AMA- Boston College Freshman in CSOM

Colleges and Universities A-Z Boston College
1

<p>Hi everyone</p>

<p>I’m currently about halfway through my first semester and I think I’ve settled in enough to be able to answer most questions that may be best geared towards a freshman student here. </p>

<p>A little bit about me:</p>

<p>I’m a white male who is currently in CSOM and although I’m currently listed as having a concentration for a BoS in Econ, I might want to go into Finance or Consulting and therefore might shift in that direction. I’m currently participating in the Investment Club, the Club Ultimate Frisbee team, and intend to join the Student Admissions Program (which involves outreach and other admissions/information-related efforts). For the future, I’m working on getting into the CSOM Honors program. However, that’s easier said than done. </p>

<p>So that’s my little spiel. If anyone (parent or prospective student) has any questions that might help them draw some conclusions about student life or admissions. Please feel free to ask. I’ve loved whatever I could get from this site when I was still a prospective student and would like to try to give back what I can. </p>

<p>Feel free to also message me personally if there’s something you’d prefer to be kept more in a private setting (for whatever reason).</p>

2

<p>What were your stats that got you in BC CSOM. I am also interested in BC CSOM.</p>

3

<p>@Lacoste You can check my recent posts for my stats but here’s a basic rundown…</p>

<p>-2190 SAT superscore on 2 tries
-33 ACT on one try
-98.77 W GPA at time of applying (top 5% class rank… I’m from Long Island where we mostly do things out of 100 so sorry for a lack of a 4.0 scale)
-I applied regular decision
-subject tests: 770 Math II, 750 US History, 650 Bio E
-President of FBLA and another club which had the largest representation in the school
-Internship for two years at the Make A Wish Foundation
-Volunteer work over the Summer at a local fish hatchery
-attended two summer college courses following junior year in Environmental Science and Economics and got a 4.0 in both </p>

<p>Let me know if you want me to go more in depth or if you have any other questions</p>

4

<p>How would you recommend approaching the supplement? I’m writing prompt 5, which is about achieving magis in your life. Would you recommend mentioning BC in the essay or just focusing on showing another side of you that the admissions counselors can’t see from your app?</p>

5

<p>BC really emphasizes the"set the world aflame" approach and using scholarship and success for the benefit of your fellow man. They’re really strongly emphasized here and I’d recommend you try to incorporate that as much as possible in your essay. Fit is a big thing here and the demonstration of that fit is predominantly shown through essays. So, essentially, align yourself with BC’s demonstrated values by saying how they can influence you in your time here. If that doesn’t fit with the prompt, be as clever as you can in the way that you work “fit” into your essay.</p>

<p>Hope that helped. Let me know if you have any more questions.</p>

6

<p>Just thought I’d throw this back to the top now that some kids have been admitted for the class of 2019. Additionally, I’m bored over break with no better alternatives haha</p>

7

<p>“Fit” is something the adcoms need to see in your whole admissions application. The adcoms know too well that essays are often written with lots of external help.</p>

8

<p>Just out of curiousity, what are some of the courses you have taken this first semester? Have all of them been through the CSOM, or have you also taken classes in the CAS as well? I was accepted to the CSOM but plan to minor in physics and/or comp sci too. How manageable is that?</p>

9

<p>@GreenEggsHam‌ Well first of all, as someone in CSOM, you have the ability to have an A&S major as well, if you want. However, with that said, you definitely don’t have to. I have friends that are majoring in physics and one of my two roommates is a comp sci major (who also took a physics class as part of his requirement). From what I understand, and from what I’ve heard directly from them, physics and computer science are definitely a considerable workload, and is often the lower class among the five you’d take per semester. So, like you said, you can minor in physics and/or comp sci, but it will be a considerable amount of work from the start and I’d definitely recommend only one of them as a minor until you’re positive you can handle the workload (if you’d want to switch to double majoring). I would personally recommend holding off from those classes first semester (since you can afford to do that if you’d only minor in one of them) just to get used to the college experience. However, scheduling or class restrictions may forbid that, so I don’t want to give you a 100% definitive answer, since I don’t take classes in either. Taking physics or computer science right off the bat could prove to be the main catalyst for why you’d ‘hit the ground running’. Esp since you’re a management major (everyone in CSOM is), GPA can be big for internships and stuff down the line, and hard classes taken the very first semester can be demotivating and mean you’d fight an uphill battle for the next few semesters until it’s time for internships. So, I’d recommend you just acclimate a bit first, but it’s definitely doable. Just take it easy first and ride out the first semester transition.</p>

