<p>Can you share what you and your child did facing this issue.</p>
<p>Your child get's into their dream collegel but does not get into their dream school (ex. business school to study finance.)</p>
<p>For example, if the Wharton Business School only accepts 12% of applicants what is a student who dreamed of studying finance to do if they get rejected.</p>
<p>Spend $200K+ on a major they did not really want.
Transfer to a business school at another college.
ETC.</p>
<p>I think it’s the other way around. ‘Admitted into dream school, but not into dream college’. Well anyway, here is my take:</p>
<p>Undergraduate degrees mean close to nothing without experience. In college, you learn content, skills, and refine who you are as a student and person. BUT internships is what makes you good at business or whatever you choose. Why good is an engineering student from Cornell if they have no field experience. 9 times out of 10, they will choose the person who has field experience over the one who went to a good school. Especially at the undergraduate level. Grad school is a different story though when it comes to jobs. But aside from that, it won’t matter really if a student doesn’t get into their dream college within a university. What truly matters is what they did on the outside of the classroom. </p>
<p>@PurpleTitan For example? I get mathematics majors or people who want to do linguistics or a history major. But even still, for those majors, a grad degree is almost a given.</p>
<p>For example, investment banks recruit Wharton more heavily than the rest of UPenn (for both internships and fulltime). There are a lot of schools where they don’t recruit at all. Yes, if you land an internship, it’s easier to get a full-time offer, but if you are at a non-target school, getting an internship will be hard.</p>
<p>In CS, people mostly care about how well you can code. But it doesn’t have to be at a job. Many software firms would be more impressed if you did good open source development or coding for class/independent project than by scut work in the IT department of a corporation.</p>
<p>Also, different schools have more or less powerful networks on Wall Street and Silicon Valley that can help you. A ton of coders in Silicon Valley join a company because their friends are there.</p>
<p>Take something with a more clear cut path. Accounting</p>
<p>I have a junior working for me as an intern. Wanted an undergraduate business degree in accounting.</p>
<p>Accepted into a school with a top 12 business program. At this school you apply to business school after freshman year with Econ and Calc One as the “weeder” courses.</p>
<p>Did not get into the business school.</p>
<p>Getting an economics degree.</p>
<p>Won’t be able to get an accounting job at a bigger firm.</p>
<p>Kid will try to get a master’s in accounting at a graduate business school.</p>
<p>Probably would have been better off transfering to a school with a less selective business school for his undergraduate degree.</p>
<p>I think kids with certain goals (business esp) need to look at both the selectivity of the University and the program they are interested in.</p>
<p>“Spend $200K+ on a major they did not really want.
Transfer to a business school at another college.
ETC.”</p>
<p>I guess it’s a matter of priorities. Does your child want to focus on “the college experience” or focus on training for a specific career? Is college the means to an end, or is it the most important thing in his/her life at this time?</p>
<pre><code>My daughter, for example, absolutely loves Ithaca, NY. But neither Cornell nor IC offered the degree that she wanted for her career, so she chose to apply to schools that did. No hanging around Collegetown or picnicking by waterfalls, but now she lives and works in another area that she has fallen in love with, along with being very happy with her career choice.
