Hi everyone,
I am a prospective engineering student, but I have always had interests and dreams of managing a business. I have definitely combined these interests in high school and in my extracurricular activities and I feel I would be incomplete if I left one of the two sides out during my undergraduate education. Going to grad school is also a must for me, so I want to make sure I am a strong candidate for both engineering and for an mba if that’s the path I end up choosing.
I really feel that I am a strong candidate for any of the above schools based upon volunteer work, awards, EC’s, GPA, test scores, and essays, but because each school could still very easily reject me, I want to disregard that for this forum. If I assume that all three of these schools above are accessible to me, which provides the best pathway for me to go?
Double majors and dual degree programs are very appealing to me (some form of engineering + economics or management), so Penn’s M&T program was an immediate standout. However, Northwestern allows for and encourages students to take classes across different schools and double major if they can handle it and Cornell does the same. If you assume that I love all three campuses the exact same and could see myself being happy at either one of them, which should I make my first choice?
I am also open to any other considerations.
Thank you for the help
All three are great schools. Sometimes, it just comes to the “feel” you have when visiting the campus, and the location. Clearly, the three are different–one is in a city (Penn), the other in a suburb (Northwestern) and the other a bit more rural (Cornell). They all appeal to students in different ways.
Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science has a big focus on entrepreneurship and business in general, and there are plenty of other opportunities to learn about business in undergrad, which, as you will see, many students at NU follow.
Here’s a link to the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation: http://fcei.northwestern.edu/
There are undergraduate certificates you can get from Kellogg, the business school, regardless of which major you are in: http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/certificate/ I know many engineers who are pursuing one of these, or at least considered doing so.
If you’re looking for dual degrees, NU has one between Industrial Engineering (essentially business in engineering contexts or vice versa, depending on how you look at it) and Economics: http://www.mccormick.northwestern.edu/industrial/documents/undergraduate/ie-econ.pdf Again, I know people who are doing this.
There’s also a minor you can get, and minors are very doable at NU, even as an engineering student: http://www.bip.northwestern.edu/
I don’t know much about the other two schools, and I’m not saying that you should make NU your number one choice; I just hope I helped you find out more about what’s available at Northwestern.