<p>Financial Engineering may prove challenging. Otherwise, business, even at the MBA level isn't that difficult from what I hear. Personally, I wouldn't bother with an undergraduate business degree unless it seemed fun. It's the MBA that counts nowadays. And Poli Sci, at the graduate level can be very very very difficult depending on the program.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, and people are just generally haters. So that's why they scoff.</p>
<p>I am a business major, in fact I am going to get my MBA. It is more than just a choice I made because I dont know what I want to do. However, alot of people pick Business because it is a broad feild of study. Business is included in every aspect of life. Yuu can take your carrer anywhere with a business degree... including accounting which I have repect for becuase I am in the class right now.</p>
<p>Morrismm says that "smart" people, like those who go to 6 of the 8 Ivies undergraduate schools and the top LACs don't study business--therefore, it must be that only "dumb" people go into business.</p>
<p>Please explain to me how smart Wall Street, okay?</p>
<p>The internet bubble was only a few years back and now we're in a worse mess than before. It seems to me that Wall Street has a remarkable talent for cooking up crazy get-rich schemes that ends up getting the economy and their own firms (and clients) in tons of trouble repeatedly over and over again.</p>
<p>And let's not forget our "smart" lawyerly friends in Congress and in this presidential administration, and at the Fed. These are all the guys that graduated from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Amherst, Yale and the like and have less knowledge of finance than a Sudanese tribesman. </p>
<p>Alert to Congressmen and the American public: Getting a law degree does not automatically make you an economic/business expert.</p>
<p>We have a Republican Presidential candidate who by his own admission doesn't know anything about economics--and we have a Treasury secretary who wonders why we don't feel like giving him $700 billion without maybe a little bit of oversight, and the Democratic-controlled Congress left and had planned to adjourn for the rest of the year before they were called back to approve this bailout. This is true. The Senate majority leader said regarding the financial crisis, "No one knows what to do." Well there's a ringing endorsement to re-elect them also, huh? '"Hey, good luck! You're on your own! We're leaving!". And now I see that the Republican VP candidate is threatening that unless the bailout is passed without changes--and immediately--we face another "Great Depression". </p>
<p>Look, I think the problem is that these so-called "smart" people are dumber than you think when it comes to finance. They get out of school, and because they graduated from a "name" university or because they have some friends with money, they get top jobs and then think that they run the world, and know it all.</p>
<p>P.S. I've taken this into account when it comes to my own son's education, also. My own son wanted to go to law school to do corporate law. His original plan was to take a liberal arts major--preferably a simple area that would allow him to build up a high GPA--without really learning anything of substance--and thus would enable him to get into a top law school. Then in law school he could learn about the basics of doing corporate law.</p>
<p>I strongly urged him to learn something about business first. I explained to him that trying to create regulations, craft contracts, and perform mergers may require a lawyer--but it requires business knowledge (particularly accounting and finance) as well. Accordingly, he is attending a top-ranked business school program as a business/legal studies major.</p>
<p>It has made it tougher for him to get the high GPA, but it has made it easier to get internships. He had a good one this past summer--and even in this tough environment, he already has an offer to do an environment legal work internship next summer in the Silicon Valley.</p>
<p>A lot of business majors are dumb. </p>
<p>If you're on this forum, I'm probably not talking about you.</p>
<p>But as someone who has participated in recruiting for a Big 4 firm, I can assure you there are lots of students from good schools with good GPAs that are dumb, dumb, dumb.</p>
<p>I find it odd that just about everyone I hear on the news these days involved with the current financial crisis, or display of extreme corporate greediness , was educated at Harvard: President Bush, Beranke (Fed Reserve Chairman), Paulson (Sec of Treasury), Cox (SEC Chairman), Raines (CEO Fannie Mae), Frank (Chairman House Finance Committee), ONeal (Merrill Lynch), Imelt (GE/NBC), and lots of others. Also from Harvard is millionaire Obama, who chose to focus on his presidential campaign the past few years instead of on fixing the impending national financial disaster. He lost my vote and confidence these past few weeks. In a few years I look forward to taking an MBA course explaining today's financial crisis. I don't think that these guys in the news are dumb, but they sure seem to lack training in ethics or business common sense - and I'm very distrustful of these losers deciding my financial future. Surely our nation has better talents than this for solving our finance problem and leading the future.</p>
<p>What do you classify as dumb?</p>
<p>I'm choosing business because I've tried engineering and thought it was my thing but I realized that I actually really hate it. </p>
<p>Do what makes you happy; not what earns the fatter pay check</p>
<p>
[quote]
how come it seems like dumb people do business?
