are capably suited. Real quant finance as practiced by the elite hedge funds requires graduate-level math, stats, and computer skills which is why they hire PhD's in quant fields. These jobs are well beyond the reach of business school kids, either undergrad or MBA, because they require elite skills, not Finance as taught in business schools. Anyone can learn NPV and derivative pricing concepts, but not everyone can apply sophisticated math models and algorithms to exploit data correlations to make money. |
Anonymous
An accountant can just as easily become a CEO by taking the MBA route. If anything, accounting undergrad allows both CEO and CFO paths open, while non-accounting generic business majors generally do not become CFO's at all, and need an MBA to become CEO anyways. |
Anonymous
NP. I spent 10 years in the IB world. There’s always these abstract ideals. There are certainly stars that have non-standard backgrounds. But the vast majority of interviews is about pattern recognition. The interviewer seeks people that fit into their models. In the tech world, there’s always stories about great engineers that didn’t have a STEM degree. But these are outliers rather than practice. Same with quant jobs. Take these types of recommendations with a grain of salt. |
Anonymous
When I say Finance undergraduate, I meant the former, not quantitative finance. Finance at top undergraduate business schools is far better than Economics, while getting the lower-level theoretical Economics courses are required anyways. And it is quantitatively heavy. Economics major, meanwhile, is generally the path that students that can't even get into the undergraduate business school of their universities take. Basically, pre-Finance kids that can't get into their undergraduate business school drop out into Economics. It's a major for relatively mediocre students in the vast majority of universities throughout the country, including UVA, UT-Austin, U-Michigan, who otherwise have great undergraduate business schools. Of course, at schools without undergrad business schools i.e. Harvard, those that want to go into business generally take Economics. But if there is an undergrad business school, then Finance major is generally better and filled with better students due to the filtering when applying for the undergrad business school. |
Anonymous
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You don’t necessarily have to major in business to get into the business world. It all depends on where you go to school.
Some target schools (like Harvard/Yale/Duke/Northwestern/etc.) don’t have undergraduate business schools, and the name on the diploma will open a lot of doors in and of itself, so major is slightly less important. Still, I’d recommend majoring in something like Econ, comp sci, math, etc. that is quantitative heavy — something that shows prospective employers that you are skilled with numbers/data. For target schools like UMich, UC-B, UVA, NYU, USC, etc. that DO have a business school, you’ll definitely want to get into the business college. The opportunities for internships, recruiting, networking, etc. will be much more than if you major in something like econ within the College of Liberal Arts. |
Anonymous
Let's presume that your assumptions are correct, that business-minded students at universities with undergrad business schools prefer that option over majoring in Economics in the liberal arts school because they perceive this route to be more directly applicable to their near term goal of getting a finance-related job after graduation. However, there are 2 counterarguments to your position, one of which you have alluded to: 1. Why is that the most elite colleges don't offer an undergrad business major (with the exception of Penn and Wharton, but that reveals more about Penn and its relative standing)? Harvard and Stanford and other Top 10 schools have graduate business schools and could easily extend that to an undergrad option, but why don't they? Because they don't feel that devoting 4 years to studying business is a worthwhile undergrad pursuit when one can specialize in that profession later by getting an MBA. Instead, they hope to cultivate critical thinking skills which will serve their student well no matter what career they eventually pursue. 2. You criticize Econ as being more theoretical than Finance which is more practical, but that is exactly the point if the goal is to develop reasoning skills. Econ at the best schools is heavily quantitative and the best preparation for graduate school Econ is math which aligns with the skill set that quant finance is seeking. Students would be far better served majoring in Econ and taking lots of advanced math courses while also taking a few business school courses at their university than majoring in business in undergrad. Study any liberal arts subject and then get your MBA at an M7 business school. Would you rather have an undergrad business degree from Wharton or an MBA from Wharton? |
Anonymous
| I'll take Wharton undergrad and skip the MBA, thanks. |
Anonymous
