When Canuckkid 1 entered the program, the school admitted 200 out of just under 3000 (I don’t remember the exact numbers) applicants. At the time of Canuckkid 2’s graduation, the school was accepting 300 out of 4847 that applied. Today, it is 6341 for 475 places. The number of admits has significantly increased, but the admissions rate is still hovering around 6-7%, give or take. No yield management. No hooks.
The other elephant in the room is grading. An average GPA of 3.47, as in Wisconsin, is unheard of. For this program, 50% is a pass, but an overall average of 60% is required to graduate, 65% is needed for honours, and 80% for first class (honours). For my kids, one scored 75% and the other, 73%. Converted into GPA, it would be 3.28 and 3.1 respectively. YMMA
In the Rotman program, grade conversion into a GPA format is much clearer. A D grade (1.0) is a pass, but an overall GPA of 2.0 is needed to graduate. (With 3.2, one graduates with distinction, and 3.5, high distinction).
I digress, but the point is that I have a hard time believing these students are somehow not educated, or that they can not match the English/sociology majors in candle power…
I am not sure people fully appreciate the math involved in Finance/accounting. Sure I get that accounting 101 and finance 101 does teach you some simple math but as you delve deeper into the major, it gets more difficult. Is calc 101 all that difficult? Does that mean that an engineering degree is easy? of course not.
One only needs to calculate the cost of a call option or a put option to understand the math involved. It is not easy. Anyone who says otherwise is a gifted person indeed.
My son is a freshman accounting major, and he has found the writing very different (not lesser, just different) than what he was used to at his NYC prep school. His high school was absolutely relentless (ruthless?) with teaching writing skills - starting in the summer BEFORE freshman year. I loved how they taught writing and believe he was very well served, indeed. However, his high school generally required that all papers be done in MLA format, and in his first semester of freshman year in college he had a paper due in APA, which he was not familiar with. Thankfully, in high school he learned the value of visiting the writing center! The major differences that he has noticed are brevity and citations. He was required to write at least one paper each year of high school between 30 and 50 pages with everything cited to the nth degree, as well as medium-length papers on a very regular basis. in colleges business classes, some papers are assigned as absolutely no more than 3 pages and are expected to be done based on assigned data sets and nothing else, so no citations required. This has been harder for him to deal with than we expected, but he is learning discipline. He will also take history, literature and other core classes where he will write the big papers he is used to. I am pleased that he is going to be a well-rounded writer.
Mass- most business students do not advance to the level in their finance courses where the difficulty comes into play. They learn how to do a basic NPV calculation (which a smart 8th grader could do), they do problem sets where they have to plug numbers into an algorithm.
I interview new grads for a living. The typical business student (undergrad) majors in marketing, “international business”, organizational behavior, etc. These courses are heavy on content (which becomes obsolete pretty quickly) and light on analytics. The international business students are rarely fluent in a strategic language (which would make them very marketable) and the marketing students don’t push themselves to take statistics or a big data sequence which would actually make them incredibly marketable.
I don’t need to hire marketing students who don’t understand that the entire field has migrated to data science. And I don’t need to hire business students who have only taken the two semester required finance sequence. I can teach a history major or poli sci major with good quant skills all the finance they need in one of our proprietary training programs. And get someone who can write and do research as a bonus.
Grad school is the way to go for business. These kids are 18 and have no experience to bring to a “business” class. In my experience, parents who send their kids to undergrad for business are just focused on them getting a job. Our nephew chose that path (or should I say his father chose it) and is now in a training program for big consulting firm. Our S19 looks at his cousin and thinks “he sits at a desk all day and makes reports with pie charts”. He wants none of it. Doesn’t matter to him that his cousin is making good money and living in a nice place. He’s pretty sure he can make that happen without being a business major.
IMO, college is a time to learn all kids of things, broaden your horizons, maybe find a passion. Read Tolstoy. Learn about politics around the world. Get excited about astronomy. Write that short story. So many of these kids have been nose to the grindstone in high school and don’t have room in their AP schedules to take something like Art History or Psychology. Of course, kids also need to figure out how they are going to support themselves so they should look for internships that interest them. Make connections with people and keep them.
Accounting and writing memos can wait for grad school if that proves to be an interest later on.