<p>Personally, the courses I took this semester were microeconomics, business law, computers in management, portico (the standard business ethics class that all CSOM freshmen must take), and theology. I came in with a pretty considerable amount of credits (because I got credit for 7 AP’s and two summer college courses prior to the start of this year), so classes like calculus, writing/lit seminar, and history are some of the things I’m lucky enough to avoid. It’s not to say that they’re bad, though, I just wanted to jump into classes related to my major as soon as possible. 3/5 of them satisfy the CSOM core while the other 2 satisfy the rather extensive liberal arts core, which is predominantly A&S. </p>

<p>In terms of difficulty, I got lucky. Really lucky. My workload was very manageable. For the most part, it’s something I chalk up to my luck of not having to take some of the more work-intensive classes like calc. I did take a couple classes, like law and theology, which had a decent number of upperclassmen, but it’s not totally unmanageable either. I finished with a 3.4 this semester which, although a bit low for my goal of a 3.6, wasn’t as bad as some other kids I know, whose GPAs were .3+ lower than they expected.</p>

<p>Hopefully this helped, lmk if anything else comes to mind.</p>

10

<p>Awesome! Thank you so much! I will definitely keep that in mind going forward. One more thing… What are the pros to being in the honors program at BC? Since I was not accepted into the honors program, I would like to possibly work my way into it. However, I don’t know much about the honors program and what it has to offer. Since you are interested in it, I would appreciate hearing what it is about the honors program that is appealing.</p>

11

<p>@GreenEggsHam‌ It was more just in reference to a leg-up with regard to the interview process. It also has some perks like a commonly smaller class size in a more conversational setting (so I’ve heard). Just a few little things like that</p>

<p>I’m not sure if you’re already in the program, but if not, it has incredibly high standards for post fall semester admits. You have to be in the top 5% of CSOM after the fall semester (with regard to GPA) and then undergo a fairly extensive interview process in which only approximately 3 people (among those in the top 5%) are actually admitted into the program. My lackluster first semester definitely hurt my chances, personally. But that’s as much as I know.</p>

12

What would it be like for a woman at CSOM. I know you are a male but how are women in the business school generally percieved. Also how is diversity at BC especially in the CSOM?

13

@nfhd11214367p0i There are definitely a lot of female exclusive opportunities and clubs that are there if you’re looking for a business school with a strong independent female presence. As in any business school, it’s a relatively male-dominated major, so most of your core classes will be I’d say about 70-30 in favor of guys. I don’t know the exact statistics for CSOM, but BC overall is I think 53-47 in favor of girls, just if that makes a difference. From an admissions standpoint, again, like at any business school, you’d probably have a little more of an edge because you’re “rarer” (so to speak). Any of my female friends that go here have never made an issue of the gender spread though. Some actually like it to be totally honest (good ratio for them haha).

As far as diversity as a whole here, we’re an upper level school, and therefore have a lot of international appeal, so we draw a decent number of people. Three of my good friends are from Morocco, Paris/London, and Argentina. I wouldn’t say were necessarily on the same level as the ivies, Stanford, MIT, etc., but we definitely have diversity. I’m a white male from Long Island so I didn’t come from a very diverse high school tbh (predominantly white, upper middle class neighborhood) so anything, when compared to my HS, is diverse. I’m not too well versed in opportunities available for URMs here (being that I’ve never had the need, obviously) but you should look up Boston College AHANA. If diversity is important to you, you’ll probably love it if you were to come here and give AHANA clubs a look.

Hope this helps!

