<p>Im a junior in high school now and, after working really hard in school, have great academic grades. I was considering my college route and , after touring many Southern schools, I really took a liking to UVA. I loved the social scene, the business school, and pretty much everything else. However, I was wondering how an undergraduate degree in Finance from the University of Virginia stacked up against a degree from an ivy (Like UPenn or Cornell)? In essence, I want to know if potentially giving up fun and social aspects to go to an ivy was worth it compared to UVA, which I fell in love with.</p>
<p>It’s not a business school. It’s Commerce. </p>
<p>You’re required to complete a two-year pre-Comm programme, and you have to apply to the Comm school at the end of your second year.</p>
<p>The thing that sets the Comm school apart from other business schools, even the Ivies, is the ICE programme (the Integrated Core Experience), a 12-credit course that has you work with a Fortune 500 company, and one that will forge very tight teamwork with your appointed block and will probably demand lots of all-nighters in addition to integrating basic fundamental courses into a course that every student must take</p>
<p>Now though I have many comm school friends (who are often the exception to the rule), I do not have the greatest respect for most other comm school students. Nevertheless, in general they are generally innovative, creative, influential student leaders if somewhat misguided by their pursuit of income over the pursuit of intellectual knowledge. I do believe that science and engineering is more challenging than the Comm school, but it’s a commerce school. It’s not a business school. I don’t think Wharton has anything even remotely close to ICE. From what I gather, ICE has you apply the very theoretical to a very “real world” proposal that you must submit at the end of your first semester in the Comm School. Employers like this. </p>
<p>My friend in the Comm School was guaranteed a job by a major investment bank (Morgan Stanley) a year and a half before finishing school (as a third year). That’s how rigourous the programme is.</p>
<p>An alternative that I would recommend though is to do science and get picked up by a hedge fund later. You can apply a science degree to financial jobs; you can’t apply a finance degree to science jobs. My friend from MIT (and TJHSST) was picked up by a hedge fund in her second year – and she’s a computer science student. Science opens more doors than finance does.</p>
<p>I’m still curious. How would a degree from UVA differ from Wharton in the future? Which is more worth while?</p>
<p>Penn, Harvard, Princeton > UVA. After that it is up to choice.</p>
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<p>If you prefer UVA, go to UVA. There’s more to a school than just going to classes, and to be honest there isn’t a large difference in quality between top undergraduate business courses.</p>
<p>To address some of the previous topics -</p>
<p>There really isn’t a difference between commerce and business. Commerce is just what TJ would have called business. Its another one of those funny names you’ll find at UVa like “Grounds”.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t say science opens more doors than business. I have one degree in economics and another in business. My current job is a combination of management and industrial engineering.</p>
<p>As far as your main question - Penn and Cornell are the two Ivys with undergrad business programs. At the others you can take some business classes, but there is not a major. In terms of getting you a job, business at Penn will be a bit better than business at UVa. Cornell is on about the same level as UVa. As long as you go to a top school, finding the job you want has more to do with how you do in school, and the work experience you get. Realize that the average student at Wharton vs. McIntire will end up with a better job, but also that the average student at Penn is smarter and a harder worker.</p>
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<p>What evidence do you speak from?</p>
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<p>It also depends if you’re Asian. In my experience, most of the Asian students in McIntire are quite qualified to be there, are innovative and creative thinkers, often leading very large student orgs, went to TJHSST, etc. … whereas I’ve met a lot of white kids of who went to some rich Virginia prep school and are at McIntire by virtue of pedigree, ridin’ awn their daddy’s coat-tayels.</p>
<p>P.S. Wharton doesn’t have anything close as hardcore as the ICE programme.</p>
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<p>The economic crisis was caused by less-than-intellectually-informed financiers who plugged in equations and models derived by scientists and physics and chemistry students, forgetting about the caveats and assumptions that the scientists had explicitly stated.</p>
<p>This is why financial firms are still hot on engineers and science students. They actually know what they’re doing, and they think more critically. In a sense, MIT has as good a finance programme as Wharton. Except that MIT’s “finance programme” consists of thermo, statistical mechanics and heavy quantitative modelling.</p>
<p>There is no way any model can predict or account for the random externals that create changes in the relationships of some variables.
So if they are still hot on them it is only because it can work in the short term when all are using the same programs which tends to keep things tidy for a short time.
Basically their work is useless/dangerous and moves away from common sense over time.</p>
<p>[Recipe</a> for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street](<a href=“Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street | WIRED”>Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street | WIRED)</p>
<p>Apply to all of them and keep your options open. Remember that admissions to the Ivies is extremely unpredictable because there are so many applicants with near-perfect scores and grades and counselors paid to “edit” their essays.</p>
<p>Also, for some colleges with business programs that you enter directly from high school, it is much harder to be admitted if you apply to the business program. That is true at Villanova, which has a top-rated undergrad business program.</p>
<p>Thanks so much guys.</p>
<p>Everyone at McIntire is qualified to be there, evitaperson. Those white prep-school kids might have gotten into UVA by their pedigree, but if you don’t have the grades you don’t make the cut when it comes time to apply.</p>
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<p>Not any more dangerous than employing uninformed “finance graduates” to do the same thing. No model is perfect. There are limitations to every model. Even Einstein’s original model for temperature-dependent heat capacity failed catastrophically at very low temperatures. The problem is again, in the misinformed using those techniques without realising what they were really doing; most finance students appear to see the math as a necessary evil.</p>
<p>Models aren’t supposed to replace human judgment. They’re just tools. Some finance students get lazy, of course. When a scientist uses a model, and looks at its results, she regularly questions, “what is this model really saying? how did it come up with this result?” and “does it make theoretical sense”? But the impression I get from most finance students is that their theoretical sense is weak, compared to scientists and engineers. Sure they’re pretty good at the techniques explicitly taught to them in school, but they’d rather not think harder than they have to.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone wants to think harder than they HAVE to. ;)</p>
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<p>Look up any employment list at all IB and Consulting firms. UVA has an unbelievable business school. A plethora of the top companies in the world recruit there. However, you can’t argue Wharton or Harvard don’t have better placement…</p>
<p>Exactly, just look at the rankings from a top financial firm like [URL=<a href=“Bloomberg - Are you a robot?”>Bloomberg - Are you a robot?]Bloomberg[/URL</a>]</p>
<p>Wait a second…</p>
<p>^^ lol</p>
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<p>Scientists do. That’s how they usually innovate. They go, “wait a second, but what if we think about it this way?” (Or they innovate by complete accident. Either way it usually requires thinking outside the norm.)</p>
<p>Also, since we’re in the UVA forum, can you please call it the Commerce School? I cringe every time I hear McIntire described as a business school. Yes, it’s like calling our “Grounds” a campus. It’s cuz our Grounds isn’t a campus. It was built and designed differently. We do have a campus, but you can find it at the UVA Hospital.</p>
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<p>Meh, doesn’t refute UVAorBust’s statement, because Princeton and Harvard do not have undergraduate business schools.</p>
<p>I wasn’t aware we were talking about graduate schools. I thought we were talking about the OP’s concerns.</p>