Is a top school worth it?

College Majors Business Major
1

<p>So I know that the school you go to is very important for jobs in ibanking and consulting.</p>

<p>But they cost so much. I'm from a family with about 190k per year, so we wouldn't get much financial aid but my parents still wouldn't pay 50k per year for me to go to duke or another top school like that. So I am relying on getting as many independent scholarships as I can. Is it worth it to get loans to go to Duke or an ivy league and going into debt just to get into the finance industry or would it be better to just go to unc chapel hill where I could pay for it?</p>

2

<p>Are you talking about undergrad?</p>

<p>Undergrad debt is rarely worth it. If you get into UNC CH, which by the way is an excellent state school, just go there.</p>

<p>Save the big tuition cost for your MBA/Masters program. </p>

<p>You know there are other ibanking and consulting jobs besides G&S and McKinsey and they do hire grads outside of the Ivie or Ivie type schools.</p>

<p>You do not want to graduate with 200k in debt from undergrad. Go to UNC- get really good grades, intern, and do fall recruitment, you will get a job.</p>

3

<p>Undergraduate debt is worth it if you know what you want to do when you leave school. I'd generally say you're better off for two years at a school giving you a fair amount of aid (either merit or it's a state school with reduced tuition), assuming it's a high-quality school and you can keep your GPA up, then transferring into the 'elite' of your choice for your junior and senior years.</p>

<p>I'm in a different situation than you are, and because of that I think Malishka's advice is a little better for your situation than mine would be. If you're a little ambivalent about the job or the quality of job you want out of school, then you should absolutely do everything you can to minimize debt and maximize the quality of education- even if that doesn't mean a brand name (the Ivies are known for grade inflation, and you'd be surprised how stupid some people are at the big three).</p>

<p>I think there's a question you kind of have to ask yourself. Looking at the schools on your list, whatever they may be, and looking at your academic capabilities, whatever they may be, do you believe that you are (1) good enough academically and that (2) the school you'd attend has enough merit money for you to get close to a full-ride in your second year? It's dependent on a lot of factors. Plenty of schools won't give you merit money even if you come out of your first year with a 3.8, and some will give you plenty for a 3.4. If you think, for one reason or another, that you're capable of going to 'top school' and that you are capable of excelling and the top school is willing to provide you with merit aid coming into your second year, then it might be worth the hit in the first year.</p>

<p>In general, though, I think there are too many unknown variables to really say what you should do. In response to Malishka, a large amount of employers will pay for an MBA- especially in banking and consulting. There are also certain fields where it's fairly easy to get a masters/doctorate + stipend that ends up giving you a solid yearly salary because they're fields that are underpopulated or fields that schools are willing to spend money on to get the best candidates (cs is a good example).</p>

<p>There aren't a lot of schools that are going to cost 50k a year. If you're looking at Ivies/top schools, the aid packages might be better than you're expecting, especially with the recent push to slash tuition by Harvard that's resulted in responses by Yale, Tufts, Chicago, etc. All in all I'd say keep your options open and wait until you get aid packages before you make any decisions.</p>

4

<p>Well 50k a year is considering tution + living expenses... and a lot of schools do fall into that category.
I went to UCLA as a resident and my tuition+expenses was 22k</p>

<p>Also, if the other school option was University of North Dakota, i would take a different stance. But the other school is a GREAT TOP PUBLIC. And the savings in money is going to be substantial.</p>

5

<p>Well, I have a few offers from small southern LACs for full tuition scholarships. And I am still waiting for decisions for some of my top schools. I think I would rather pay the 15k for UNC than taking the scholarships at any of the schools which I've been offered so far. Its basically unlikely for me to get any merit aid at UNC and more than likely no need based aid but I can do 15 no problema.</p>

<p>
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You know there are other ibanking and consulting jobs besides G&S and McKinsey and they do hire grads outside of the Ivie or Ivie type schools.

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<p>Thats a pretty good point. </p>

<p>
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If you're a little ambivalent about the job or the quality of job you want out of school, then you should absolutely do everything you can to minimize debt and maximize the quality of education

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<p>Not the case here. I'm pretty sure that i'm leaning towards consulting, but I think I would prefer a smaller firm like the Parthenon group over something like Mckinsey. And I kind of want to move up north. Then again, four years from now things may have changed and my college experience may give me insight as to what I really want to do. But Consulting does sound pretty exciting to me</p>

6

<p>Well, you know, that's the thing. You can't be sure what you want to do, and consulting is really a field that is so ridiculously diverse that it's almost a conformation that you don't know what you want to do. For some reason I had a brain fart and I didn't see that you mentioned UNC in your original post, and in my head I was wondering why Malishka was mentioning it. Chapel Hill is really solid, and if you're going to graduate school you'd probably follow the path most people seem to follow (big for undergraduate -> small for graduate, or vice versa, but rarely the same) so you'd end up with a degree from whoever anyway.</p>

