Is Undergrad Business Worth It?

<p>That's what I think. And if you get an MBA wouldn't you be better off with an undergraduate in business than liberal arts? If you want a PhD in Psychology wouldn't you do an undergraduate degree in psychology?</p>

<p>Yes, I think if you are in a top school, you should not major in business. (unless it has a top Undergrad B-School and that's what you want to do.) If you aren't in a top UG school, then I would major in business because then you have the direct skills for business jobs out of UG.</p>

<p>if it's not an upper tier i'd go with something like engineering if you can do the quantitative nature. still have the good job prospects, and the potential to move on from there... law or mba or whatever w/ quantitative skills to make the transition easier. don't really think you'd need business background other than work experience going for an mba</p>

<p>
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And if you get an MBA wouldn't you be better off with an undergraduate in business than liberal arts?

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No. Buisness undergrad majors at Top MBA schools are in the great minority. For some graduate programs, it's advantageous to know the material before hand, but academics aren't the most challenging at MBA schools.</p>

<p>
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If you want a PhD in Psychology wouldn't you do an undergraduate degree in psychology?

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Grad schools, especially non-engineering, non-science, almost never require the exact undergradate majors. Usually, as long as you take some required courses, you're elligible to apply.</p>

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No. Buisness undergrad majors at Top MBA schools are in the great minority.

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</p>

<p>Not entirely true. Take Harvard Business School for example:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.hbs.edu/mba/pdf/HBS_MBA_Program.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.hbs.edu/mba/pdf/HBS_MBA_Program.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Undergraduate Majors:
Humanities/Social Sciences 38%
Engineering/Natural Sciences 28%
Business 23%
Other 11%</p>

<p>And most of the Humanities/Social Sciences are Economics majors, which is fairly close to undergraduate business. Given that most undergraduate business programs require a minimum of Macro+Microeconomics courses.</p>

<p>Frosty27 - that's my point. People always say major in anything but not business and then say engineering. What if you're not a math person? Why should you major in linguistics as opposed to business? And rgs321 if you were in say Wash U. you say you would be better off majoring in anything but business? Comparative literature would be better than business? All the top schools which have business also have good business schools - Penn, NYU, Carnegie-Mellon, Wash U, Cornell.</p>

<p>Yes, I know the numbers (around 20-25%) which is far from a large amount to say that you "have to major in business undergrad." Also, econ isn't quite the same as Business. Here at Penn, Econ and Wharton majors only necessarily share 3 common classes.</p>

<p>Let me respond to one point here.</p>

<p>Aurelius wrote:</p>

<p>If you look at MBA programs, the primary focus is not actually academics, but networking (ie. its impossible to academically flunk out of MBA programs). Compared this to medical school which is years of hard academic work.</p>

<p>Really--I'll have to explain that to the 1/3rd of my UCLA MBA class which either dropped out or flunked out. Most of these people had either bachelors or masters in engineering or science degrees already, and quite simply were unwilling to put in the extra two years of hard work it took to complete the MBA. They somehow thought (like apparently many on this thread do) that their great knowledge in engineering or science was all it took to understand business. They found out quite quickly, to their detriment, that it wasn't true. </p>

<p>Let me also add that UCLA--which used to focus on admitting people with masters degrees in science and engineering to their MBA program--apparently thinking this would lend prestige to their admissions numbers, changed their minds after a few years of seeing the terrible dropout/failure rate of these people. UCLA has since then focused less on those with engineering and science, and instead their admissions (like Harvard's) is balanced across all disciplines and primarily on those with bachelors degrees.</p>

<p>Oh, and I guess I didn't realize my 96 quarter units of classes were not academics--yet, I'm pretty sure we had regular textbooks as well as lectures from professors who were former economic advisors to presidents, former presidents of stock exchanges, and even talks from business leaders and top consulting firm CEOs--and I remember research papers and tests that I had to complete. Oh, well.</p>

<p>You know, I have yet to see one person on here who actually went through a business school that says that a business degree isn't worth the study. All the people saying otherwise are those who never went through the courses, and don't really understand what business is about. Sure, engineering, science and medical advances are necessary and make up a lot of what gets turned into products and services that business provides. But how this whole process operates as a cohesive whole to get those products produced in a quality manner, sold at an acceptable and profitable price, distributed across multiple international borders, recorded, statused, taxed and summarized, and how the computerized systems track this stuff and schedules it doesn't happen by magic. It requires detailed planning and lots of analysis and an understanding of all the aspects of business that bring it all together.</p>

