What’s up College Confidential.
Notice: very general, open-ended question.
How well does Cornell’s ILR program prepare aspiring entrepreneurs?
I’ve read extensively about the program and student’s satisfaction with the broad range of classes that they can take. I’ve also read that many graduates go on to work in many diverse fields. AEM seems to have an advantage in the sense that it has a stronger focus on business skills and even a double major option available for its students.
Again, I know it really depends on the field the entrepreneur wishes to enter, but which school, AEM or ILR, would help better prepare an entrepreneur in aggressively expanding a business?
AEM or SHA is where you’ll find more business/entrepreneurship oriented stuff. ILR is very good prep for law school, consulting, and HR related stuff. I’d suggest going to ilr.cornell.edu, dyson.cornell.edu, or sha.cornell.edu to look a postgraduate placement and undergrad curriculum and curriculum objectives to see what fits your needs the most.
@Endeeare I am an ILR student. I would say that access to entrepreneurship resources is very open to any major as there is a vibrant entrepreneurship community for anyone who wants to be a part of it - across all schools. The Blackstone Group recently made a large donation to Cornell to support E-Hub, which will provide mentorship and resources for aspiring startups. However, if you are looking for specific coursework in entrepreneurship, I would echo @IndoorCloud25 and recommend you apply to AEM (a more quantitative major) or Hotel (a niche business school). There’s actually an entrepreneurship center in the hotel school With that said, I am using ILR to give me a differentiating factor in terms of consulting and management.
Thank you for the connection, I’ll email them if I have any questions!
Aside from the strong consulting skills that you’re probably developing, would you say ILR preps you to make good business and management decisions? Also, how flexible is the ILR curriculum, in terms of concentrations?
I was originally attracted to Cornell because of AEM and its location in the CALS (interested in agriculture, sustainability), and the strong quantitative business skills it teaches, but it’s amazingly selective and I don’t think my math credits (currently in precalc but am planning to take a calc class during the upcoming summer; am taking AP Stats, though) would help me much in this pool. But, on the other hand, I also like ILR because I like the mix of business and government/law (very interested in this as well). I heard about the availability of minoring in the CALS school, so I am considering applying to ILR and minoring in some type of sustainability or agriculture study.
About the hotel school: I haven’t considered the Hotel School at all, as I really have no current interest in the hospitality business.
In short, the AEM school is pretty ideal for my interest, but it is extremely selective, and the ILR has this weird, distinct allure that I like.