<p>I am currently deciding between the University of Michigan and Duke. Obviously Ross at Michigan would be golden but I wasn't accepted preadmit. So I am wondering how the UM Econ program matches up to the Econ offerings at Duke. Is the pre-business track at Duke a popular one and is it very highly regarded by job recruiters, employers, and the like? Can anyone provide me with actual tangible statistics like perhaps the admissions rate of Duke undergrads into top B-schools or perhaps regarding IBanking/Consulting internships offered to Duke students post-graduation? Thank you very much.:)</p>
<p>I don't have any statistics but econ is the most popular major and there are plenty of opportunities for internships in those fields. I know the business school admissions rate is very high for Duke undergraduates compared to many others. Also I didn't really like econ at all but there's also a markets and management certificate that's very popular and you can take that with the econ major or some other major. I am not doing pre-business but it seems like there are plenty of choices here and you can't go wrong with Duke.</p>
<p>One thing that is important to note is that with B-school admissions a lot of it is based on work experience outsides of your undergrad major.</p>
<p>Many people here are on the IBanking/Consulting track and are competitive at getting internships and jobs. I'm pretty sure all the main firms recruit here. I've heard of lots of engineers, some history majors, econ majors, etc. ending up in Ibanking. I know it's the goal of many people here in a "pre business" track.</p>
<p>Bump. Any more thoughts/ideas/anecdotes/relevant data/rankings pleaaase? Quite frankly, I LOVE the idea of going to such a well-rounded school like Duke but I first have to convince my parents who are not sure that Duke is at all good at business/economics just because it doesn't have an UNDERGRADUATE B-SCHOOL.:rolleyes:</p>
<p>Our economics department fills that niche just fine.</p>
<p>Astonishingly, many of the best business offers go to engineering students. Why? Because they've proved that they're good with numbers and quantitative analysis, but nobody's yet corrupted their minds with false business notions.</p>
<p>Many businesses want to train students in their own ways of thinking about money, and it saves them time if they don't first have to untrain you from the way you've been taught to do things by that one professor from your freshman year.</p>
<p>Economics is a broad, liberal-arts curriculum. While we have classes in finance and such available, you'll also be well grounded in the basics of macro, micro, game theory, and basic economic principles in a way that many business schools dramatically abbreviate in favor of extremely specific terminology and case studies which may not always cross-apply.</p>
<p>This isn't to say that business schools are a bad place if you're looking to go into business.* I just mean that our economics program is very broadly applicable, is very well-recruited, and teaches you very well.</p>
<p>*I would probably be willing to guess this, actually, based on what I've seen from friends with business degrees vs. friends with other degrees. Of all my friends, all over the country, my business degree friends have almost all gone into marketing jobs -- what one of them calls "retail". My closest three friends went to Macy's (Emory), Kraft (Wharton), and unemployment (Stern). (This is just a sample size of three. Take it with a grain of salt.)</p>
<p>The friends I know who've ended up with jobs in more prestigious sectors have all had a broader degree of some kind:
Bain (Duke Math/Biology, Stanford Computer Science, Brown Public Policy, Harvard Economics)
Mercer (Duke Public Policy)
Deloitte (Princeton Engineering)
Lehman (Princeton History)
Goldman (Duke Econ)
UBS (Duke Math/Biology -- not the same kid as the Bain kid)
Morgan Stanley (Duke Econ)
IBM (Duke Sociology, Duke Economics)</p>
<p>Is this partly a phenomenon of the overall brand name of the school (Harvard, Princeton, Stanford vs. Emory, NYU, Michigan) trumping the major? Absolutely. But that is, actually, the dilemma you're facing here. And I wonder, too, if consulting and investment firms are a little more hesitant about business majors.</p>
<p>This may have been mentioned previously, but most graduate business programs prefer or require the student to be out in the work for for several years before entrance into an MBA program. Also, I have often heard that business schools don't require and might actually prefer you to study something other than business at the undergraduate level. All the business courses you need you'll get in grad school anyway, so they don't feel you have to learn them at the undergraduate level. Also, I have heard from a very respectable source that business schools see a lot of econ majors, but a public policy major really stands out. Duke has a great public policy department, so that may be an alternative pre-business major to consider.
Good luck.</p>