Good day. S was accepted last week. Very excited.
Would like to hear from upper grade posters. Son will be a HOD major, with the new business minor. Wondering how the job prospects are for Vandy Students nearing graduation. Was the career office helpful? Were there lots of recruiting opportunities for both internships and jobs. Are vandy students competing for plentiful or limited opportunities to enter the business world. Is lack of a business major making it impossible to get consulting/finance jobs? Any insights would be appreciated. Thanks in advance
This is just the anecdotal viewpoint from a science major, so take it with a grain of salt, but it seems like the HOD kids do great here.
Of the HOD people that I knew, they had plenty of internship job opportunities. A lot of them ended up in consulting jobs with top firms (Deloitte, McKinsey, etc.) so I wouldn’t say that the lack of a business major negatively affected them. I can’t really speak on the career office or how competitive the recruitment process is here due to lack of personal experience. It seemed like if you put time into your classes and made sure to get great grades, stuff opened up for you.
@fdgjfg : BBA programs (or other bachelors in business programs) are really over-rated. A huge chunk of people at certain firms have them, but it is more of a self-selection bias by many students majoring in it. They (firms) all pretty much look for experience. You will need internships to access them (you can get access through simply having good academic performance and a high intelligence as most at an elite public or private will), not a degree in a particular thing, but the surprisingly high paying entry level positions do tend to like those with more quantitative experience so all the finance concentrators, statistics majors, and economics majors with a really strong quantitative background will have an advantage for those. Again there are so many ways to pursue “business”. The current state of undergraduate business schools is under intense scrutiny and have come under fire with some insiders (faculty) even finding some curricula within them questionable. Really only the more elite (like top 20 or so) business programs are still regarded as reliable and particularly special in placement and it has maybe less to do with curriculum and more like social activities, promoted extracurriculars (case competition participation for example), alumni network, and of course location (of course those located in cities with easy access to fortune 500s or maybe entrepreneur access will have a greater chance to get access to this resource in and out of the classroom). Often these programs function in a bubble completely separate from the College and other entities and have a completely different culture (Wharton among many of them is a perfect example of this).
what Bernie says. In my experience as a parent who has one son in a successful business career…there is business and there is investment banking. Investment banking and finance jobs were “all the rage” when my son was in Duke before the bubble burst. The reality is that they want people with proven high quantitative skills and they look at your calculus and Econ grades. Business as a career path is much more varied. A top 20 MBA program is a great boon in networking but you have to have been employed for a while before they want you plus you must perform on the GMAT which has a quantitative edge. Engineering undergrad and MBA later is a killer combo. Any good job experience and a good GMAT score will likely get you into a fine MBA program. Our son did his MBA at night the long slow way which is not as beneficial for “networking and interviews.” We had spent too much paying full price undergrad and really could not help him with a pricey MBA. However, he had a very good job while working through his MBA. If you have limited resources and must be strategic about where to blow the bulk of your tution money…I would say…go to an excellent undergraduate school with a reasonable price tag (finanical aide or merit dollars or state flagship), go to work for a while, mature, set aside time to nail the MCAT…and then go to a full time 2 year top MBA program where your real job opportunity will emerge.