Cornell education - is it worth the price?

<p>Alexandre - Are there any other schools (including the highly selective, the Ivy League, and west coast schools) that are highly acclaimed over there, aside from Michigan?</p>

<p>What do you mean by "over there"?</p>

<p>Yeah, I know a kid from school who interned at a bond trading office in Chicago and his boss there said that he would prefer a Michigan degree even over a University of Chicago degree, which was really strange to me.</p>

<p>I worked at one of those three firms Alexandre and so I know many of the people we recruited. Michigan Business did very well, but the regular undergrad did not do as well as Cornell. Also at my top-5 business school, there are MANY more Cornell than Michigan alums. Like I said though, one can be equally successful from either.</p>

<p><a href="http://brody.com/college/resources/college_rankings.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://brody.com/college/resources/college_rankings.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>I don't think those rankings really mean much. It doesn't really say how they got the rankings, they're just there.</p>

<p>Alexandre, I have just checked with a former Goldman Sachs Vice President of my acquaintance. He recollects zero U Michigan undergrads hired as analysts in the New York office during his 10+ year tenure there. He does, however recall analysts hired from Cornell undergrad. I have known two of them myself.</p>

<p>He says they may have had U Michigan analysts hired for their branch Chicago office, he doesn't know about that.</p>

<p>A former co-chairman of Goldman, Sachs, Stephen Friedman, was an undergraduate at Cornell, though his Harvard graduate degree probably had more to do with him being there.</p>

<p>It would appear to me that if they are actively soliciting Michigan undergrads for NY analyst positions it is a relatively recent practice. </p>

<p>The investment bank I worked for did not recruit at Michigan for undergraduate analyst positions either, so far as I am aware. It did recruit at Cornell.</p>

<p>Xanatos, that's SOOO BIASED.</p>

<p>To continue: with respect to graduate business school hiring he reports that Michigan was not highly represented. It is his impression that perhaps a greater proportion of their grads are recruited for midwest jobs. Cornell MBA was represented, but mostly by lateral hires from other firms, not so much from on-campus recruiting.</p>

<p>I experienced the same at my consulting firm. We didnt even recruit at Michigan undergrad.</p>

<p>The "reputation" and "prestige" of U of M B school will undoubtedly be helped by their recent #1 ranking. I would certainly expect a flood of apps to the B school.</p>

<p>
[quote]
9/21/2004 --</p>

<p>Recruiters applaud Michigan's emphasis on real world experience.</p>

<p>ANN ARBOR, Mich. – The Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan was named the No. 1 business school in the nation by the Wall Street Journal and Harris Interactive this morning.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>If you can make a "fit" or "feel" case for a radically different school, perhaps a small LAC, I would say go for it. But 30 years ago I didn't even apply to an out of state school because we had U of M right there and it didn't make sense to look elsewhere. It's not a whole lot different today. :)</p>

<p>and also, a good friend of mine just had his D accepted ED to Cornell. He told me as a NY resident he gets a big tuition break. So it works both ways.</p>

<p>MONYDAD, I have no idea where you got your information from. Goldman Sachs hires over 20 undergrads from Michigan annually. JP Morgan hires over 40 and Morgan Stanley hires more than 20. </p>

<p>Here is a list of the most popular companies where Michigan undergraduate Business graduates went to work last year. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.bus.umich.edu/EmploymentProfile/TopHiringCompanies.htm?StudentType=BBAGrads%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.bus.umich.edu/EmploymentProfile/TopHiringCompanies.htm?StudentType=BBAGrads&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>What's amazing about those numbers is that the Business school at Michigan is tiny. Of the 5,000 undergrads who graduate each year, only 300 are part of the Business school. </p>

<p>There are no statistics for the colleges of LSA and Engineering, but they generally send more undergrads to Investment Banks and Consulting firms than the Business school. I myself majored in Economics. My class ('96) sent more of its students to the "big 3" than the Business school did, and that's just Economics. English and Computer Science sent a lot of their students to the Big 3...as did Engineering.</p>

<p>As a sidenote, one of the people who recommended Michigan over Cornell for my undergraduate studies was an old family friend and ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs.</p>

<p>And SLIPPER, your claim that your consulting firm does not recruit from Michigan pretty much means that you work for a very unknown consulting firm because all major consulting firms recruit at Michigan.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.bus.umich.edu/StudentCareerServices/RecruitingCompanies.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.bus.umich.edu/StudentCareerServices/RecruitingCompanies.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Again, like IBs, CM firms hire more from the colleges of LSA and Engineering, but they do not publish their numbers.</p>

<p>As for your charge that your MBA program has more Cornell than Michigan grads, I am not surprised. You go/went to Columbia. Not only is Cornell affiliated to the same academic group (Ivy League), but it is also located in the same state. Over 50% of Cornell students are from NY. It stands to reason that the demand for Columbia's MBA program from Cornell is higher than Michigan. I would like to see if there are more Cornell alums at Chicago's MBA program or at Kellogg. Don't bother looking it up. Michigan sends more than double the number of students to those two top programs than any Ivy save Harvard and Penn. It is all about geography.</p>

<p>My firm was Mercer, and they didnt recruit at Michigan as far as I know...</p>

<p>I think you are right Slipper. I never saw Mercer at Michigan. However, I know for a fact that Mercer recruits at Michigan. They always have a stand in our career fairs and they hold information sessions at several of our departments. Mercer is a great company by the way. But I can tell you why Mercer loves Cornell. One of Mercer's main consulting specialities is HR consulting and Cornell has the #1 Industrial and Labor Relations program in the world. I did my graduate studies at Cornell's ILR school and Mercer was all over that school. But I would not use Mercer as a measuring stick to compare Michigan and Cornell. It would be like asking Cisco Systems to compare Stanford to Yale.</p>

<p>Alexandre, I already told you where my information came from. I suggest people for whom this is important do their own investigation: talk to people and find out what schools are well represented at a particular firm, and, importantly, what kind of jobs those people have there. For example, branch office or NY corporate finance group.</p>

<p>So Blarney stone, back to your original question of this thread.</p>

<p>If you are actually interested in the program of study offered at Cornell ILR, Alexandre has just stated that : i) it is the best program of its type in the world; ii) it is recognized as such by employers in the field. iii) At least some employers "in the know" clearly prefer Cornell to Michigan in the area that ILR specializes in.</p>

<p>If you actually are not really interested in this program of study then that's a different matter.</p>

<p>hey slipper, do they recruit a lot at Amherst, Dartmouth, Brown, and Penn?</p>

<p>How about Williams college, as far as recruiting goes?</p>

<p>Well I think it's a fairly well known fact that I-Banks and consulting companies recruit mainly at these places: All the Ivy's, Cal-Berkeley, Michigan-Ann Arbor, MIT, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Chicago, Duke, NYU, Georgetown, Amherst, Williams, and Swarthmore. </p>

<p>To go to one of these institutions is definitely advantageous; however, you do not HAVE to go to one of these univerisities/colleges as a prerequisite for getting an i-bank or consulting job. But I wouldn't necessarily like my chances if I didn't go to one of those schools (and there may be a few others that I am missing).</p>

<p>Goldman Sachs recruits at UCLA and USC as well. What is the big deal? Why do people refuse to believe that GS recruits at Michigan?</p>

<p>Alexandre, what is the ratio of in-state to out-of-state students at ILR? What kinds of professions is it best to go into after graduating that school? Thanks.</p>