<p>Geez...this turns into another UMich vs NU thread all of a sudden. Can we stop this? :D </p>
<p>TourGuide, thanks for starting it! :rolleyes:</p>
<p>kk,</p>
<p>The admission will be fairly competitive as you mentioned. But it's not as bad as it may look. NU has about 250 econ majors each year; but these majors follow one of the three options and only option 3 students will have enough pre-reqs to apply. So you really don't need to be the top-20% (50 students) to get in. I think the applicant pool will be pretty self-selected and the admit rate will be fairly high. The heavily quantitative pre-reqs will stop most music/communications/journalism/education students from applying. There will be engineers applying but they may not be in large number since they have the Managerial Analytics cert program under Kellogg.</p>
<p>Hehe! Actually Sam Lee, Touguide and yourself are the culprits this time! </p>
<p>But back to the topic at hand. In my personal opinion, Kellogg is one of the top 3 (the other two being HBS and Wharton) MBA programs in the US. I cannot imagine they would endorse and "certify" undergrads unless it was a serious distinction. I am sure Northwestern is proceeding slowly and with care in developping a full program, but even at this stage, the simple affilitation and association to Kellogg makes this certificate highly desirable.</p>
<p>This is sad. An undergraduate education at what's supposed to be at least a second tier university is supposed to be broad and teach the student how to think and write and communicate. Perhaps the ethical lapses we've seen in American Business are partly due to the lack of breadth in the education of our leaders. This move to the "business certificate", in my mind, makes Northwestern more like a trade school than a university. And the sad thing is that prospective students will think this will give them a leg up in the world of business - look at the leaders of our top companies and banks, they all have undergraduate degrees in subjects like history, English, sociology, mathematics, etc.</p>
<p>Most of the Fortune 500 CEOs majored in business, engineering, or sciences. It seems to me they have great analytical and communication skills. I am sure their secretaries write very well. ;)</p>
<p>On the other hand, the four courses will be taken as free electives. We are talking about 4 out of 45 courses required here. I imagine many pursuing this certicate probably end up graduating with 48 courses (typical load is 4 per quarter). The econ majors still need to fulfill their liberal arts requirements anyway.</p>
<p>BigGreen, the vast majority of heads of the Fortune 500 firms come from state schools with the most coming from Wisconsin. You will love the surprise ending of the article.</p>