[/quote]
Maybe because there is more influx of students going from engineering to business than otherwise?
Maybe because business classes aren't as rigorous as engineering classes?</p>
<p>Look, I'm not sure it is fair to criticize all the talent coming out of the top schools. In fact, I'd go so far as to say the best two speakers I've heard on the bailout plans have been economists out of Princeton and Carnegie Mellon.</p>
<p>What I do wonder about is some of the rationale for this plan.
The CEO from Goldman Sachs and the Chief Economist for Lehmann Brothers were on TV last night and their comment was that the bailout was needed so that the US (a debtor nation) could continue to soak up all the money from investors in other countries (saver nations) and thereby support its continuing Social Security and Medicare debt. No kidding.</p>
<p>So, in other words, supporting investment vehicles for foreigners to keep our Social Security system from going backrupt was the key reason--but if that is true, why not just cut out the middleman and place $700 billion directly into the Social Security fund right now instead of giving it to the banks and investment companies? Since nobody asked that question of them (probably because they were all as dumbstruck as I was by their original comment), I guess we'll never know the answer.</p>
<p>I'll stop here, because this is a college discussion site, and I don't want to get into politics or make this an economic discussion site. Still, I think a bit of economic education is a good thing for all Americans.</p>
<p>Students change majors all the time and for many different reasons, not just because they flunk out of their department. A huge reason why engineering and pre-med students switch to business has a lot to do with the requirements of the programs.
Business is backloaded with conceptual although not challenging work (plus extensive time commitments to job search, etiquette training, networking events and internships) junior and senior years.
Engineering and pre-med is front-loaded with challenging and time-demanding labs freshman and sophomore years. A premeds' requirements the final two years is largely optional - especially for a pre-pharmacy student.
At my school, engineering students are recommended to take 6 electives their final 2 years whereas the business majors can take a maximum of 4 if they wanted to because all their upper-level business courses must be completed only in their final 2 years and not before, leaving little time for electives.</p>
<p>I would NOT say that students majoring in “business” are dumb. It is true that business courses are not as intense compared to ‘pre-med”, “biology”, and “engineering”. A lot of people major in business just because it is “easier” compared to other majors. Furthermore, as previously mentioned, they have no clue what they want to major.
It all depends on which business school you are in. If one is attending the top twenty business schools, they are “hell” smart. So please do not classify all business students are “dumb”.</p>
<p>calcruzer--did you even read what I wrote? Your response sure does not indicate that your either read it or understood it.</p>
<p>I teach, in the business school, at a state college. The business major is considered one of the hardest in the school. We have high standards and low grade inflation. ( The college does not have an engineering major.) Some of the students in the major are real sharp, and others, not so much.</p>
<p>I have one daughter at an ivy taking many business classes and was an intern at Goldman Sachs this summer. She is very smart and ambitious. I have a son at a top LAC. He is a physics major, math minor. He is very smart but not at all ambitious. Their hs grades were similar, but D's were higher. Their SAT totals were exactly the same. Her grades in college are higher,but not because of the major. They are very different people.</p>
<p>Morrismm,</p>
<p>I was agreeing with you and disagreeing with your critics. Sorry if this wasn't clear from what I wrote. I apologize for that.</p>
<p>My point was that business is a great major to have--especially when you need to understand the business world--and that LACs and law school is great--but only if you couple this with business education as well (at least if you plan to do work in this field, or if you are planning to go into politics or the government sector--and not go into the engineering innovation field, or some outlying field (relative to business) like criminology or anthropology).</p>
<p>Reading back over my comments, I realize how unclear I was--once again, for that I apologize.</p>