<p>I am interested in persuing a major in business (more specifically finance). I know AEM is pretty much the business school at Cornell, but I was turned off by a few things I read on the website that maybe someone could clear up. First it said that freshman take Biology. I HATE biology, and I don't see what this has to do with business what so ever. I much rather take a math for physics course, anything but bio. So can anyone confirm or deny this, and tell me what kinds of classes they do take at AEM. Second, it seems like they have a big emphasis on agriculture, which I care nothing about. I'd like to work on Wallstreet, so I wouldn't mind taking 1 or 2 classes that have a little agriculture influence, but I don't want to be taking many of them, because I see no value. </p>
<p>I also read on the Cornell site that Hotel has an emphasis on business, but I don't know how much it would help as far as finance is concerned. Does anyone get investment banking jobs coming from the Hotel school? What kind of courses does Hotel offer? Can I spin it into more of a business/econ type cirriculum rather than hotel hospitality?</p>
<p>Maybe someone could also make a recommendation of where they think I fit more as well. By the way, which is harder to get into (I'm out of state)?</p>
<p>maybe majoring in econ in CAS would be best...harder to get into depends on your credentials. if you dont have a background in hospitality (waitress, country club dude, assistant in real estate office) hospitality is difficult. CAS has the lowest overall accept rate, but if you can write great essays about how econ helps unravel the confusing business world into theorems and equations and how you think thats cool, then CAS is best choice. Pick the college with the best match, not the highest accept rate. cornells multiple colleges and large size make its acceptance rates decievingly high, and uninformed english major applicants have been known to apply to engineering school because of it's high 30%s acceptance rate. naturally their 800s on SATII writing and literatire and 650 on SATII bio dont help them... you seem to be on the right track though</p>
<p>Bio is a college requirement. If you do not want to take it at Cornell, you can transfer it in from another school. AEM is a major and within it you have to pick a concentration from the following list: Business, Agribusiness, and Agriculture and Applied Economics. Here are the classes you will have to take for the business concentration: <a href="http://business.aem.cornell.edu/academics/index.htm%5B/url%5D">http://business.aem.cornell.edu/academics/index.htm</a> . You will see that there are no required agriculture courses. The reason that business is in CALS is because is started as agricultural economics a hundred years ago, but has evolved into what it is today. I would not be surprised if it breaks away into its own school within the next 50 years. </p>
<p>If you want to do finance, AEM is the place to be. Most of the students in AEM want to do some sort of finance. You can do finance from the Hotel School as well but you have to understand that there is a heavy focus on hospitality operations. I started out in the Hotel School because I liked hotels and I wanted to do finance, but I got annoyed at all the operations and cooking classes I had to take just to get to finance. This is why I transferred into AEM. Personally, I do not like biology either, but I would rather take two bio classes than a dozen hotel operation classes. Take a look at Hotel's requirements: <a href="http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/students/curriculum/core.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/students/curriculum/core.html</a>. Compare it with AEM and see which you like better. Just dont let two bio classes throw you from making the decision to go to AEM.</p>
<p>Thanks for the insight guys. I guess AEM is more of the place for me. I like a lot of their electives as far as business courses. I would dread taking those 2 bio courses however. </p>
<p>I can't believe Cornell is the only Ivy that has a business major, kind of odd.</p>
<p>Whoever said that hotel school involves just cooking an operations is not well informed. In fact - the Cornell hotel school brochure underlines in bold text that it is in no way a culinary school and those looking for a education in this area should look elsewhere. If you look at the core requirements closely - there is only ONE class involving culinary theory, and two directly involving operations. </p>
<p>The majority of your other core classes and elective classes will involve management skills designed to train you for senior positions at organizations.</p>
<p>I am well aware of the hotel school curriculum, as I started my Cornell career in the Hotel School. There are 5 core operations courses: Lodging, Food Service, Hospitality Quantitative Analysis, Service Operations, and Restaurant Management. In Restaurant Management you manage your own restaurant in the Hotel School for one night. The rest of the semester you are stuck cooking for your peers, so you are going to spend a good deal of time in the kitchen for this class. Then there is Culinary Theory which involves a weekly cooking lab.</p>
<p>Also, for the other core requirment, they are all hospitality based. So if you are not really into it, the classes can get annoying quickly. But if you do like is, this will probably be the best school for you. I personally did not care for the Hotel School, but it is still a fine place to study. I know many people that are very very happy there.</p>
<p>spn2200:
So did the hotel school feel like a hotel-focused business degree or a business-focused hotel degree to you? My point being that the former <em>might</em> better prepare you for an MBA whereas the latter would help you build a career in the tourism field faster.</p>
<p>My apologies spn2200, thank you for the explanation.</p>
<p>Don't hotel school students feel cheated? Paying big money to learn how to cook? Or is that a silght exaggeration, is cooking confined to only the two classes mentioned above? What if a student has absolutely no inclination towards cooking, will he or she fall behind in the program?</p>
<p>I was led to believe it was a management school that focused on creating industry leaders for the future. I would be incensed to attend a program that ended up being merely doing manual/laborious tasks for much of the time.</p>
<p>Leigh787:
The hotel school felt like a hotel focused business degree. If you are in the hotel school you can do operations, food service, real estate, finance depending on the concentation you choose. You can work on Wall Street. But you have to go through a lot of operations based courses. If someone likes finance but not so much the operations, it will get old and frustrating quickly. The school is a business school and will prepare you for an MBA like AEM will, but it will take you along a different path. AEM is more finance based, as most students in the program want to do some form of it. </p>
<p>Vaib
The hotel school is not a cooking school, but like I said above, you have to take these certain required courses in order to get to the other general business courses. If you do not want to do food service you still have to take these classes. It is possbible to keep up with everyone else just like you would in any other class that you do not enjoy. Neither AEM nor the Hotel School are better than one another, it is just a very different type of person that goes to each one.</p>