Hi, I am a senior in high school and have an interest in studying business and/or economics/finance in college. I know that Emory’s business school is one of the top in the nation, while Bowdoin has no business school at all. After I graduate, I don’t know exactly what I’d like to do, but I certainly have interest in owning a business, working on Wall Street or being a financial consultant; I am wondering which school would better position me for these jobs. Bowdoin obviously has more prestige, but, being from the Northeast, I don’t know if I want to endure more cold winters when I could be in the warmer, southern climate. At the same time, I want smaller classes, and Bowdoin trumps Emory on that metric.
I suppose I am really just wondering if it makes more sense for me to study under Bowdoin’s economics program, or go to Emory, where I have the opportunity to take economics and be a business major (or double major in both). Thank you in advance!
Are you asking because you are planning to apply ED to one of the schools? If not, they are both great schools and you should apply to both. What other schools are you considering besides these two?
I’m not sure that Bowdoin automatically has more prestige - depends on who we’re talking to. I’m from Atlanta, and obviously people in the Southeast know about Emory and respect it highly but Bowdoin is less well-known. Even on Wall Street I think both Emory and Bowdoin will be respected at a level that any differences in prestige won’t really matter.
Emory only has about 7600 undergraduates. Your freshman and sophomore level classes may be bigger but not necessarily humongous. Your upper-level classes may not be that much bigger than they would be at Bowdoin - larger universities also have more professors and more sections offered, and there’s often a wider variety of classes to take to satisfy requirements.
That said, I agree with @doschicos. Apply to both schools and see what happens.
By one measure of faculty scholarship, publishing in economics journals, Bowdoin placed 15th among liberal arts colleges. Emory placed 92nd among U.S. colleges of all types.
(From IDEAS. “US Economics Departments at Liberal Arts Colleges.” “US Economics Departments.” Available online.)
@merc81 that’s an awful measurement given that you’re comparing liberal arts colleges and research universities in two different categories. If you were going to use a less disingenuous measure, you could look at number of citations per economics professor, average number of papers published on a per faculty basis, etc. I suspect if you used one of those metrics you’d find that surprise, a research university does more research than a liberal arts college.
To the OP, the fact is Emory is more well known, more prestigious overall. There are plenty of alums who work in finance all over the United States including on Wall Street.
Have you considered Emory’s two year liberal arts college, Oxford?
The LAC graduates tend to gravitate away from traditional corporate finance jobs towards consulting and advisory, private equity and venture capital, asset management and start-ups.
They also go to graduate school at a higher percentage.
Overall IMO you have come down to two very different types of schools and two very different courses of study. I think you need to do some research and reflect on which would be the better match for you. Nobody on this board should presume to make this choice for you. Here are my comments:
I don’t think Bowdin “automatically” has more prestige. I’d put the two schools as pretty equal in that regard. Don’t obsess about college ratings – in the “real world” nobody does. And I’d guess that Emory is more well known nationally
You need to consider the overall college experience you would have at a LAC versus a university. They are very different in so many ways. Where do you feel you can thrive? What is important to you?
You have also come down to a northern Maine small LAC and a university in a large southern city. Again, very different places with very different atmospheres. What do you prefer?
An economics major and a business major are very different. Again, you need to think about what you want. Economics is a liberal arts course of study and at the upper levels it gets pretty theoretical. In contrast at any business school you will take a business core curriculum with introductory classes into subjects such as finance, accounting, management, IT etc. And you will major in a business discipline such as finance. One is not better or worse than the other but they are very different. I would go through the websites of the two schools to get a firm idea of the curriculum you would take at each and consider which path you prefer.
“That’s an awful measurement given that you’re comparing liberal arts colleges and research universities in two different categories” (#4)
If you read the post (#3), you can see I intentionally SEPARATED the categories and provided enough information so that the analyses could be reviewed in their full form. Both colleges are easily within the top quarter for their group, so the metric is not negative for either of them. In any event, I simply stated the respective colleges’ placements neutrally. Beyond that, the “US Economics Departments” category is non-restricted, and some smaller colleges, such as Williams, Wellesley, Middlebury, Wesleyan and Hamilton do well on it even when evaluated by a non-normalized, absolute standard. There’s nothing “disengenuous” about the sources provided for those who make the effort to read through them in their full forms and interpret the findings carefully. Of the academic factors the OP is interested in, strength in economics is one of them. That’s what I posted on.
@happy1 Thank you for these questions. I looked up the curriculum at both schools, and got excited over the courses offered by Emory and not as much by those offered by Bowdoin. While I know that employers often just want to teach people with smart brains how to do their specific work, I still do not think I would want to be taking theoretical economics courses. I’d much sooner see myself taking a class that focuses on stock market investments, or the like, even if this is not for what I end up being hired. Even though I now think I know what I want, I am just having a hard time making the final decision and pressing the submit button. I hope this is normal!
It is normal to hesitate a bit before finalizing your decision but it sounds like you figured out which course of study you will prefer. Good luck going forward.
Yes. Just ask the NYC chapter of the Emory Alumni Association. There are plenty of other cities with large financial industries. It’s not as though Wall Street is the only source of investments, private equity, etc.