<p>Consulting and business in general is really 90% who you know, which might make the UNC location difficult. Then again, that difficulty is offset by the fact that I'd imagine they have a solid alumni network. Small southern LACs (there are southern LACs? are you sure? :p) aren't going to have that, and they're also not going to have the location benefit of being in the Northeast for what it is you care about.</p>

<p>The thing with consulting is that... There's always some opportunity because there's some field or company that's always booming or underserved or trying to recover or trying to stay afloat, whereas finance can have hiring freezes industry wide if there's a downturn in the markets. Yeah, just like finance there's a big rush out of school and a tremendous amount of competition and horrible work schedules, but unlike finance it's really easy to get into it years down the road and you actually do tremendously well having specialized in a totally unrelated field (though consulting itself really isn't a specific anyway field unless you're doing workplace efficacy stuff like human factors people).</p>

<p>There's also the fact that you don't really need to be hired by a consulting firm to work in consulting, unlike finance. While you can freelance in finance in many forms, the opportunities in consulting are greater, and you can actually work for a company that does not do consulting as an internal consultant. That's generally more an engineering or upper echelons of management thing, but it's out there.</p>

<p>Again, wait for your aid packages (or wait to even see if you're admitted) before you make any decisions. I'll always recommend Chapel Hill over small southern LACs because the only real good southern LAC I can think of is New College or maybe Davidson if you consider NC southern.</p>

<p>The biggest thing for you is that no matter where you go you need to start working alumni immediately, you need to do as many internships as you can (you're in a nice position that you don't have to worry about making $ during the summer) and you need to generally work on your rhetorical skills to make sure people remember you. If you really think consulting straight out of college is the thing for you, then you absolutely must learn additional languages. You can go the pragmatic route and learn Mandarin or Russian or Japanese or German, or you can go the 'passion' route and learn Italian or French, but if you want to set yourself apart knowing 3 languages will be a bonus for maximizing your chances of being able to do overseas consulting work. Assuming you do all this you'll probably have a few offers before you even graduate.</p>

7

<p>Thats good to know. I've been thinking about an international business major because I'm really interested in doing business overseas but I have heard that the international business major isnt very marketable. I am already fluent in spanish and I am trying to decide what language to learn next. I want to learn italian but I think that mandarin or japanese would probably help me more.</p>

<p>I'm pretty sure I'll get in to chapel hill, they sent me a likely letter.</p>

<p>
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Small southern LACs (there are southern LACs? are you sure? )

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<p>Thats kind of the reason I don want to go to them =)</p>

8

<p>Also, do you know if there is much of a ceiling in consulting? I figure that at some point I might want to get my MBA but only if i need it. and do you think that cmc certification is necessary to advance in consulting.</p>

9

<p>I will just make a semi related post you might find helpful about internship.</p>

<p>I came from community college in california with some normal work experience and got an internship my 1st quarter at UCLA (i applied through monstertrack) at an economic consulting firm dealing in litigation cases. </p>

<p>It is a small firm, but a top firm, our clients included Costco, staples, merill lynch, sydley austin, etc. </p>

<p>the firm basically dealt in labor economics- hired lots of consultants and paid interns. We got paid 15$ (that is a lot for an intern in my opinion) ... we did nothing but data entry and got some presentation about something or other.</p>

<p>Now the hiring practices for both interns and consultants and economists was quite simple, they hired pretty much from the top schools, and the interns came from UCLA, USC, then we had 1 from Northridge and 1 form Loyla (ca).</p>

<p>It was a bit of label wh*reing . But those were the schools in the area, and the state school was well represented.</p>

<p>Those with the internship and some rather non consulting majors for example one was majoring in psychology , went on to be consultants for basic firms with starting salaries of 55-65. (very good if you ask me form undergrad)</p>

<p>Going to UNC you are not going to cut yourself short on the basic consulting firm. They will reqruit form there, and like i said there are PLENTY of places you can work at that do consulting in one form or another. </p>

<p>But my point is that go to a school that is as well known as you can because i do think consulting is about labels. Even in our small firm of about 40 people, it was Chicago, Harvard Columbia etc Phds for the economists. and only 1 person, albeit the most important one, the statician held a degree from a highly uknown national school but known in NYC, but he also was the best friend of the PHd manager guy. </p>

<p>Unknown lacs i woudl avoid. But UNC gives you little to no debt, still gets you into the field and with enough work experience you can go on to get your brand name MBA/Masters and still apply to those top top companies if you want.</p>

<p>But i question who the hell wants to work 80 hours at G&S upon graduation anyways?</p>

10

<p>What do you guys think about going to great business school at a not so great state university. I am talking about the Finance program at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. If you can pay in-state for Kelley, and you can also get into top publics like UNC, UVA, what would be the better option. Kelley's finance program was ranked no.7. Does it make more sense to pay extra OOS tuition for UNC or UVA (if money is a slight problem)? (I am in IU, considering a transfer)</p>

