I am not looking to pick an argument. My child really likes Fisher for business. However, I had to do a lot of digging to find the career outcome for undergraduates, and it’s, from my perspective, underwhelming.
The data is buried on the fisher site at if you search for “OSU Fisher View the 2021-22 Annual report” in google
By recalculating the data of the 21/22 annual report, the succesful placement of jobs (done by removing the number looking for employment) is only around 80%.
I find that extremely disconcerting. I’m not looking for “well it has this club or this program, etc to boost career chances”. I’m looking for an understanding of why te data on that annual report is so much lower than the other schools OSU Fisher is compared to such as IU, UIUC, etc.
Please shed some perspective since if my child gets in and really wants to go, i don’t want to be thinking it’s a mistake with the employment results.
I’m not sure this is the case. They have a 70% response rate. It shows a knowledge rate, not a success rate. The career report online is not complete. Ask for one from the school.
I’d say two things.
So many today get jobs on their own. LinkedIn, indeed
OSU fisher is well respected. If it’s your kids top choice, I wouldn’t hesitate.
Hustlers get jobs. Slackers don’t. No matter where you are. OSU is fine.
You proved my point. OSU is woefully lower. If i parse out international students it bumps Fisher to 86% but the other schools don’t so I’m not sure it’s relevant. I’m just honestly having a very difficult time imagining that Fisher has one of the lowest placement rates in it’s closest competitor schools. This is my guess why they decided to no longer participate in Poets & Quants rankings…It shows their achilles heal.
My argument here based on me not wanting to do extensive research on response rates for the various schools being looked at is that no survey will have a perfect response rate. I have to make the assumption the sample sets across the schools are reflective of a large enough sample population to make the data sound or otherwise all of this school data can be rationalized away.
You can probably find a lot of “business schools” rated far below. It’s OSU. Everyone knows it. It’s not the name of the college anyway that matters. It’s the student who gets the outcomes they work for.
I don’t know anything about OSU’s business program, but that statistic doesn’t alarm me at all.
First, I am not sure you are comparing apples to apples. The numbers from other schools might be the placement rate within TWO YEARS of graduating or might represent a survey in which only 50% responded or something.
Second, any figure over 80% sounds pretty good to me. Would you consider a college that admits over 80% of applicants hard to get into? It means that for the typical student, getting employed is very doable. Which leads me to point number three…
Third, OSU may be doing a BETTER job of coaxing and guiding lower-income students, first-generation students, and other students with barriers all the way through graduation. If students with struggles at other schools drop out and never make it to graduation, they are not reflected in the employment figures. If you only graduate students who showed up at college with more resources and advantages, that might equate to a better employment rate but is not a reflection of a superior school.
If a student is a historically strong student going into college and has decent soft skills, I would be confident about their ability to land a job coming out of a school with over 85% employment.
Likewise, if a student struggles academically and/or doesn’t have good interviewing skills or a strong work ethic, I would be concerned regardless of how great the school’s employment numbers were. A school name or connections isn’t going to magically open up employment positions to one of its students who is a substandard candidate.
A former colleague of mine who had an extensive Wall Street career recently joined the OSU Fisher staff as a guest lecturer and is teaching several financial markets classes. He recently reached out to me to see if we could host a group of 30+ students that were visiting several New York based I banks on a 3 day visit. I am told this trip was extremely well attended and received.
Regrettably I couldn’t accommodate his request but he was forthright that part of his mandate is to create greater familiarity and connectivity with financial professionals and firms. He was quick to acknowledge that the school was not as recognizable or integrated into recruiting circles and alumni network as what he described as academic peers.
He spoke very favorably about the quality of both students and the academic offering. My take away was that the school is taking meaningful action to try and improve their profile and improve placements. Given the individual I referenced (and I suspect others with similar backgrounds) I anticipate they will have some success.
Others have minimized the potential impact of where you get your undergraduate degree in regard to business careers. I tend to disagree when it comes to I Banking. In my experience historic recruiting relationships, being a target school, alumni network, physical proximity and prestige often impact accessibility and opportunity. While there are always exceptions some paths are much more frequently travelled than others.
OSU appears to be acknowledging this reality and responding to it in a viable and impactful way. They are leveraging their faculties historic relationships into opportunities to market their students and school directly to their former Wall Street professional friends and co workers.
Choose what you want to choose. However, anecdotally my child graduated Fisher. Had great internship and job offer prior to senior year. All friends who graduated Fisher got wonderful jobs post graduation.
Good friend who graduated IU Kelley has been searching for a job for two years with no success. Great kid who I would hire in a minute. Is now considering giving up and going in a different direction.
Great insight into Fisher and its current efforts!
I note that investment banking is a bit unique when it comes to recruiting. It’s great that OSU is working to make inroads in that area, but don’t know that its lack of investment banking presence is necessarily tied to its overall employment numbers. (Presumably no school is placing 90% of its grads in investment banking and, conversely, schools with very high graduate employment numbers may have virtually none in investment banking.)
OP simply says business. I Banking is a niche that is difficult anywhere. I presume OP’s child, by saying business, was speaking of the school in general and not an overly targeted discipline.
Wait, i just went to Oklahoma State website and looked up their majors and it lists the % employed within 6 mos. Pretty solid in the 90s. I get what you meant now. Note how OSU Fisher doesn’t communicate those % similar to many schools.
Pardon me, it was a humorous comment about how I misunderstood the “OSU” acronym as being Oklahoma State when I first read through this thread, as that is the more common usage in my region of the country.
@Catcherinthetoast Thank you for your detailed response. This is the type of insight that I was hoping to garner from my first post on this website. Although I can’t envision my child pursing IB, I do feel that this is a weak spot that Fisher should be addressing school wide and from the sounds of it, is.
@bhs1978 I also want to thank you as well. This real example of a Fisher outcome from a parent also helps to quell any broad concern I would have if my child A) gets into OSU and B) decides to go there. Sounds like for the vast majority its a great experience
