<p>I'm somewhat certain that I want to do something business-related (a managerial position). My parents have always been pushing for Harvard, Stanford, MIT, etc. but none of them seem to have a business undergraduate major, no matter how prestigious their graduate schools may be. Under these circumstances, what would be my best bet for declaration of concentrations and stuff? Should I still apply to these schools (my parents are really in to the prestige factor)? Thanks in advance</p>
<p>MIT has a great B program!!</p>
<p>Majoring in Economics at Harvard, Princeton, Stanford or Yale is just as effective as majoring in Business at any business school, including Wharton, Ross, Sloan (MIT does indeed have an undergraduate Business program), or any other undegraduate Business program.</p>
<p>What do you mean by "effective"? How are you measuring effectiveness--median salaries, job opportunities, level of expertise?</p>
<p>I mean job opportunities.</p>
<p>I myself am not too clear on what exactly constitutes an economics major as opposed to a business major--can someone please clarify?</p>
<p>An economics major would study economics in-depth. A business major would study a broader base of subjects, including accounting, economics, finance, management, etc.</p>
<p>If you want an elite business job (consulting or finance) undergrad business school isn't an advantage. Majoring in business gets you these jobs at the top 2-3 undergrad business schools, but the best access comes from majoring in econ at the top schools. If I had to rank colleges for students wanting elite business jobs I would rank them as follows.</p>
<p>1) Wharton, MIT (business)/ Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT (econ major)</p>
<p>2) Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, Duke, Caltech (econ major)/ NYU (business)</p>
<p>2.5) Williams, Brown, Northwestern, Cornell, Amherst (econ)/ Michigan, Cal (business)</p>
<p>Its an absolute myth that one needs to go to business undergrad to get a top business job.</p>
<p>Northwestern should get bumped up, and Penn CAS dropped. Northwestern Econ is better than that, and with the certificate could be the best. Penn CAS is below Cornell, where AEM helps too.</p>
<p>Econ dept rank isn't a factor (that's why Dartmouth and Williams do so well), its the overall school. Northwestern does well with consulting, but not as well in finance. On the other hand Penn is on par with NU in consulting but beats it in finance access.</p>
<p>slipper1234,</p>
<p>Can you expound on what jobs you are referring to with your list above?</p>
<p>slipper, your rankings look fine, but I would bump NYU lower. Way lower.</p>
<p>As for Caltech, I probably wouldn't even consider it. Most Caltech students just aren't into business jobs and the like, although several firms do hire in Pasadena.</p>
<p>How does Econ at UMich compare to those schools?</p>
<p>NYU econ is way lower but NYU (Stern) does well, better than Ross and UCB, when it comes to finance.</p>
<p>Stern does better than Ross? Explain please? </p>
<p>IMO They're even. Ross ranks above Stern in both US News and Businessweek.</p>
<p>He said better "when it comes to finance". I think Stern was 2nd in finance on US News and Haas/Ross were 3rd and 4th.</p>
<p>It's probably early to know what you want to do. Most people do end up in business, but I think you are better off learning how to think in college. The real question is whether you will want to end up in the elite parts of business (i-banking, private equity, management consulting). That's where a lot of money tends to get made, but you tend to work about 25 hours a day and if you don't absolutely love it, it can be very stressful. There are other ways to go into business, including learning about technology and becoming an entrepreneur. </p>
<p>I've never looked at this systematically, but my impression is that the people who go to undergraduate business school tend not to be at the high positions later on. There may be two reasons for this: 1) the smart kids don't go to undergrad business school; 2) what they teach ultimately isn't what you need to be extremely successful; 3) fast-track employers don't think for the first two reasons that they'll find what they want at undergrad business programs. There may be a couple of exceptions to this (e.g., Wharton), but I think that is generally true.</p>
<p>Let me give you one data point. Two days ago, I was talking to my nephew wants to go into business. He is studying economics at McGill. [All the bright kids from the Canadian side of my family go to McGill]. He said that he sat in on some management courses and was surprised that when they taught economic concepts, they did so in a way that people could appreciate them but not really understand them. He thought it would be both frustrating and not all that useful. It is kind of like studying physics without calculus -- you are unlikely to understand much in a way that would enable you to make your understanding useful. I agree with him. </p>
<p>I've been a professor at a prestigious B-school, an investment banker, worked in private equity, helped start a couple of hedge funds (though never made them my main activity), co-founded and run a boutique consulting firm; and do other stuff (write, sit on a couple of boards, etc.). My belief is that you are better off learning how to think as an undergraduate (be able to put on a hat as a micro-economist, game theorist, social psychologist; cognitive psychologist, neuro-scientist, transportation engineer, statistician, evolutionary biologist, etc.) than learning accounting and lower level finance and marketing. Then, get some work experience. Then, go back to business school. My experience as a professor was that the students without work experience hadn't wrestled with enough difficult decisions to understand why what they were learning in B-school was valuable. The older students tended to get more out of the experience.</p>
<p>I've hired folks who studied business as an undergraduate. They've gotten the less interesting jobs -- like back office in the hedge fund. The best employee I've ever had was an undergrad math/econ major at UMass Amherst (and I hired kids from Harvard, MIT, Princeton as well as Babson, Bentley). He could figure out a function that he was performing and find a way to automate big parts (via software) so he could focus on just the parts that required judgment. He also was always teaching himself new things, which he would then bring into the job. He's now a foreign currency trader at a big bank and doing very well. We didn't trade foreign currencies, so again he's prospering by learning. I taught myself finance and business strategy during my year as a post-doc at a business school. I later put these to work as an investment banker and consultant. If your education enables you to learn how to learn, you'll be well-served in life.</p>
<p>Anyway, the moral of my story is simple: If you want a career in business and are not going to come at it from the technology end, I think that at the undergraduate level, it is better to a) learn how to think well; and b) learn how to learn than to learn specifics about business. I'd say this is true with respect to the high end jobs, but I'd also argue that the increasing competitiveness we are going to see in the global market for labor means that even the middle-level jobs are going to face lots of competition and wage pressure and being able to think and adapt, like my best employee, is going to be the major way to maintain decent wages.</p>
<p>Just my 2 cents based upon my own idiosyncratic experience and analysis.</p>
<p>^exactly.</p>
<p>Harvard, Princeton, Wharton, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Yale are all very heavily recruited for Investment banking and the likes. After your first stint as an analyst (which is almost always a 2 year contract), you have to go back to business school anyway if you wish to become an associate. At that point, no one cares what undergrad you went to, and to an extent they don't even really care about your GPA. It depends on your job and how well you did.</p>
<p>I agree with shawbridge. If you want "elite" jobs you're better off going to HYP, Dartmouth, Columbia, etc (with Wharton as the exception). In my experience you get a much more balanced education and a better job in the end. However for less "elite" jobs such as sales business school might be better.</p>
<p>I would think Chicago econ would place somewhere on this.</p>