14

re: post #11:

when comparing colleges, you should know that ALL undergrad B-schools have a heavy majority of male students. (Not as much as engineering programs, but still a high male-ratio.) While BC does not report its numbers for CSOM separately, I have no reason to believe that it is any different that other undergrad b-schools. That being said, dorms and every other activity are not limited by school, so you would be on a dorm floor with women from other BC colleges . And there are plenty of women in A&S, Education and Nursing, so BC has a good gender balance overall. (btw: since BC does not have Engineering like its neighbor BU…)

15

Thank you @appplicant and @bluebayou very informative! Do you know anything about Consulting Firm recruitment especiallty from MBB or other top tier firms?

16

@applicant Why did you choose CSOM? What appealed to you (besides their ranking)?

17

@nfhd11214367p0i I’m not too familiar yet with recruitment, especially in certain fields for post-undergrad careers. I, personally, have an internship with UBS through a family connection and a few of my friends have some low level introductory internships with smaller firms to which they say the BC name has definitely helped. But I think I’m going to leave that more to @bluebayou to answer so I don’t mislead you.

@dhman2014 The ranking was definitely a big part tbh. It’s actually kind of weird how it worked out for me. I was originally super into going to Cornell because of its environmntal economics program. I actually got a guaranteed transfer plan to go there after my freshman year if I held a 3.5 or better wherever I decided to go for my first year. It took about 2 months at BC to decide transferring was a no-go. The 3 schools I was deciding between in the end were BC CSOM, UVA, and Villanova Honors Program. In the end, I realized UVA might have had the best reputation, but BC’s proximity to Boston in addition to its campus and, and I can’t emphasize this enough, the fact that CSOM is a four year program, unlike UVA’s McIntire School, which you have to apply into. I also wasn’t a big fan of the Greek life being so dominant at UVA. I liked BC a lot for its lack of fraternities. When I visited, I also went into Boston via the T and it quickly has become my favorite city in the country. Being very pedestrian friendly and having a thriving financial district is an awesome thing to have available.

Hope this helped!

18

@applicant How is the job placement for BC grads? BC is a big name school in Boston, but BC students are probably competing with the top students from Harvard and MIT who want to stay in Boston; they might also be competing with top students from other highly-ranked business schools who are coming from other places to Boston.

Is the career center helpful at all?

19

@dhman2014 Like I said in my last post (#16), I’m not yet familiar enough with recruitment to be able to comment. I only just finished my freshman year and only a fraction of rising sophomores get internships moving forward. Usually that flares up after sophomore year as per my understanding of the general trend around job acquisitions. Additionally, like I had also mentioned, my internship was through a family connection so I have yet to even go to the career center, although I’ve heard good things. I have also heard of professors offering students a plethora of research opportunities and internships so long as they perform well in class and have a decent out-of-class relationship-- whether through office hours or otherwise.

I’ll try to do my best to answer the rest based on what I know, but this would be much better fielded by an upperclassman or recent alum.

As far as intercollegiate competition goes, yeah, it’s there, but more prevalently in sports, esp w Harvard, northeastern, and BU in hockey particularly. I personally, would consider us the #3 national university in the Boston area behind Harvard and MIT. Some would argue Tufts has that spot, but I’m biased haha. Assuming school reputation is directly correlated with the strength of one’s chances in the job market (which it is to an extent, aside from multiple other factors like GPA and extracurriculars), that means we have competition with only a fraction of the 1,700 and 1,000 students graduating that year from Harvard and MIT, respectively. Many of those 2,700 will be looking for jobs outside of Boston and another chunk of that number won’t even be in the same field as what you’re looking in. Harvard doesn’t even have a business school (not to take away from their reputation in Econ). So, long story short, competition might play a role if it’s you against a Harvard or MIT grad with regards to a specific job, but often, it’s not something to worry about. Our employer survey ranking in businessweek is #7, last time I checked. Plus we’re #4 overall nationally in undergrad business. Overall, with that in mind, BC grads do fine for themselves both in and out of Boston. Outside of CSOM, we have a number of grads working in top firms. I think I remember hearing somewhere that, in pure numbers, we had more A&S grads get jobs at Goldman Sachs than CSOM grads. Granted, A&S is larger and Goldman is only one firm, but it speaks to BCs overall ability to get their grads employed, regardless of which school you’re in.

Hope this helped. Let me know if you want me to elaborate further or if you have any other questions.