</code></pre>
<p>@PurpleTitan I didn’t say that it doesn’t matter at all. But an undergrad degree from any school doesn’t get you very far in investment banking. No matter what, you need a graduate degree and that is when going to Wharton makes more sense. </p>
<p>My children weren’t allowed to have dream colleges until they were accepted. Since the admissions decisions are based on subjective decisions of a set of flawed people who are doing the best they can, and which you really don’t have much control over, I think the concept of a dream college is really dumb. </p>
<p>There are many colleges that are viable conduits to a dream life. That you have more control over. </p>
<p>As far as I’m concerned, not getting the school you want, is not getting in. </p>
<p>You should study what you want to study. If they won’t let you, then you should take your business elsewhere. </p>
<p>@PurpleTitan Most people don’t even remember what they learned from undergraduate school. I went to college and grad school and am sending my daughter to college. Don’t try to patronize me. Especially when you have no clue what you are talking about. Prestige doesn’t get you everywhere in life. Unlike what most people believe, it’s what you do outside of the classroom that matters. But I am not going to argue with a child. You can believe what you want, but don’t go around giving false information when you are truly clueless.</p>
<p>Not sure I understand the question. Is your child already at Penn? Or it sounds like he/she is at another school.</p>
<p>Anyway…if your child is applying to Wharton and doesn’t get in, he/she should be expected to be rejected by the university. If that is the case, move on to the next choice school. Personally I would not go to a school where I could not study the field I’m interested in. There are many other choices after Wharton (NYU, BC, Dyson, Notre Dame, to name but a few).</p>
<p>If your child is at a school like UMichigan with no priority admit to Ross and didn’t get into Ross I’ve heard of kids doing different things. One or two I knew transferred to another b-school and others who love the school will stay and major in econ or information sciences or something and try to get into the business minor and then go on for a Masters in Accounting if that is what he/she wants to study. This could take two years with no undergraduate background in accounting (or a compressed one year program like the one at Rutgers).</p>
<p>Personally I have a preference for schools that accept directly into the business school so you you know you can study business as an undergrad if that is what you want to do.</p>
<p>Why do you even bother discussing things here? “My way is right because I am an adult on a forum frequented by high schoolers” doesn’t lend to good discussions and you need to actually start backing yourself up with facts when you disagree with someone rather than ad hominems. </p>
<p>@foolish That post was completely irrelevant to the OPs concern. Especially seeing that what you just said was your first post on the thread. If you want to try to condemn me for something, do it through PM. And PS, I am living breathing proof to show that your undergraduate degree isn’t that important in the career world. As is my husband. Neither of us are doing anything related to our undergraduate major and got amazing professional jobs by doing internships and building connections that way. I didn’t rely on my Vanderbilt degree to propel me forward. I worked outside of school, which is all that truly matters. But of course, you wouldn’t know things like that could happen because of your 16 or 17 short years of life. Believe it or not, adults do know more than teenagers. That isn’t disparaging in anyway. It’s a fact of life and when you get to my age, you will realize that.</p>
<p>When I was at Penn, you could apply to CAS or SEAS and <em>immediately</em> start at Wharton, with no delay completely ignoring your SEAS major (or be undeclared) and not take any “useless” courses. They now make you take at least two years of your original coursework (technically two semesters but can’t transfer unless after two years), <em>however</em> an enterprising person could manage to get enough overlapping courses to switch most to Wharton.</p>
<p>IMHO, if you are close enough to consider Wharton possible, apply to other top business schools and hopefully a 7% chance at each will add up to getting into one of them.</p>
<p>If you have money, it’s not an issue. If you don’t, you have to very carefully plan how to do it - like maybe take a year off and work or something.</p>
<p>You can imagine that males could apply to the College of Nursing and then switch to Wharton. But I would say in any of the cases, if you are not applying to Wharton and your ECs all point to transferring to Wharton ASAP, you should be careful.</p>
<p>PS - a Wharton MBA is not a necessity, but it is a feasible alternative if you can’t get into a top business school undergrad but do really well at a second-tier business school or in your first job.</p>
<p>And for those getting huffy - sheesh. Probably the most important point of these posts is that Penn does NOT allow you to apply to more than one college as far as I know, unless you are applying to a dual degree program like M&T. I know some other schools do allow that, but I’m pretty sure Penn does not. It’s basically double-work for them (which is why many people apply to SEAS and then change to M&T, because M&T is difficult to get into off the bat).</p>
<p>When I was at Wharton it was exceedingly difficult for students to do an internal transfer from another school to Wharton. The school is certainly wise to that game.</p>
<p>Well clearly there are a lot of careers where it does matter what college you were in at the university - accounting, teaching, engineering- where the skills can’t be learned on the job through an internship. That’s the question - what to do if you want something specific and can no longer do that. If you want to graduate from a business school, I think you should transfer. My daughter’s ex-boyfriend wanted to be in a specific program for some kind of film producing/businessy major, and he didn’t get in. Now he doesn’t know what to do (and I don’t care because he is the EX boyfriend). He doesn’t want a German degree, or general business, but this specific thing.</p>
<p>Back in my day, if you didn’t start in the business school, it was impossible to transfer in. My year they took 5 transfers, at a university with 18000 undergrads. Five. And if you weren’t in the business school, it was impossible to get classes there, so it wasn’t like you could just take accounting and graduate with a degree in History. So you had to make a choice.</p>
<p>Um, @AnnieBeats, I’m not a child. And I’ve actually worked at an IBank (with many folks, a lot quite senior, who did not have graduate degrees). </p>