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I am a CPA with an MBA from a T15. Facts:
- accounting is one of the few professional fields where academic pedigree is not a huge deal. The Big Four recruits from hundreds of schools. Pass the exam, bring in business, and nobody gives a rat's ass where you went. - accounting is a good entry way to other fields, like corporate strategy, consulting, or M&A as a lot of deals have transaction implications deal makers often don't understand. - most CFOs are not CPAs. They usually have top 20 MBAs or get moved over for the job from operational roles. Or a big one is somebody who worked on Wall Street, then moved to a corporation. - you don't see a ton of people with CPAs and MBAs from better schools. But I see a lot of "John or Jane is a CPA, then earned an MBA at night from a local school to check a box". I think that is a function of people joining the field for job security vs. being go-getters. |
Anonymous
No, it's not. Poets and Quant is a little better for MBA, but their undergrad rankings are a mess. Just the simple fact that schools like Penn State, Arizona State, Maryland, and countless others are nowhere to be found, but trash schools like UT ARLINGTON and PROVIDENCE COLLEGE make the cut is absolutely absurd. It's an absolutely useless list. I am a b-school professor. |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
This is not a presumption, this is a generalized fact. Economics at Michigan, UVA, etc. often consists of students that couldn't get into the respective undergrad business schools. 1. Most elite undergraduate colleges do have undergrad business schools - just the Ivies sans UPenn/Cornell, Stanford, and U. Chicago don't have undergraduate business. MIT, UPenn, Cornell, Northwestern, CMU, Berkeley, Michigan, Washington University etc. do. The reasoning behind the Ivies/Stanford/Chicago is that the undergraduate education should be focused on 'liberal arts and humanities' and not something that is professional i.e. business. The students that attend these schools can afford to major in history for their undergrad and do an MBA later. The argument is that having a undergraduate business school is like having a undergraduate medical or law school. The reality, of course, is that many students can't afford another $150k MBA on top of their 'liberal arts' undergraduate education, and most students go to college to get jobs, which is why top technical universities like MIT and top public universities like Berkeley provide business schools. 2. Econ is not only theoretical, it is entirely inapplicable and furthermore rather useless as a field. Math of course is a very worthwhile major. The point I'm making isn't liberal arts vs. business, it is Econ vs. Finance for an undergraduate degree in university that has a undergraduate business school. In those universities - which includes Michigan, UVA and UT-Austin - Economics major is often filled to the brim with students that weren't able to get into the undergrad business school. Economics is basically a money-making major for the university for students that aren't cut out for STEM or undergrad Business school. Now imagine the type of kids that isn't even cut out to get into the undergraduate Business school. That's the type of kid that your student will be taking classes with as an Economics major. I'm sure Economics is somewhat rigorous at U. Chicago or Harvard. But those schools don't have a undergrad business school and are irrelevant to the discussion. Perhaps even at MIT Economics is rigorous, but certainly still among the easy majors offered. For the vast majority of universities out of Northwestern, Cornell, Michigan, UVA, UNC, UT-Austin, etc. etc., Economics is going to be a the major that any student enrolls in because they want to 'work in business' and graduates in. |
Anonymous
| I am the parent of a current student at Northwestern. They do not have an undergraduate business major. Their business school (Kellogg) is only open to graduate students — however, students interested in business can get a certificate from Kellogg and there are several business-related *courses* than an undergraduate can take there. But no business major. |
Anonymous
This is definitely very true. Also, the student quality will be better, in that the business-school kids will be more ambitious and go-getters because they had to go through the undergraduate business school filtering process. Some undergrad business schools have rather stringent entry requirements i.e. 3.7 GPA. Economics generally takes in any kid. That filtering has an obvious effect on the student population. It's why any state flagship public university, regardless of ranking, will have better students on average than that state's average public-high school student. Because those public high school students had to go through some filtering process to get into the flagship public university. |
Anonymous
Agree with this. My employers prefer business grads and not MBA's. The business grads are ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work. |