<p>I believe the people who comment on not having to study too much/spending more time networking mean this because of the fact that you only need to make straight C's (or whatever is deemed passing) due to grade non-disclosure agreements.</p>

<p>Possibly this is what was meant. </p>

<p>Oh, and most graduate programs (including UCLA's) require a 3.0 GPA for graduation.</p>

<p>Maybe the UC system has higher standards in terms of grades but I mean, just looking at the grading system at Wharton's MBA program:</p>

<p>
[quote]

  1. Wharton’s MBA courses are graded on a letter-grade system with the following categories: Distinguished (DS); High Pass (HP); Pass (P); Qualified Credit (QC); and No Credit (NC).
  2. The recommended grade distribution in Wharton’s MBA courses is: DS: 15% HP: 20% P: 55% QC + NC*: 10% *where NC is usually 0-5%
  3. The QC category is an internal signal to the student that does not appear on the official transcript. Faculty are required to give a QC to students whose performance falls in the lowest 10% of a Wharton class with a total enrollment greater than 20. Students in the QC category receive a passing grade of “P” in the course on their transcript. The grade is communicated through PennInTouch as P (QC). Faculty have the option, in exceptional cases, to award an official grade higher than the “P” to students in the QC category.

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</p>

<p><a href="http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/mbaresource/academicpolicies/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/mbaresource/academicpolicies/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Not only that but if for some reason you do end up without credit for the course, they allow you to just take it again. So I'd say that it would be pretty tough to fail out there and you might have to totally not work at all to do so.</p>

<p>Well, this is easier grading than at UCLA. </p>

<p>However, even if someone got an NC, this still counts as essentially an F and stays on for purposes of computing the grade point average. So this person is in the graduate school, they will have to get at three As (DS at Wharton) to make up for one NC and get at least a B (HP at Wharton) in the class they failed to average the passing grade point average needed for graduation. This could be a bit tough at a school where the average GPA of incoming students is about 3.5 in college with a 715 GMAT. </p>

<p>But like I said, this grading is still easier than at UCLA's MBA school.</p>

<p>Getting back to undergrad business - do you think there are so many non-business majors getting MBAs because so many good schools don't offer business as a major?</p>

<p>Aurelius - even if you aren't required to major in say psychology to get into grad school wouldn't it be an advantage over a completely unrelated subject? Wouldn't it help you with your coursework?</p>

<p>amazon, in answer to your first question above, I think a lot of non-business majors get MBAs because the combination of a bachelors in something like engineering/science and a masters in business is excellent for many manufacturing firms--especially those in the high-tech or medical products area. Now you have both the expertise to understand the product being produced, and the expertise to understand what it takes to bring it to market and get it to the customer. </p>

<p>BS Finance majors can make a ton of money if they get accepted into the Ibanking firms and can survive, but if you look at the numbers for where more people have been successful, my guess would be that it would be going BS--Engineering or Science, followed by the MBA--Strategy/Marketing/Finance majors.</p>

<p>Quoting from the OP's original post, "In conclusion, college is about growing and maturing and pursuing your interests. Our parents pay great sums of money hoping that we will become intellectual human beings four years later. Sadly, I don't see how this can be done with such a pre-professional degree such as business, unless you are interested in research(then do ECON). I understand you want to become a businessman. Not just any businessman. But if you're talented, ambitious, and hard-working, you will be succesful." </p>

<p>I believe that an undergraduate business major leavened with challenging liberal arts courses )in literature, philosophy, history, mathematics, and the sciences) can indeed develop "intellectual human beings four years later." Here's why. The concepts a student learns from a business curriculum such as marketing a product, finance, accounting (the language of business and organizations), working successfully in teams, being a good follower as well as good leader, etc. can be applied successfully to any organization - whether profit or non-profit; business or government; volunteer groups, etc. Along with the "thinking critically" skills learned in liberal arts curriculum, I believe that undergraduate business majors after four years are ready to be successful in a range of disciplines and fields - again not just the profit making ones.</p>

<p>Is it impossible/lot harder to get to a top law school doing honors undergrad business instead of say normal government?</p>

<p>Personally, I think it's easier to get into law school coming out of an honors program in anything rather than out of a regular program. </p>

<p>I don't have any statistics to back this up, however, so you might want to see if any lawyers are on here and can give their comments.</p>