<p>I'm a freshman at Cornell, and while I'm happy to be here and it's a great place...it's just so damn hard. The tests are impossible, and there's no break from the work. I see acquaintances at other state schools (i.e. UMass, UConn) and they're having fun and getting better grades.</p>
<p>I know that I want to go into the business world (not a career that relies on getting into med school or law school), thus I ask the question:</p>
<p>Purely career-wise, is it better to go to an Ivy like Cornell, major in Econ or something like that, make connections, internships and good leadership roles but get C's and a not so good GPA...or go to a place like UConn and pull a GPA in the 3.5-4.0 range? I'm not talking wall street or i-banking, but some management roles, etc.</p>
<p>If you were accepted to Cornell, then clearly someone thinks that you have the ability to compete and succeed. What kind of courses are you taking? Take advantage of your professor’s office hours and find study groups that work for you. If you’re trying to solve your economics problem sets the night before they are do or anything similar to that, you’re likely going to perform poorly. </p>
<p>Give us a little bit more information. I attend an elite LAC and I’m an upperclassmen economics major, so I probably know what you’re talking about.</p>
<p>^ Do you have experience with the Cornell econ department to justify that statement? People usually bash each other’s majors for being easy, but then take a course in it and realize that such generalizations are simply ■■■■■■■■ and meaningless.</p>
<p>In all serious, what I meant is that the econ program here is not going to be significantly harder than the econ system at high state schools. Econ here is definitely not one of the easier majors, but it isn’t a harder one.</p>
<p>Haha I’m aware that the econ major isn’t by any means rigorous CornellPerson, with only 8 classes required the major…but its those distribution requirements in the arts college that would kill me!</p>
<p>So my question still stands…would it be better in business to have a 3.0 at Cornell or 3.5+ at flagship state u? assuming mba/grad school isnt directly on the horizon…</p>
<p>If you search the job requirements at many companies’ web site, you will general see a minimum GPA requirement for new graduates. If you do not meet that threshold you will not be looked at. So in certain situation, a higher GPA at a lesser school might trump a lower GPA at a higher rank school. This is just a general statement. There are other advantages, however, that a higher rank school offers than a lesser one.</p>
<p>You’re asking a question with the assumption that there is a direct relationship between university rank (which is arbitrary) and GPA insofar as trade-offs are concerned. As such, there is no correct answer.</p>
<p>If you were to transfer from Cornell to a top-tier state school (Penn State University, Maryland, UCal Berkeley, etc; I don’t know about their economics ranking; I’m an engineer), then I doubt that the difficulty would change that much. </p>
<p>Success is not tied to your alma mater. Successful people find a way to succeed no matter the consequence.</p>