Finance Major, Undergraduate Admissions?

Applying to College Common and Coalition Application
1

I apologize if this is such a stupid question, but I genuinely need an answer to it!

I am planning on majoring in finance. Recently, a friend told me certain schools do not allow you to major in “finance” without applying to their business school. For example, I had my heart set on Brown until a friend told me there was no “Finance Major” at Brown, only Econ. Which raises the question of: if I am applying to a college for their undergraduate business program, do I have to do another application separate from the Common App? Or is there a section where I have to mark this on my common app? The schools I am currently looking at are Carnegie Mellon (Tepper), UC Berkeley (Haas), Notre Dame (Mendoza), and NYU (Stern). If I want to major in finance in each of these schools, is there a separate application for their undergraduate business school?

Thank you in advance for helping out a clueless student!

2

There’s a different major at brown as well it’s called Business, Organizations, and Entrepreneurship.

Basically it works in 2 different ways with regards to your question. At a lot of universities, you will apply directly to your major. The term generally used for this is “direct admit”. However, at some schools, you are not allowed to apply to your major until you’ve been at the institution for 1-2 years. This means that you are not guaranteed a spot at the business school, and you might even be competing with transfer students for the slots. I believe this is the case at UC Berkeley. If that were to happen, you would probably be stuck doing economics.

3

Oh okay! So if it is a direct admit, all I need to do is mark finance for the major and if I get in the college, I will automatically be accepted to their business schools?

How do I tell between direct admit and others? Is there a list, should I do my own research, or will I find out when filling out my Common App?

4

And any cases where I have to do a completely different application/ additional information outside of the Common App when applying as a Freshman?

5

No

6

So let’s say I want to go to NYU Stern, if I just indicate a business major in my Common App when applying to NYU, if I get accepted, am I automatically a Stern student?

7

I’ve never heard of having to do that as a freshman, just a transfer student, in response to post# 3.

In response to post#2, I recommend doing your own research, it’s the type of thing that a 2 minute phone call to the admissions line could solve.

8

Okay, thank you so much! About to do a lot of research and I envy your knowledge in this area- I assume you’re majoring in business as well? If you are, any tips or things you’ve learned will be extremely helpful such as whether to pursue a job right out of college, try for graduate school, etc!

9

A couple of things…

  1. Whether you apply directly to the b-school or not depends on the college. It is usually made clear on the school website and the application supplement. You need to be careful to do the research and understand how each school is set up so you apply correctly. For example you would apply directly to Stern, Mendoze, and (I think) Tepper. To get into Haas as an undergrad you have to take some courses at Berkely and then apply – it looks like under 40% of the applicants get in so you cannot guarantee that you will be able to study finance. https://haas.berkeley.edu/Undergrad/class_profile.html Brown does not have a business school so you cannot study finance there. Some schools (like IU-Kelly I believe) have a supplemental application for the b-school.

  2. It is important to understand that economics and finance are very different majors. Economics is a liberal arts course of study and gets very theoretical at the upper levels. In contrast if you go to an undergraduate business school you will take a business core with introductory classes in subjects such as accounting, finance, IT, marketing etc. and then you will major in one of those disciplines. I’m not saying that one path is better than the other, but they are different. I would take the time to look at the coursework (can be found online) for both a finance and an economics major and see if one path is preferable to you.

  3. You mentioned graduate school in the post above. You should be aware that the top MBA programs typically want (among many other things) applicants that have at least 2-5 years of meaningful work experience so you should not plan to apply to these schools directly after your undergrad education is complete.

10

I am majoring in business(finance), and as a transfer applicant I had to deal with a really complicated process.

11

I am a little more interested in finance… Does this mean Brown is not the best school for me?

12

Brown also has an Applied Math - Economics - Mathematical Finance track that would offer some very challenging finance classes if you have the math skills to handle them. You will not get some of the basics like Financial Accounting that you would in a traditional undergraduate business program.