I am a NJ resident and will most likely be choosing between these schools. I plan to be a business major (probably marketing) and was accepted to both of these colleges. I realize that I can relatively easily transfer to Rutgers business, so that isn’t really the issue. I’m just very unsure. Maybe someone can shed some light on their experiences at either of these schools. Also, cost isn’t really an issue for my case, but I’d like to hear about other topics. Internships? Friendly student body? MBA programs?
Internships = Baruch’s fairs are superb, over 200 employers and any big name in the city. They do have GPA requirements ; if you made it into Honors (or, later on, into Zicklin Honors) there are special internship offers for those groups, and the career center is quite active too.
Rutgers until 2 years ago hadn’t realized that its career center wasn’t quite that good, but it’s been working on improving it.
Friendly student body… Baruch is a commuter school. You’ll have to work hard at making friends. Clubs meet on Thursdays from 12:30 till 2 (or something like that) which limits how many you can join. If there is a “freshman seminar” (there should be some meeting on Fridays), join, regardless of how corny the topics covered sound: it’ll be a good opportunity to meet people and make friends. Try to find small-ish classes (again, it helps if you’re in Honors, but if you dig through the schedule, you’ll find enough that have 25-40 students rather than 100.) The gym and sports facilities are overcrowded and need to be reserved ahead of time. You can live in the dorm (pretty nice digs though) to increase the residential feel, but it will NOT be a residential campus’ experience.
Rutgers is more residential, with a traditional campus life, dorms, sports, etc, etc. The campus is dividing into two parts, which can be annoying, but overall it’s not bad at all, with green quads and what you’d expect.
Go and visit both to see if you “feel at home” at one or the other. They’re very different.
MBA: you’ll need to work for 2-5 years before you can apply to one. MBAs are for professionals who want to reach another level in their career.
Be aware that marketing majors have some of the lowest starting salaries, and in order to find a job you’d better plan to minor in statistics (in our days of big data, no one’s got any use for a marketing major that doesn’t have a strong foundation in statistics).