Need help choosing business schools! Any suggestions/advice appreciated!

Hi everyone! I’m going to be a senior in the fall, and am attempting to finish up my college list to get a head start on college applications before school starts in September. I am having difficulty finding business schools and categorizing them into safeties, matches and reach schools. I am looking for medium/small schools on the east coast, without much of a party scene. Financially speaking, I am fortunate that my parents can afford private school tuition (any aid is unlikely), and they are willing to pay for my education. In college, I am thinking about majoring in Business or Economics.

Schools that I am currently looking at:
-Boston College
-Brown

-Duke

-Fordham
-U of Pennsylvania

-Tufts
-Villanova
-Wake Forest
-Yale Univ

About me:
Gender: Male
Ethnicity: White
ACT: 35 (35 Eng, 35 Math, 34 Reading, 34 Sci)
SAT II: 800 Math II, 730 US History
GPA: 4.56 Weighted (4.0 UW)
APs: 5 Psychology, 5 Macroeconomics, 5 Microeconomics, 5 US History, 4 Physics I (Taking 5 APs Senior Year)

Ec’s: Varsity Tennis player (9-12 Captain 11-12), Biology Team (9), Technology Club (9-12), News Editor of School Newspaper (10), FBLA President (12), Chem Team (10), Officer of Veterans Outreach Club (10,11), Math Club, Treasurer of NHS (11,12), 4th Place Statewide at Physics Olympics (NJ)
Volunteering: Nursing home (9-10), Helped run a Youth Bible Camp (11-12), helped run a summer reading program at library (12)

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions on schools to apply to! Thank you!!

Brown, Duke, Tufts and Yale do not have undergraduate business schools.

None of the schools you list are safeties.

Babson?

Fordham is the only safety on your list, so perhaps add Loyola MD or Providence if you’d prefer them to your state flagship. You have a reasonable shot at BC, Villanova, and Wake and might add Bentley as another match. Penn is a great reach for you for business. Have you looked at Georgetown as another reach?

All of these are reaches due to acceptance rates, except Villanova (express interest and it’s a match to low match) and Fordham (safety).
Therefore, you need to add 1 more safety and 2-3 more matches.
Matches: Babson, UVM honors, Dickinson (international management), Denison (global commerce).
Safety: UDel honors, Bentley.
You may want to look into PSU Smeal, UMD Smith. The universities are bigger than what you want but they’d be good matches.

William & Mary would also be a good addition to your list. And Emory.

Brandeis could be also be good low-match to add to your Boston-area list.

Are you going to choose an ED school? Some of your schools (UPenn) admit a majority of their class ED and have much higher admit rates for ED than RD. Others, like Tufts, don’t really advantage ED applicants. Most are in between.

Thanks everyone for your replies! I appreciate all the feedback, and I now have a lot more research to do :).

@TomSrOfBoston I was thinking about going the economics route at Brown, Duke, Tufts and Yale. Personally, I thought Fordham to be a bit more of a safety school, especially since I have expressed a ton of interest in the school. I do agree with you I need more safeties. Thanks for the help!

@Eeyore123 I visited Babson and was not the biggest fan of the location, but I definitely should put it on my list. Thanks!

@LuckyCharms913 I was thinking about Georgetown as another reach. I’ve heard really good things about it. Thanks for the recommendation of Loyola and Providence, I’m going to do some research on them. Thanks for the help!

@MYOS1634 Thank you for the help! I think I’m going to add UDel and PSU on my list. Thanks!

@aquapt I think I am going to ED to UPenn. I’m visiting this weekend and if I like it, I definitely will. I’m going to look at William & Mary and Brandeis. Thanks!

If you apply to Fordham non-binding EA and get in by December you don’t need another safety.

Unsolicited advice: A number of schools on your list don’t have undergraduate b-schools. Think about if you want a b-school program or if being an economics major (or whatever else you might be thinking of) is the right way for you to go. It is important to understand that economics and going to a b-school will be very different programs. For example, economics is a liberal arts course of study and gets very theoretical at the upper levels. In contrast if you go to an undergraduate business school you will take a business core with introductory classes in subjects such as accounting, finance, IT, marketing etc. and then you will major in one of those disciplines. I’m not saying that one path is better than the other, but they are different. I would take the time to look at the coursework (can be found online) for both a b-school program and an economics (or whatever major you are looking at) major and see if one path is preferable to you and adjust your application list accordingly.

@happy1 This is really great advice. Thank you so so much! I was going to make another post about if I should be pursuing business or economics in college, and this answered my question. I really do appreciate it!

@Jacobthebest1 Yes, you should think about economics vs business vs ??? But, you don’t need to make that decision before applying to schools. There is a lot of growth still to come in your senior year. As you go through the year, you will find that your interests will evolve. It is a good idea to apply to some schools where you would like to study business and other schools where you would like to study economics. Once April rolls around, you should have choices for both paths and you can make your decision then.

An economics major is “how does our society function and grow?” Whereas a business major is " what is management? what is accounting? What is supply chain management?" (Then, in both, you need to go deeper into an area of interest.)
Economics will likely comprise about 10 courses with about 10 courses “free to choose” in that field or another one. Business generally has more required classes. Both will have co-requisite classes in common (calculus, statistics, macro/micro economics).

Also, at many colleges, Economics functions as a preprofessional major - leading to the same kinds of internships and jobs as a business major would elsewhere.
After 3-5 years of professional experience, it’s possible to apply to a top MBA (which actually prefer this kind of background unless you effectively double major in business and a liberal arts field as must be done to graduate from Wharton w McDonough, Mendoza…)

Wharton sounds like a great ED choice for you. But in case you don’t like it, here’s another thought:

Some schools offer an economics major in the business school AND in the liberal arts school. I’m thinking here of U South Carolina but I’m sure there are more. Students earning an econ degree from the business school take additional business core courses, while students earning an econ degree from the College of Arts and Sciences take more courses in non-business subjects.

You might take look at U of SC as another possible safety. Although it is bigger than what you want and farther south than your other choices, it has a highly regarded Honors College for which you would be a strong candidate. Plus their International Business program is consistently ranked #1, and their Finance Scholars Program is increasingly impressive.

Economics is the study of how people allocate scarce resources. Business is the application of various liberal arts fields like economics, sociology, psychology, and statistics to solve business problems.

Note that economics can be heavy with math and statistics, particularly if you want to go on to PhD study.

Where there is no business major, economics departments sometimes offer business-like courses like managerial economics or accounting for the more pre-professional / “business” oriented students. You can check course catalogs and offerings.

Very likely to get into, but might not meet your critera 100%: Pittsburgh, New Hampshire, Northeastern, Boston U., Va Tech, George Washington U, Delaware.

Kids in my son’s high school in NJ , with stats like yours and full pay parents, have done reasonably well with acceptances at NYU Stern. It may be an easier reach via ED than Wharton, but only if you find it’s your first choice. You should consider it for the RD round. Penn has an advantage for legacies in the ED round.

Thank you to everyone for the help! For the economics vs business discussion, I am still trying to figure out which I prefer. I have always loved math (to the point of thinking about potentially majoring in college), and I have heard from people in the business field that business graduates who have strong backgrounds in math are in higher demand than those who have not studied math.

Have you visited William & Mary or U of Richmond? Other colleges with strong business programs – Loyola University in MD, University of Maryland, U of Delaware, UVA, Carnegie Mellon, Babson College.

UNC has both very strong business school (Kenan Flagler) and economics.

Good luck!!