<p>I'm going to be majoring in business, and right now I've already been accepted to the University of Indiana with a major merit scholarship, and I'm in-state, so it's very very cheap for me to go to IU.</p>
<p>On the other hand, it's very likely that I will be accepted to at least one of the following, much better universities: Penn, Cornell, Wash U, NYU, Michigan, Northwestern and U Chicago (economics). </p>
<p>I know they all have really high rejection rates, but I'll still get into at least one. And all of them are better than IU in business.</p>
<p>The question is, my goal is graduate school and an MBA. Would it be better to attend Indiana and get really good grades, and graduate within the top 10% of the class with a 3.9+ GPA? Or should I go to a tougher school like Penn or U Chicago and risk getting a low 3.0 GPA and graduating in the bottom 1/3 of the class?</p>
<p>Which result would end up with me getting into a good graduate school? I know that I'm not THAT smart, and I won't be at the top of the class at any of the harder schools. I'll probably be near the bottom.</p>
<p>Why not do well in a strong undergraduate business school and skip the MBA altogether? (I have one, and was an undergraduate business major as well, so can tell you it is pretty repetitive). Top companies recruit at a lot of the schools on your list, and once you are working for them, they care a lot more about what you bring to the table than whether you have the MBA. Wharton, Ross, Kelley are all top 10 undergrad programs.</p>
<p>Well I’m not sure if I can skip the MBA if I want to get a good job. Today’s job market is extremely competitive, there are so few jobs that it’ll be little me with no actual job experience competing with 50 year-old senior managers with 30 years of work history that just got laid off.</p>
There’s at least one well known ranking system that disagrees with your statement. It has Kelley rated higher than Cornell, Northwestern and Chicago. </p>
<p>And if you think a new grad out of college is competing with senior managers who were just laid off you have no idea how businesses hire. Good graduate schools want students with business experience, not newly minted undergraduates.</p>
<p>Well, first I wouldn’t assume that your GPA will be lower at a top school. Top schools are known for grade inflation, and some students do better when they are in a more challenging, driven environment. (The comparison with Indiana is less stark than with some other directional state U or tiny college - but an intelligent kid may do better at Penn than Podunk State or Small Tuition-Dependent College if all his peers at Podunk State/STDC encourage him to skip class and party all week.)</p>
<p>But with that said, I think you should choose whichever one has what you want to study and where you think you would be happier. Don’t choose one of the other schools because they are prestigious - choose them because you think they will help you get where you need to go. Several of those schools are ‘target schools’ for top consulting and i-banking firms, if that’s your goal; I know that Kelley is a top-ranked business school but I don’t know if they are also a target school for those kinds of jobs.</p>
<p>I agree, too, that you need to work for a few years before you go to graduate school. Number one, because MBA programs prefer applicants with work experience anyway, and number two, you may discover that you don’t need an MBA - or that you don’t need one right away, that you might be 10 or 15 years into your career before you actually need one, and maybe then your job loves and values you so much they pay for it.</p>
<p>Kelley is an IB target for those who get in to their IB Workshop. All the other schools you listed (assuming Ross@UMich & Stern@NYU) are also IB targets except for Olin/WashU (so I would choose Kelley over Olin if IB is your goal).</p>
<p>BTW, elite admissions isn’t random, so don’t assume that you’ll get in to at least one of the other schools. Come back when/if you have a choice to make.</p>
<p>Also, @"Erin’s Dad", you are aware that Northwestern and UChicago don’t have undergraduate b-schools, I hope (though Northwestern has a couple Kellogg certificate programs & now a 1-year Kellogg Master’s that’s just open to NU undergrads through which you can take b-school course).
Which ranking were you thinking of that ranks Kelley over NU’s and UChicago’s nonexistent undergrad b-schools?
Also, Cornell’s undergraduate business program is actually in their Ag college, so that ranking may have missed them as well. </p>
<p>Finally, @intparent, I would say that an MBA is for the network and recruiting opportunities. So if you want to change careers or think that you can get better opportunities than you have now from going to a good MBA program, I can see that as a valid reason to pursue an MBA even if you majored in business as an undergrad (many of the courses offered would be the same, I agree).</p>
<p>So I went to Ross as an undergraduate (before it was called that), and 90% of the companies that recruited there were looking for undergraduates and graduates (had interview schedules for both). Graduates of an undergraduate as good as Ross, Wharton, Kelley, etc. will be just as good a network in the long run as you would get from a top MBA program (assuming you keep in touch!). Honestly… it isn’t worth the extra 2 years out of your life and the cost if you make the most of a top undergraduate business education. </p>
<p>@PurpleTitan the ratings I looked at were US Snooze. I am aware NU and Chicago don’t have business schools (I don’t subscribe to the ratings online so I don’t know if Cornell is considered at all, though I don’t see why they would not). I was replying to the OP’s comment that both are “better in business” than IU. Kind of hard for that to be the case when they don’t have a business school. </p>
<p>Well, the OP said “better universities”, not “better business schools”, and he specifically noted he would study for econ at Chicago (while NU has those Kellogg certificate programs through which you can study business).</p>
<p>Chris, you are probably splitting hairs here. A top student out of Kelly can be a rock star. Also, get the MBA. Get the MBA after a few years of work. An MBA from a good school opens doors years, decades later. There are many ceilings in large, mid-market, and even small companies that go away if you have an MBA. </p>
<p>Well, specifically I would major in finance or concentrate in that, it’s just that some of the “better” schools only have 1 major in their business school called business. If I do go to U Chicago or Northwestern, I’d be majoring in economics. They’re pretty much the same as a business degree, right? Especially if I wanted to go for an MBA at a top-ranked graduate school immediately afterwards?</p>
<p>For finance, US News ranks them as: Penn > NYU > Michigan > MIT > UC Berkeley > Texas > Virginia > UNC > Carnegie > IU</p>
<p>I’m not applying to MIT cause they make you take science subject tests and I probably won’t even get in, Berkeley’s too far away, and I don’t like the south so I ignore Texas, Virginia, and UNC. </p>
<p>I’m basing my assumption that I’ll get into at least one of my reach schools on my 34 ACT and the fact that I competed in a professional video game tournament and my team won $2000 (it’s Counter-Strike).</p>
<p>Well, I hate math and I’m really bad at it, but I like statistics. I got a 5 on the AP Stat test and aced the class.</p>
<p>As for other math, I’ve never gotten an A in a high school math class except for statistics, if you take out math and science (chemistry, physics) from my transcript I have a 4.0 GPA, and if you take out math from my ACT score I get a 36.</p>
<p>My point of view is, you know, in the real world, I get to use a calculator and I can look up formulas.</p>
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