<p>Long story short: I've been looking seriously at Indiana University Bloomington. I know I want to major in Art History and minor in both Business and Fine Art. ...But then there's Penn, a school I've always loved the idea of attending.
My questions:
Will I be significantly better off as an Art History major at Penn than at IUB? I know that Gourman ranks it higher, but I don't really know how big the difference in quality really is.
Can anyone tell me what the requirements are for a Business minor at Penn? I can't seem to find any specifics on their website.
Likewise, can anybody tell me what the requirements are for a Fine Arts minor?</p>
<p>The business component of your aspirations is going to be a bit different at Penn than at most schools. Penn doesn’t offer a business minor, nor a business administration degree; they offer a B.S. in Economics (which is admittedly similar) through Wharton, which is separate from Penn College (CAS), like Engineering (SEAS) or Nursing. If you want a business degree, you have to get one from Wharton (which is, to brag for a moment, the most competitive and prestigious undergraduate business school in the world).</p>
<p>You pick which school you want to be accepted to when applying to Penn; obviously you’d be choosing between CAS and Wharton. Wharton is more competitive (1/3 the ED rate, 1/2 the RD rate) than the other schools in Penn (and they look for a different type of applicant), but if you get in, you can just choose to get a second degree or a minor in Art History from CAS. However if you apply and are accepted to CAS and want a second degree from Wharton, you have to apply for a highly competitive internal transfer. Since the curricula of CAS and Wharton are almost completely different there is no double major/minor option, unfortunately. You could however use electives/extra spaces in your schedule to take Wharton classes, though you would not get a Wharton degree/major/minor that way.</p>
<p>So essentially if you want business to be part of your education at Penn, you have to be in Wharton–but I’d like to caution that Wharton is (in my opinion) just as much about a life path/career as it is about learning, and the students in it are correspondingly more competitively pre-professional and quantitatively-oriented than most other schools in America. If that doesn’t appeal to you or suit your tastes, you may prefer to major in Art History and then take Wharton courses as your schedule permits.</p>
<p>You don’t have to major in business to go into a business career. In fact, business schools take students form every major imaginable, and while there are many Econ/“Business” majors going to top B-Schools (HBS, Tuck, Booth, Wharton, SBS, etc.), there are plenty of people there that majored in something unrelated. In fact, B-Schools like classes of diverse educational backgrounds because it enhances the learning and because they’ll have a graduating class going into many different fields of business, not just iBanking. </p>
<p>Side note: One of my biggest pet peeves is people that major/minor in “Business” or “Business Administration”. You don’t need to spend tens of thousands of dollars to earn a degree in business when people can learn the exact same stuff you’re learning while on the job. That’s also why most top-institutions don’t have “business” majors… it’s such BS. You should major/minor in Econ, that’s not a waste of time.</p>