Some business majors do that. Mine is taking Art History this semester and will skew his electives all toward history-related things because he loves history. Not everyone wants to go right to graduate school or can even afford that. There are different paths to becoming educated and having a good life. My D did college and graduate school in the non-business field of her passion. Now that she is out of school and engaged to be married, she sees real value in going for the job and lifestyle in order to build a family life. She didn’t do it, but understands and respects those who did.
Nothing wrong to go to grad school to study business, but business grad education is costly (on top of college education) because need-based or merit-based aids and scholarship is rare; grad education at the master level is often cash cow to business school. This cash infusion allows for doctoral education not relying on grants.
“Accounting … can wait for grad school.”
Master in accounting is often 1 year unlike MBA tends to be 2 years. Internship experience in accounting can be an logistic issue if one studies accounting only in grad school.
Seems like the Canadian business programs you are using for reference are more like the few US business programs that have highly selective admissions (either at highly selective universities, or the major is significantly more selective than the university), not like the large number of US business programs where both the major and university are not that selective and the business curriculum is taught at a lower level.
Nice generalizations. Why is it that some people love to wax poetic about Tolstoy or astronomy but seem to look down on the kid who is truly interested in accounting or business? Believe it or not, there are kids – even SMART kids – who are simply interested in the field. We should be happy that such kids exist, right? The world needs smart accountants who love their work and are energized by it.
Surprise, surprise – my D is an accountant who also took Art History, music, European history, and religion as an undergrad. She just happened to fall in love with Financial Accounting and Audit. I certainly did not “send her to undergrad for business,” although I am happy that she now has a job she loves that also pays her very well. I, on the other hand, majored in Chemistry and English and often wish I had chosen differently!
I hear about college graduates (and know a few personally) who had to come back and live in their parents’ basement. Occasionally on this site I hear parents talking about having to continue economic assistance to their kids as they “launch”.
Have never heard a story about any of the above from anyone whose kid passed the CPA exam.
For those pursuing the MBA, the ideal/common path is to graduate undergrad in whatever major one happens to have, work a few years, and then apply to an MBA program.
It is actually NOT considered optimal in most cases for students to go for their MBAs straight out of school and most MBA programs…especially the elite ones will not allow it unless someone has unusually exceptional work experience and/or exceedingly topflight academic record. And even with the latter, many employers would look upon an MBA with little/no work experience in between undergrad and MBA with some dubiousness.
If one does it right, the individual concerned would have saved up enough money to attend or in some cases, have the employer defray part or all of the costs for a part-time or sometimes even a full-time MBA program*.
This is one perk given to some organizational business consultant associates who make a reasonably decent impression on their supervisors after doing their 2 year stint. An in-law who wasn't an undergrad business major managed to get her top 3 MBA program completely paid for by a household name firm(Think McKinsey or BCG) after her 2 year stint.
All I can say is thank goodness most people who are actually in business do not share this view. Undergrad business is a solid and excellent choice for someone looking to work in corporate. Lots of opportunity to develop analytical skills, communication skills, finance, accounting, etc - many of which you would not get outside the business major. I get that there are some kids that squeak thru underprepared, or that the top programs may be more rigorous than others, but all in all it’s a good path to enter the business world. I’m sure that this same person hates that top salespeople make so much money. Just my 2 cents and no need to agree.
Thanks Scout59! My son is one of those kids who really likes accounting and finance (so far). He likes numbers, he likes to see where things fit. I mean, I’m sure he would prefer to have been a golf pro or a kept man, but if he has to actually work for a living, it will be something involving money and he will be happy as peanut butter in chocolate!
LOL. And even if he achieves those other aspirations, finance and accounting skills will be useful to manage his earnings, especially given the relatively short duration of those types of careers.
Every single member of my family, including my wife’s side of the family, all studied business and got their MBA’s.
Really successful people. The one person in our family that did not study business, chose to study business at an engineering pressure cooker, graduated and had a complete melt down as an engineer in the corporate world.
In my case, I learned a lot of things in business school that helped me in my career that I didn’t; learn in a book. Probably the most helpful thing I learned was presentation skills.
I have 2 sons, one who wants to study business ( innovation and entrepreneurship) and then maybe law or MBA, and the other engineering. It will be interesting to me to watch their careers.
It seems the students and parents of students who are undergrad business majors are very happy with their choices, and its the other parents whose kids are not business majors who are critical. Jealous? Live your own lives, and don’t worry about our kids who are business majors. Apparently we are all happy.
