<p>Currently I am double majoring in finance and the classics at UF. Is this a good choice for a future at a top MBA program? If not, what undergraduate degrees would you recommend and why?</p>
<p>Engineering.</p>
<p>The best undergraduate degree is the one that will enable you to get an excellent job after college. After excelling at that job, you should be a good candidate for business school, regardless of your undergraduate major. </p>
<p>Your job experience and your recommendations from colleagues and superiors at work will be much more important in MBA admissions than your undergraduate major.</p>
<p>^Exactly. A job where you can accomplish substantial things, have people reporting to you and grow quickly in the 3-5 years you’ll have it.</p>
<p>Even at the top MBA schools, there aren’t that many people who had “people reporting to them” pre-business school (or in their first job post-MBA). The schools aren’t only admitting chest-pounding, self-proclaimed leaders or else they’re going to kill each other once they arrive on campus.</p>
<p>Yeah, I don’t know about the “have people report to you” bit, especially since many are engineers who will have more project management roles early in their management careers. I think what is more important is to have demonstrative leadership skills, and being a leader doesn’t necessarily mean being in charge. If you are the person people come to for solutions, or you can operate in a weak matrix easily, or you quickly become the ‘expert in your field’, or you have been given the reigns early on than these are good traits to embellish.</p>
<p>In addition to what gellino and Japher said, many - probably most - of the students at the top MBA schools are former IB and consulting analysts who, by definition, had nobody reporting to them.</p>
<p>I agree that very few had anyone one reporting to them but was surprised by my MBA class in how few former IB and consulting analysts there were (at least in comparison to expectation). So, I wouldn’t call it most students at top MBA schools are from IB and consulting; at least it was certainly under 50%.</p>
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<p>I have to disagree. While former IB and consulting analysts made up a good number of my MBA classmates, they were far from the majority of my class. Disproportionately represented, perhaps, but most, definitely not.</p>
<p>And it’s less today than when we were in B school. I get many, many applicants today who had considerable responsibility-- lots of folks reporting to them, controlled major budgets. In many industries lots of growth can be achieved in 5 years. We love those candidates.</p>
<p>I’m curiois gellino, what industry do you work in where you don’t see this?</p>
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<p>O RLY?</p>
<p>According to the HBS student profile webpage, 58% of the entering class listed consulting, IB, investment management, or VC/PE as their pre-MBA industry.</p>
<p>[Class</a> Profiles - MBA - Harvard Business School](<a href=“http://www.hbs.edu/mba/profiles/classprofile.html]Class”>Class Profile - MBA - Harvard Business School)</p>
<p>I’m not siding with anyone but you are going to have to come up with more than just HBS to speak for all Top MBA’s. I personally haven’t done the research.</p>
<p>Stanford - 47% from consulting or finance:</p>
<p>[Stanford</a> MBA Program](<a href=“http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/mba/admission/class_profile-p.html]Stanford”>http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/mba/admission/class_profile-p.html)</p>
<p>MIT Sloan: ostensibly ~40%. Actually, probably around 50% if you exclude the special “Leaders for Global Operations” dual-degree MBA/MS students, almost all of who are engineers (otherwise, they probably wouldn’t be admitted to the LGO program). </p>
<p>[Class</a> of 2010 Profile - MBA Program](<a href=“http://mitsloan.mit.edu/mba/experience/classof10profile.php]Class”>http://mitsloan.mit.edu/mba/experience/classof10profile.php)</p>
<p>Dartmouth Tuck: 42%</p>
<p>[Tuck</a> Recruiting Data and Statistics - Class Profile](<a href=“http://www.tuck.dartmouth.edu/recruiting/data_and_statistics/class_profile.html]Tuck”>http://www.tuck.dartmouth.edu/recruiting/data_and_statistics/class_profile.html)</p>
<p>So I concede that I was off by a few percentage points: it’s not the majority. But it’s pretty darn close.</p>
<p>Your undergraduate degree will not really reflect upon Business school acceptance. I would say a combination of management or engineering (such as management engineering, haha), but you also have economics, sociology, foreign language…</p>
<p>Stanford, ok maybe 47%, but the investment management includes hedge funds, private equity, and venture capital.</p>
<p>MIT:<br>
Not quite 40%, leading job functions and industry says Consulting or Finance, both roughly about 16-20%. However, finance is way too broad. That could involve anything.</p>
<p>Tuck:</p>
<h1>Consulting: 20%</h1>
<h1>Investment banking or private equity: 12%</h1>
<p>Around 30%, includes private equity.</p>
<p>Your numbers are slightly off, but you aren’t far off saying a lot of MBA students are from Consulting or IB.</p>
<p>I was looking at Harvard too Consulting 23% and IB 11%, I’m pretty sure you guys are arguing IB and Consulting strictly.</p>
<p>When I said IB, I meant to include the finance industry as a whole, including (especially) VCPE and investment/wealth management. </p>
<p>Regarding MIT Sloan, like I said, I wanted to exclude the special dual-degree LGO program which is almost exclusively comprised of former engineers. Sure, nominally speaking, they are MBA students, but their career paths are so idiosyncratic for MBA students that I think it’s fair to exclude them completely. They don’t participate in regular MBA summer internships, but rather have their own 6-month internship process as an integral part of the program, many of them are sponsored by their (engineering) employers which requires that they return to them upon graduation, and their ability to utilize the regular Sloan career services office is heavily restricted due to that LGO 6-month internship. Excluding the LGO students pushes the percentage of consulting + finance folks to about 45% of the remaining class.</p>
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<p>I was thinking only IB and consulting. I’m not saying it wasn’t a substantial number; just that I felt I was in the minority of my MBA classing having been in IB, which was surprising to me as many of my classmates had done much less conventional positions after UG. </p>
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<p>I work in investment management. When you say “we love those candidates” are you talking for MBA recruiting or IB recruiting? Having been in and interviewed for PE/IM since B-school, I personally value applicants that have previous corporate finance/equity research background as most helpful/suitable to what we are looking for.</p>
<p>I just found out from Businessweek that almost everyone from the top 5 undergrad business schools (Wharton, Haas, Sloan, Ross, Stern) pursue MBA after a certain work experience.</p>
<p>I don’t think there is one specific degree that provides a better opportunity. However, I will say that engineer majors tend to be popular with MBA schools. I have friends that were english, econ, history, accounting, engineering and even communications who have gotten to top 5 MBA programs. You should also know a 3.8 Communications major is not equivalent to a 3.8 Chemical Engineering Major in the eyes of MBA admissions. </p>
<p>At the end of the day, the GPA and major are simply part of the portrait. Work experience, GMAT, and personal story carry as much (if not more) than you undergraduate body of work.</p>
<p>I think the confusion is essentially over why IB is so underrepresented at top biz schools, as they probably get the most talented and hard-working kids out of college.</p>
<p>The answer is essentially: overcrowding. Half of Harvard goes off to banking, but that doesn’t mean that half of Harvard is gonna get into HBS.</p>
<p>Consulting sort of doesn’t have this problem because it is the one and only top feeder to top business programs. McKinsey has like its own program at HBS or something.</p>