<p>That website allows you to see what most people do (graduate school or job) after they complete their Bachelor's Degree at Berkeley. Basically, Berkeley surveys their graduates asking them what job they have, how much they make, where they have it, or if they're going to graduate school, what graduate school they attend, what degree they're attempting to attain, as well as what field it is in. Berkeley also tells you the % of people who reply. All salaries are first-year.</p>
<p>If you click "Buisness Administration" underneath the Haas School of Business, you see that the average salary of those who graduate from Haas with an undergraduate degree in Business is $56k. In comparison to some other degrees....</p>
<p>Isn't it odd that the average salary of Business majors is only $56k? Can any current Berkeley students comment on this data? Many use Economics as a back-up major to Haas School of Business yet the average salary is the same. Haas itself as inherently more competitive, more experienced, and smarter people because it self-selects out of the Berkeley students, yet the average salary with a Bachelor's degree from Haas is strikingly low. This brings me to my last question. How useful exactly is an undergraduate degree in Business? Wouldn't one still need an MBA for the buisness/managerial positions? And since MBA programs do not care (from what little I understand of the process) whether you have a business degree or a math degree or an African American Studies degree, what exactly is the point of getting an undergraduate degree in Business?</p>
<p>On a tangent, another thing that striked me odd was the fact that EECS have a lower average salary than CS Majors since EECS students have nearly the same required core courses in CS.</p>
<p>EECS has a lower average salary than CS because there are people within that major that are in it for the EE, rather than the CS, and therefore earn a lower salary after graduation.</p>
<p>I can only speculate, but also realize that many of the jobs that Haas graduates land (think finance) will have low starting salaries, but high bonuses and growth potential.</p>
<p>Business majors become business majors to make money. People major in math because they love the subject, not for money, yet math majors on average have a higher starting salary than business majors at Berkeley.</p>
<p>“Haas itself as inherently more competitive, more experienced, and smarter people because it self-selects out of the Berkeley students”</p>
<p>This really isn’t true. You don’t have to be smart to get into Haas and do well in classes like UGBA10. And you don’t even have to have good “business sense” either. You just have to be really convinced that Haas is worth it because you will build up a lot of hatred towards it after taking the prereqs and seeing the type of people who are in your classes. All business frats/asian business clubs are pretty universally hated and you’ll see why within your first week here. All pre-business freshmen always think Haas is so elite and cool but get disillusioned when they get here. Econ is actually as/more respected as Haas and you’ll see that Econ/Business are VERY separate majors and that business is not even considered an academic field. Your Haas degree means very little unless you’re doubling it with a real academic degree in something else.</p>
<p>Anyway, you’ll see what I mean when you get to Berkeley. You just can’t say that Econ is just a backup major for Haas, especially because most Econ majors never even applied to Haas.</p>
<p>However, the other and more important component of the explanation is that, until recently, computer science used to be an impacted major within L&S such that you essentially needed at least a 3.0 GPA in your first 2 years at Berkeley, including the CS prereq work, before you could enter the major. Those who lacked such a GPA were not even allowed to declare the major at all and hence had to major in something else (or transfer to another university entirely). In contrast, EECS students with mediocre GPA’s (2.0 to 3.0) were nevertheless allowed to remain in the major. The upshot is that CS students would graduate with higher average GPA’s and therefore tend to obtain higher-paying jobs, simply because the program effectively barred the lower tail of mediocre students from even declaring the major in the first place. If EECS had expelled all students who scored less than a 3.0 in their first two years at Berkeley, EECS would surely have a higher average salary.</p>
<p>Well, actually, you can say that, for the logic only needs to run one way, not both. Nor do you even need most students within a particular major to have applied to another major and were rejected for that major to be a ‘backup’. All you need is a disproportionate figure. For example, surely we can agree that engineering is not a backup major for Haas, as only a disproportionately tiny percentage of Haas applicants are also applying to enter an engineering major. </p>
<p>As an analogy, I think we can agree that the lower UC’s are indeed a backup to Berkeley, even though it is probably true that most students at the lower UC’s did not apply to Berkeley, or even that most Berkeley applicants did not apply to the lower UC’s. All you need is for a disproportionate percentage of Berkeley applicants to also be applying to the lower UC’s.</p>
<p>Many people would rather be Econ majors than Business majors. I could have gotten into Haas, that was my original plan. I absolutely hated UGBA10 and 95% of the people in that and the other business classes. I went to a few career fairs and realized that there was absolutely no point in me being a business major because I did not want to be an investment banker or a retail manager or nearly anything else they had to offer. And I had zero interest in being in a random business club and being involved in fake-professional sounding events. I’m just more interested in the academic and theoretical side of Business/Economics and would rather go to graduate school after college than just get a job somewhere. And I know many other people in Econ who have similar interests.</p>
<p>This isn’t like the higher/lower UCs at all. Everybody agrees that the highers are better and would switch if given a chance. Many Econ majors would not want to be associated with Haas at all.</p>
<p>While I’m not going to denigrate the economics faculty, which is indeed eminent, the Haas faculty is one of the most prominent business faculties in the world. </p>
