<p>I have visited both, and they both appeal to me, but for different reasons. This is why I'm so confused.</p>
<p>I live in VA, but cost is not an issue between the two schools. In fact, thanks to extremely generous financial aid, going to CMC would be cheaper. Haha.</p>
<p>I also got a full ride to Tech, which has an apparel management major that appeals to me (I would double major, I want to open a store in the future), and I did like the school, but size is a concern and I feel as if Tech is my weakest choice academically; what are your thoughts?</p>
<p>Full Disclosure: I go to W&M but have many friends as CMC and VT.</p>
<p>CMC is a pre-professional math-intensive institution that would likely grant you good placement right into a job. It is one of their largest majors and the beautiful SoCal location are obvious pluses. All of my friends there love it.</p>
<p>My friends at VT would agree that it is weaker academically.</p>
<p>W&M has a brand new business school that is referred to as the “Palace of Capitalism” by jealous economics majors across the street. It has a small faculty to student ratio which encourages face time and undergraduate research involvement. And for you, interested in accounting, it was ranked number one in both graduate AND undergraduate programs in accounting: [William</a> & Mary School of Business - Rankings](<a href=“http://mason.wm.edu/about/rankings/index.php]William”>Rankings | William & Mary School of Business)</p>
<p>And if you want to do the “accounting” on it, don’t forget all the plane flights out to California add up quickly!</p>
<p>True to … an extent. The table provided by WM is misleading, but in their defense they did provide the additional fine print in the narrative, namely that it was ranked number one in both graduate AND undergraduate programs in accounting in the THIRD CATEGORY.</p>
<p>The best accounting program in the nation is at UT-Austin. </p>
<p>Thanks xiggi! lol @ W&M. I don’t know why such a reputable school wants to bend the truth that badly. It tickled me upon hearing that W&M has the best accounting in the two realms. I knew something was wrong.</p>
<p>It’s like “We are the NCAA Champions”
*Of Division III</p>
<p>Here<em>to</em>Help, what do you mean by a math-intensive institution. If you are referring to accounting, by definition, it involves a lot of math. If you are referring to something else, please explain.</p>
<p>Please do take note that the divisions are based on school size (# of professors), not quality as xiggi tries to imply, so the ranking is still relevant and not at all like the NCAA. I’m not sure where CMC falls but I did not see it on any of those rankings. Indeed, to the best of my knowledge it only has an “economics and accounting” degree: [Economics</a> Department, Claremont McKenna College](<a href=“http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/econ/majors/econ-acct/]Economics”>http://www.claremontmckenna.edu/econ/majors/econ-acct/)</p>
<p>
By math intensive I guess I am referring to the school in general. A friend in their Econ department is doing much more econometrics than I at W&M, although some of that could be due to my biased interest in the philosophy of economics. However, CMC’s reputation is that of a pre-professional program designed to land graduates good jobs in, say, consulting, rather than W&M’s reputation for a more liberal arts education where half of all graduates go on to advanced degrees (although a lot still go into consulting). I see your point that this applies less - if at all - to accounting, though.</p>
<p>Here<em>to</em>Help, with all due respect, although you may have friends at CMC, I don’t think you really have a good grasp of CMC. You only included a link to the econ-accounting major, but failed to link to the economics major program, a separate major. In addition, at CMC, econ majors are allowed to take what they call “sequences” or what would be referred to as minors at other colleges. The two most popular sequences are financial economics and leadership for those students pursuing an economics or economic-accounting major. Yes, your quite right there is a heavy emphasis on internships and placing students in finance, consulting and corporate management positions. Many of the bulge and boutique investment banks, top consulting firms, Big 4 accounting firms and Fortune 500 recruit on campus.</p>
<p>As for your math-intensive reference, econ majors are required to take one econometrics course, but the econ-accounting students are not required to take the course. When you said CMC is a math-intensive institution, I wasn’t sure what you meant because the majority of students major in other subjects like govt, international relations, psychology, philosophy, history, sciences, etc. </p>