<p>For MBA admissions, the prestige of your undergrad does play a role (so I hear). Would the fact that Kelley is in IU (not a top school), hurt my chances when I apply to B-schools after a while?</p>

11

<p>while we're on this topic how about UIUC's finance? I'm def sure I want to do consulting after graduation but my reasoning is that I want to go the entrepreneurship route after getting exposure to a lot of different industries. I have my own company right now and I can see myself staring a larger venture down the line.</p>

<p>Anyways, assuming I get in to NU and Uchicago, I was wondering if it would be worth it. Money would not be much of a problem. It's just that I know I can be top top here at UIUC but I'll be in the middle (most likely) at NU and Uchicago. Keep in mind that I want to end up at top MC firms.</p>

<p>Any advice??</p>

12

<p>
[quote]
Also, do you know if there is much of a ceiling in consulting? I figure that at some point I might want to get my MBA but only if i need it. and do you think that cmc certification is necessary to advance in consulting.

[/quote]

I don't really think there's a ceiling because consulting can theoretically be so many things. I have no idea if a CMC certification is necessary to advance, I always believed it was the equivalent of a Cisco/Juniper certification for IT people- nice to have, maybe helps you get a foot in the door, makes employers more comfortable, but not the reason people will hire you outright.

[quote]
What do you guys think about going to great business school at a not so great state university. I am talking about the Finance program at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. If you can pay in-state for Kelley, and you can also get into top publics like UNC, UVA, what would be the better option. Kelley's finance program was ranked no.7. Does it make more sense to pay extra OOS tuition for UNC or UVA (if money is a slight problem)? (I am in IU, considering a transfer)

[/quote]

That's a tough question. As usual, it depends on a lot of variables. If the extra tuition will make your life appreciably harder, then no, you shouldn't transfer. IU -> UNC isn't the same as IU -> Wharton or Tepper or something. If your transcript is good enough that you think you can transfer out to UVA you might want to consider getting in touch with them about AccessUVA, which IMO is probably the best financial aid plan any public university in this country has. You might actually pay less at UVA if money is an issue for you, and that's worth exploring.</p>

<p>The main thing is getting everything you can out of your undergraduate experience. Milk every resource your school offers and it should keep you busy no matter where you go to college.

[quote]
For MBA admissions, the prestige of your undergrad does play a role (so I hear). Would the fact that Kelley is in IU (not a top school), hurt my chances when I apply to B-schools after a while?

[/quote]

Prestige actually doesn't play as much of a role as people think. It plays a role, yeah, but pretty much everything plays a little role. GPA is important, because b-schools are moneymakers for colleges and they submit their statistics to rankings- the more 'elite' the average incoming student, the better the program looks.</p>

<p>For most business schools, though, the main three things are (1) can you afford it, (2) GMAT, (3) work experience. A poor undergraduate background can hurt you, but it can't take you out of the running like those other things can. Going to IU won't hurt you, but having a GPA in anything below the top 10% of your graduating class might.

[quote]
while we're on this topic how about UIUC's finance? I'm def sure I want to do consulting after graduation but my reasoning is that I want to go the entrepreneurship route after getting exposure to a lot of different industries. I have my own company right now and I can see myself staring a larger venture down the line.</p>

<p>Anyways, assuming I get in to NU and Uchicago, I was wondering if it would be worth it. Money would not be much of a problem. It's just that I know I can be top top here at UIUC but I'll be in the middle (most likely) at NU and Uchicago. Keep in mind that I want to end up at top MC firms.</p>

<p>Any advice??

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Careful. In consulting you'll see a lot of caveats to contracts that prevent you from starting certain businesses for X amount of years after leaving the company you're with. I don't know much of anything about UIUC's finance program (which doesn't necessarily mean it's bad), but if you're interested in consulting you'd probably be better off taking an accounting track and double majoring in a language or something specialized that you enjoy. Consulting != finance, they're going to look for different things out of college.</p>

<p>What I'd say is that if you're worried about your "position" relative to other students and money isn't an issue that NU would probably be your best bet. Chicago is a rough school. A 3.4 at Northwestern or, hell, even Harvard isn't going to be the same as a 3.4 at Chicago. I know people who do great right out of Chicago, but you're really limited in what you can do there re: graduate studies at GSB (not much of anything). Kellogg, however, just started two 'certificates' in financial economics and managerial analytics for undergraduates, which would allow you to get some experience focused on what you want from a premier b-school.</p>

<p>Between the three, I'd recommend NU because I think it's the best overall match since you know what you want to do in the future. I'd actually pick UIUC over Chicago too because they're likely to have more focused 'vocational' style programs than Chicago does. Prestige is going to matter coming out of undergraduate, though, so a choice between UIUC and Chicago would have to be up to you if money plays no role.</p>