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<p>Really? Brad DeLong lacks a Economics Nobel Memorial Prize. But Oliver Williamson has one. And remember, we’re talking about a business school, which is not even supposed to specialize in economics. Haas is one of only a handful of business schools in the world that actually has a Nobel Memorial Prize winner.</p>
<p>Regardless of how smart you may have to be to perform well in UGBA10, the fact is, you still need to do well in that course in order to be admitted to the major. Let’s face it: the vast majority of other majors at Berkeley at unimpacted (with economics being a notable exception), which means that you don’t have to perform well in any courses and can still enter the major. So, if nothing else, at least Haas does manage to exclude the mediocre students with 2.0’s that other majors do not exclude. </p>
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<p>I’m afraid I do not know what you mean when you say that business is not considered an academic field that means little. Business has its own constellation of scholarly journals which, granted, practically nobody actually reads, but the same is true for the scholarly journals of any field. Business has its own PhD program, and indeed Haas runs one of the most respected business PhD programs in the world. Business does have a body of purportedly scientific theory to which scholars contribute through research. We can debate how legitimately scientific that theory is, but it nevertheless exists. {I would also say that much of economic theory is not particularly scientific either.} </p>
<p>To be clear, the undergraduate business program is indeed a preprofessionally, interdisciplinary focused program that draws from the range of social sciences. But that’s no different from engineering, which is also a clearly preprofessionally focused interdisciplinary program that draws from a range of natural sciences and mathematics. Surely nobody here would argue that a Berkeley engineering degree means very little.</p>
<p>Obama is not affiliated with Berkeley, and certainly not with the Berkeley economics department, so that point is moot. Try again. </p>
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<p>Yet the fact remains, Haas remains one of the few business schools in the world that actually has a Nobel Memorial Prize winner. Keep in mind, this is a prize in economics. Not a prize in business. Yet Williamson has one and DeLong doesn’t (yet). </p>
<p>So I would argue that your point is moot, and you should try again.</p>
<p>^Okay you obviously do not know much about the actual UGBA and Econ classes here and are just arguing for the sake of arguing</p>
<p>Sure, the business program here SHOULD be academic and scholarly. Too bad it is NOT. The structure of the classes as well as the people in the major here are not focused on anything scholarly/academic and just want to make money and do whatever they think makes them more elite.</p>
<p>Actually, I think I know them better than you do. </p>
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<p>I certainly agree that most Haas undergrads are indeed focused on making money and probably not on the academics. But let’s face it: the same is true of many other students. Let’s face it: most engineering/CS students don’t really care about scholarly theory. They just want to finish their engineering/CS degree and garner a high paying job. Similarly, many (probably most) MCB students are actually premeds and don’t really care about scholarly theory; they just want to earn the grades necessary to be admitted to med-school.</p>
<p>As far as elitism is concerned, that may well be true of Haas students. But I hardly consider that to be Haas’s fault, for if Haas didn’t exist, those students would likely be just as elitist and career-oriented. They would only be doing so via other majors, with economics being a likely vehicle. As an analogy, I would submit that many Harvard and Stanford economics students don’t really care about economics; they’re just using the economics major as a pathway towards a job in finance or consulting.</p>
<p>In any case, the point is not to state that Haas is a perfect major. Every major has its flaws, Haas included. But at the same time, I don’t see what mileage is to be gained by unnecessarily denigrating Haas. At least Haas implements relatively high standards that forces students who want to be admitted to perform relatively well in their first two years, which means that Haas students do tend to be a relatively motivated group of students. Contrast that with certain other majors - which shall remain unnamed (but we all surely know what they are) - in which you don’t have to do much of anything and still pass.</p>
<p>MBA’s are useful but certainly not required for business positions. Heck, some of the most successful businessmen, such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, never even graduated from college at all. </p>
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<p>MBA programs weight strong work experience heavily. Certain undergraduate majors - such as bus ad - are more likely to garner jobs that have more career potential than do other majors. </p>
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<p>As Christopher546 noted, the figures in the career center only encompass salaries. However, jobs in consulting and banking that many Haas graduates undertake pay a large fraction of their compensation in bonuses - with finance jobs sometimes paying over 100% of their compensation in the form of bonuses (hence, paying over double the reported salary figure). Furthermore, your salary becomes an ever-shrinking percentage of your total compensation as you progress through the ranks of finance, with many of the top bankers literally being paid less than 1% of their total compensation in the form of salary. For example, top financial traders often times earn over $30mn in total compensation, despite the fact that their “salary”, nominally speaking, rarely exceeds $300k - hence, only ~1% of their pay was in the form of salary.</p>
<p>The problem with bonus is that it is inherently unpredictable. Nobody knows exactly what it will be; indeed, in a bad year, you might earn zero bonus. It is that stochastic nature of bonuses that is the reason that they are generally excluded from any salary surveys.</p>