Lake Forest College in Illinois is located within a reasonable drive from Northwestern University. Located in a very wealthy suburb of Chicago. Lots of high ranking business executives live in Lake Forest, Illinois.
Rhodes College in Memphis, Tenn. should be considered.
OP - S attends Wake Forest and is in the B School (Junior yr). A few thoughts:
Overall excellent school (academically, socially, quaity of life, etc. )
Acts like an LAC - small classes, residential focus (required to live on campus for 3 yrs), UG focus, intimate professor / student dynamic, etc.
First two yrs are very much LAC oriented as they have a divisional / core requirement that takes two yrs to complete. Was instrumental in uncovering a politics / world affairs interest in S which has led to a minor in that field.
However, once he knocked out the core, the b school reqs will take virtually all of his final two yrs. Next semester, as an example, is Managerial Accounting, Quant oriented type finance, Intermediate Finance, Marketing, and some IT course.
Not sure how the other majors work but I’m thinking it’s very well rounded for two yrs and then very focused for two yrs. Most kids he knows have a major / minor or double major. WIthout that, it would be easier to continue sampling topics of interest.
If you are looking at business schools within colleges, maybe you would also be interested in small private schools that focus on undergrad business, like Babson or Bentley near Boston.
Almost by definition, a LAC excludes a professional major like biz. That being said,
Economics is a great traditional ‘liberal arts’ major that will prep one for business well. However,
Econ does not do Accounting and other traditional business disciplines, so if one desires a CPA, then only a b-school will do.
Finally, while many employers may recruit at LACs, they tend to not be looking for traditional business types, so if your kid’s goal is Goldman Sachs or Wall Street or Big Consulting, a b-school is the way to go.
Sorry, I should have been more clear: sure, The Street is readily available for students at Williams, Amherst, Pomona and other highly-rated LAC’s, but students attending LAC’s much farther down the food chain will be hard pressed to get an interview much less a callback from such firms.
I wonder about majoring in business as an undergrad at all?
That said, of the Wall Streeters I know (using that as a stand-in for business, I realize that is not accurate), many majored in math or a language or something else, not Econ.
In my own experience hiring for a big Wall Street IB and observing what S is going through, if big Wall Street or Big Consulting is the goal, a lesser b-school may be a tougher road than a quant based major in engineering, math, physics, data science, or comp sci in addition to econ. There are an overabundance of business majors, and if you are not going to Wharton (or near equivalent) or if you are not at the very top of your class or you/your parents “don’t know someone”, your chances are mighty slim. If the goal is a “main street” job, then a “practical” business degree is going to be of more use IMO.
The conventional wisdom used to be to do business as a grad degree but undergrad business is now the most popular undergrad major. Especially in this day and age of high tuitions and debt, this more vocational route is clearly attractive to many.
I know Ivy League grads who majored in English and went into “Big Consulting” and majored in math and went to Wall Street. Business used to like the LAC philosophy of first becoming an educated person in the generalist sense, then getting an MBA, but of course a lot of people used to rely on class connections too. And college has become more vocational all around.
For certainty about getting a job in the shorter term, I think finding an undergrad business program is a great idea, but it may not result in the kind of higher level management or business career that an MBA would bring.
I am not familiar with admissions probabilities at MBA programs coming out of an undergrad business degree. Does anyone else know?
Not everyone has the extra $220k that a prestigious MBA costs right now. Moreover, admission to Top 7 grad MBA schools is very heavily dependent upon undergrad prestige and related jobs, so from a LAC ranked 50-150, the major won’t help or hurt for admission, though it may help get a,job with certain employers. Poets and Quants is a good source for undergrad business info
Lot of paths will get you there. At the end of the day, there are tons of great business analyst entry level jobs that will set a strong foundation and aide the MBA route (which most of the high end jobs ultimately require for progression). Many of these jobs seek a UG Business background in accounting, finance, and analytics (very important today to at least take classes in big data / analytics). They also put a premium on business coding skills like Python, SQL, etc., as those are primary ways to collect and create data visualization . Of course they are interested in STEM backgrounds. UG Business (at least at some of the top programs) are getting more quant based as the employers are telling the schools what they need in new hires and the schools are creating a more job ready candidate.
Wall St and Consulting is a different animal. Recruit from a smaller pool. More quant focused. Top of your class. Connections. Very difficult to land one of those gigs. Lots of math, econ, engineering (probably moreso than buisness - and then a few yrs in they want you to get your MBA). But these careers take a ton of finance majors too.
Just be aware if the goal is Wall St, MBB (or even T2 - T3), FLDP at F100, it’s fiercely competitive. Top kids from top schools and Tippy Top kids from other schools.
The good news is there are plenty of great jobs for the rest of them. UG Business serves this space quite well (and has a place at the other table).
This is an interesting thread with some great input. I just googled Lehigh Wall Street to see if my alma mater still placed many grads on the Street, and yes, they do. They have a Wall Street Alliance group made up of alumni who sponsor events such as educational career days and many networking events. Although Lehigh is not a LAC, they do have a College of Arts and Sciences and one can take classes there while being enrolled in the Biz School.
Thanks for the many helpful comments and school suggestions!
We’re in the Upper Midwest but any location is open. He’s been admitted to:
Cornell College (IA)
Luther
Ripon
Beloit
Waiting to hear on:
Puget Sound
Eckerd
Does anyone have insights on the business program at any of these six schools?
Thanks for the tip. I looked up the site and was surprised to see so few LACs have the AACSB accreditation (including the six schools my son has applied to). Anyone know why that is? Is that concerning? LACs that are on the list include:
^ Babson is similar to Bentley in they are heavily focused on UG Business. I know Bentley has some “liberal arts” tracks but they are typically paired with a business major. S looked at them a few years back and decided it was too business focused. Kind of place where if you want to switch majors (out of business), you really need to switch schools. That said, they have very interesting majors (far more delineated than a typical UG B school - i.e. Finance has Finance, Corporate Fin & Accounting, Financial Economics and they focus on different things). Something like 30 business majors vs. the typical 5 or 6.
You have already had the answer to this many times over in this thread. For the traditionalists among us, the phrase “LAC business major” is an oxymoron, and the fact that such imaginary beasts exist is a sign of a terrible degradation in the world. My heart tells me that there shouldn’t be any such things, even as my head acknowledges that there are a number of them and doubtless will be more.
As for the AASCB accreditation: It depends how much liberal arts you want in your liberal arts college. I suspect many LACs who are offering business majors as a nod to what the public wants are not willing to devote the resources they would need to devote – nor to cut back traditional areas they would have to cut back to reallocate resources – to meet the accreditation standards. And they may not be willing to offer as intense a business curriculum, vs. giving a business spin to traditional liberal arts areas as math, humanities, and social sciences. They may think that only a small portion of their recruitment target market might care about the accreditation issue, and that the people who do care are likely to opt for a more focused business school in the end. All of which is perfectly rational.
From the standpoint of liberal arts education, “business” isn’t really an appropriate major. It’s a set of specialized applications of what you learn studying other subjects – psychology, economics, anthropology, math, philosophy, history. The danger in a business curriculum is that you don’t go deep enough into any of those disciplines to start to understand it, so you wind up with broad but superficial knowledge and without the tools to do real critical thinking. Which business certainly requires.
I am consistently surprised that some people think majoring in any subject will necessarily impart critical thinking skills. There are plenty of liberal arts majors who lack them, and a fair amount of evidence that colleges do not improve such skills in a substantial portion of their students. So whatever the major, the student should be sure to learn to write clearly, be comfortable quantitatively, and think clearly. That can be accomplished by motivated students in any field.