<p>I am sure W&M is a great school, but I wonder if any of us are really in a position to compare the schools. It is hard to be experts in more than one school, unless we have children or siblings in both schools or have had the opportunity to visit the schools. I guess it is okay to have an opinion about a school, but it would be nice if posters were clear that it is nothing more than this. </p>
<p>BTW, Xiggi was only pointing out that your reference to W&M having the number one accounting program in the country was misleading. He never said or inferred anything about school quality, just that this ranking is confined to the third category, as qualified in the narrative provided by W&M in your link. Whether you want to admit it or not, that is quite different from the claim you originally made.</p>
<p>@Here<em>to</em>Help: parent57 is right. I also think that W&M is a very good school but your original claim is a bit misleading. I looked at the report and found out that Group III consists of schools with the least number of teaching professors. So W&M is certainly the 1 in its niche however, considering that UIUC, UT, UVA, USC, Wake Forest, etc are all in Group I, I don’t think number 1 in Group III is universally prestigious.</p>
<p>If you don’t believe me then check out the document: </p>
<p>Look at page 4 and it will tell you that, overall, W&M is not even in the top 25 in both realms when they pool together all groups. We all love our schools. And I couldn’t agree more that W&M is a very good school but here we are to try to give people the exact picture of their future school of choice. And in this perspective, W&M does not standout as claimed above.</p>
<p>Why not stick to what I actually wrote instead of speculating about what I “tried to imply?” </p>
<p>For what it is worth, the only person who tried to imply anything here is the one who posted a link to a misleading table and wrote “And for you, interested in accounting, it was ranked number one in both graduate AND undergraduate programs in accounting.”</p>
<p>I added the correct and fuller information that should have been part of your statement.</p>
<p>First off, congratulations! I’m sure that you will love it there! I’m jealous of your weather already…</p>
<p>Just to wind the other comments down:</p>
<p>Parent57: Yes, and we were talking about finance, not econ, although CMC links them in the same program: N/A. The “math” comment was not intended to misrepresent nor demean CMC in any way. My apologies for the confusion!</p>
<p>
Yes, the usual question that is asked on this board, which is why I obviously stated where I was coming from in addition to my primary knowledge sources so that they could be hedged appropriately. No one else on this thread did the same.</p>
<p>Xiggi’s comment, with the capitalization and bolding of the “third category”, without the necessary qualifying remarks about what the categories were based on could reasonably be assumed to be a misrepresentation intended to confuse the reader into thinking that III was worse than II and I, rather than simply being different. Txboy13’s comments added to the confusion with an inaccurate sports reference. I was merely trying to correct, clarify, and expound upon the facts.</p>
<p>
Yes, my mistake for simply copy and pasting from the school website without doing a little bit of investigating. I was aware that our finance program was highly regarded, so it seemed somewhat reasonable. I also clarified the fact that groups were based on the number of professors in my previous post. While I am familiar with the ‘economics of scale,’ I don’t feel as if it is relevant, especially in this case (and virtually all cases in undergraduate higher education). The OP was applying to smaller schools (well, CMC and W&M anyway) that thrive on student/faculty interaction. What matters is not the raw number of faculty but rather the ratio of students to faculty and the quality of that exchange. To complicate matters CMC was not listed in the results at all. Additionally, I figured that my three summaries, all bias admitted and in the open, would be better than no responses whatsoever. Indeed, aside from parent57, I am the only one who has provided any information or opinions at all.</p>
<p>Congratulations to the OP on choosing CMC!
Here<em>to</em>Help-comparing W&M and VT is comparing apples and oranges. W&M is essentially an LAC, very strong in humanities,etc, no doubt stronger and a better reputation in general in those kinds of majors than VT . VT is a research institution, whose 2 strongest and very well regarded programs are in engineering and architecture-majors W&M does not even have.</p>
<p>One other thing I didn’t mention in my previous post is that CMC students are allowed to have dual majors. For example, it is not uncommon to see students majoring in both economics and government. CMC will allow you to reduce the number of electives you have to take in each major in order to complete a dual major.</p>