<p>I'll agree that we need more data before we can create conclusions, but I have a feeling that undergrad engineers have a higher acceptance rates at top MBA programs than undergrad business majors. </p>
<p>This may be directly because of the degree, or because of higher quality work experience for engineers.</p>
<p>Getting back to the objectives of the OP, he indicated possibly leaning toward business because of the number of women majoring in it as compared to engineering. First of all, not too many students associate exclusively with others in the same MAJOR or even the same COLLEGE (within a university) as themselves. Therefore, once you select a university to attend, your choice of major will have little to do with exposure to men or women (except during the 15 hours or so of classroom time). Furthermore, if you attend a school such as MIT, you are not even limited by the institution. In the Baston/Cambridge area, there are something like 250,000 college students of all different majors, interests, etc., and probably about 50/50 are men/women. </p>
<p>If you like engineering and can do extremely well, then it is a good choice for a major. If you like business and can do extremely well, then it is also a good choice for a major. I am an engineer (PhD from MIT 15 years ago) and I have friends who were engineering undergrads/MBA grads, or PhDs in engineering who work for McKinsey or for a Wall Street firm, or undergrad management majors with an MBA. All of them seem to have done fairly well. If you want to be a ZILLIONAIRE, then no matter what you major in you must necessarily be some type of entrepreneur (which requires business skills but not necessarily a business degree). If you just want an interesting career and a very solid income, then I would pick something you like and excel at it.</p>
<p>Also, I have noticed, at many of the colleges I looked at, the engineers are the most qualified students, or stated differently, that the college of engineering is the most selective (not by pure acceptance rates, because engineers are a bit more self selective). The college of engineering at many schools seems to have the highest SAT scores, highest GPA etc. Now, that may be a result of admissions philosophies of engineering vs. general, but still, the fact remains that engineers on average are smarter than the rest of the crowd.
Here is one example, though far from conclusive, and may be biased, because this school is known for its engineering.
<a href="http://www.oar.uiuc.edu/staff/systems/qdr/reports/FreshmanProfile_Fall2004.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.oar.uiuc.edu/staff/systems/qdr/reports/FreshmanProfile_Fall2004.pdf</a> last page.</p>
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at least at USC-Marshall (where I work for the MBA program), the most common undergrad major of admitees is business/economics. In distant second comes all of the "liberal arts" majors lumped together (I'm not sure why it's done like this), and then engineering. Coincidence? No.
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confidential, CMU might be skewed. Every grad/professional school has a disproportionate amount of students from its own undergraduate school. CMU as you probably know is predominantly focused on engineering and computer science.
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<p>I think I have to back up confidential on this one. Engineering is an extremely common way to get into MBA programs. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/admissions/apply/entering.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/admissions/apply/entering.htm</a>
<a href="http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/downloads/publications/mbacareer02.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/downloads/publications/mbacareer02.pdf</a>
<a href="http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/bmag/sbsm0211/spreadsheet_class.shtml%5B/url%5D">http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/bmag/sbsm0211/spreadsheet_class.shtml</a></p>
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Either way, no claim was made that engineering was an inferior method of gaining entry into b-school; rather, that undergrad business gets more flak than it deserves.
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<p>Themegastud, I think we both know the real reason why undergrad busad gets a lot of flak. The truth is, there are a lot of schools out there for which the undergrad busad major really is a 'gut' major filled with athletes and other people who just want to get a snooze-degree without having to study very hard. By that, I'm not talking about the Whartons or the Sloans or the Haas's of the world, I'm talking about all those other no-name schools out there in which busad is an easy major filled with students who are in it just because it's easy. And the fact is, these students make ALL undergrad busad students look bad, even the ones who go to the top undergrad busad programs.</p>
<p>For example, in the East Bay of the Bay Area, I know some students who are majoring in undergrad busad at CalState Hayward. These students are also conspicuously notorious for never going to class, never studying, never doing any work, and basically never doing much of anything. People see that and they equate undergrad busad with laziness and sloth. So when others say they go to Berkeley and are majoring in undergrad busad, people just think that, just like the Hayward guys, they also are doing it just because they want to be lazy. It's unfair, but that's what happens. </p>
<p>The point is, the weak undergrad busad programs make ALL undergrad busad programs look bad. Contrast that with a major like electrical engineering. At no school is electrical engineering considered to be a cheese major filled with students who are just looking for an easy degree without having to work hard. At any school that teaches EE, EE is invariably going to be one of the most difficult majors at that school. </p>
<p>As a rule of thumb, I sometimes use something called the 'football' test. At any school with a bigtime Division 1-A football team, go look at what the players are majoring in. Few football players at Cal or Stanford are majoring in EECS. Because of the rigor of the Haas School, few Cal football players are majoring in undergrad busad either. On the other hand, I think we can all agree that there are plenty of football players who are majoring in busad at schools that are known more for football than for academics.</p>
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Most engineers start out designing the most mundane and unimportant aspects of a job. Many starting business majors are handed the grunt work on a large project. Everyone starts at the bottom and has to show what they can do. At least in business you often get an office and a chance to travel.
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<p>Oh, believe me, there are PLENTY of business majors who end up doing extremely mundane and unimportant things - in fact, generally far worse than engineers do. Let's not only look at the business majors who get high end MC and IB jobs. Plenty of business majors get stuck in deadend jobs too, with no office and no opportunity for travel.</p>
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Major in engineering, work for a few years, and have your company pay for your MBA.
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<p>Only if you don't have a problem with being bound to that old company of yours. It's not like the old days where some companies would (stupidly) pay for people's MBA's only to watch them immediately jump to a competitor. </p>
<p>The fact is, an MBA is to a large extent an 'exploding' degree - because the value of the MBA declines dramatically the longer it's been since you've had it. After a few years or so after graduation, nobody really cares about whether you have an MBA, they only care about what you've been doing on your job. The MBA is at its most valuable the at the moment of graduation, because then (and usually only then) can you set yourself on a career path that may really give you a lot of opportunities. For example, if you want to get into McKinsey, right after graduation is probably the time to do it. If you want to get into Goldman Sachs, right after graduation is the time to do it. You don't dither for a few years and then decide that you now want to work for Goldman Sachs. It doesn't work that way. That ship has sailed. </p>
<p>So when companies lock you in and force you to come back to work for them after you get your MBA, that's a heavy price to pay in terms of opportunity cost. Much of the reason for getting an MBA in the first place has been denied to you. So you have to be sure that you really do want to come back to work for your old employer. I know a number of people who were offered sponsorship for their MBA from their employers...and turned it down, because they valued their freedom more.</p>
<p>It's great to be backed up by sakky! One thing I wanted to add was also note that many engineers go for graduate school rather than MBAs. That makes the 44% engineering/sciences at Kellog even more impressive because undergrad business majors who want further education most likely get MBAs so 22% is pretty low.</p>
<p>P.S. Economics is a great major to pursue if you're interested in either law school/MBA school. Looking at Kellog again, I think 18% econ undergrad majors is pretty darn good considering econ is not a large department at many schools like engineering(at tech schools)/business(at big state schools) may be. Most econ majors pursue education, but considering that they are spread between econ grad, law school, and business school 18% at Kellog is a great number and shows the value of a undergrad econ degree.</p>
<p>Maybe the fact that so many engineers go on to obtain MBA's says something about the career of an engineer. For ug business majors an MBA is really more of the same unless you change the area of focus.</p>