<p>It seems to be kind of a long shot to obtain preferred admission into the business school as an incoming freshmen. Any idea what stats, etc.. are needed to have a chance at it ? Thanks.</p>
<p>I think I read 15 or 16%</p>
<p>Actually I just found it:
Average GPA: 3.8
Average ACT: 31
Ya it's 16% exactly.
716 applicants, 115 acceptances, 62 attending.</p>
<p>ECs are HUGE for this program.</p>
<p>^ that was for 2006.</p>
<p>This year there were about 2300 applicants</p>
<p>Ouch...pretty rough. My S has 1450 / 2230, 4.8(w), 15 of 575, editor of paper, capt. varsity tennis, a few other things.... seems like much competition. For kids that don't get preferred admits, is regular admission to the business school within reach for most kids ?</p>
<p>im in the same position....1500/2300, rank 3/340, and some quality EC's, but the numbers are against any1 who applies. its sort of a crapshoot if u fit the numbers, because there are tons of qualified students</p>
<p>Hi tennis. I concur. The real issue that presents itself is how difficult is it to
get into the biz school via applying as a soph. If it is anymore as difficult, a person could find himself changing majors or schools if not accepted in to it.
Still, UMIch is probably the # 2 best undergrad biz school in the country. I have a number of colleagues who work downtown here in NYC and UMich carries a lot of weight.</p>
<p>2300? Where do you get that figure from? I don't believe the number of pre-admits tripled.</p>
<p>Rossis not #2. It's like 5 or 6, and that's only bc the top schools mostly don't have undergrad business. Getting a business undergrad (except wharton) is very limiting for career options down the road. They want economics/math majors for the best positions. Talk to any recruiter; they will confirm this that by getting a BBA you just created a glass ceiling for yourself.</p>
<p>MBJ, many of the pre-admits will have lower stats than your son. With such a high quality pool of applicants, the essay plays an important role in the pre-admit process. The essay should demonstrate a passion for business and the skills necessary to succeed in business. I wrote about a humanitarian effort I initiated at my high school and focused on the transferable business skills I used to make the effort successful (organizing people, raising money, persistance and perserverance, marketing, etc.). My stats were slightly above average for the pre-admit pool, but not markedly so.</p>
<p>Getting in with a freshmen application... The middle 80% UM GPA was 3.29-3.91 for the sophomore class of 2007, and the average/median (not sure which) GPA was 3.59. Usually, about 50% of the freshmen applicants are accepted. This last year the number was around 37% (too lazy to find it on other previous thread). However, the class size was a bit smaller due to space limitations until the new building is complete... but the applications were also up. Ross is becoming more popular, but the GPA median was the same as the previous year.</p>
<p>Given your sons high school stats and achievements and assuming he focuses during his freshman year, I would bet he stands a good chance of being accepted as a freshmen applicant... assuming he doesn't make it in the pre-admit class.</p>
<p>1MX, take a look at the Ross BBA employment stats... the glass ceiling is BS.
<a href="http://www.bus.umich.edu/pdf/EmploymentProfile2006.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.bus.umich.edu/pdf/EmploymentProfile2006.pdf</a></p>
<p>I agree that Ross is not Wharton, but the top firms recruit and hire from Ross and a few other schools. Ross is ranked #3 by USNews and #5 by BusinessWeek.</p>
<p>1MX, you also have no idea what you're talking about regarding the number of applicants. Read Scott Moore's blog... the head of the BBA program. The number was about 2300 pre-admit applicants.</p>
<p>Sounds like you have some axe to grind with Ross or you just haven't been following the threads over the past few months. Whatever... do some research.</p>
<p>The figure 2300 is absolutely correct. 1MX , if you don't have your facts please refrain from blindsiding others.
And noone was asking for anyones opinion regarding the career of BBA's and whether or not its 'creating a glass ceiling for yourself.'</p>
<p>This year , there were 2300 applicants , and around 130 were accepted as Ross was shooting for a preadmit class of about 100. That would bring the acceptance rate considerably lower. As tennis says , you cannot know if you'll be accepted even if you have excellent stats. The essays , you EC's and your leadership expereince count a lot.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Competition for preferred admit program</p>
<p>We are extremely blessed here at the Ross School. Through a combination of factors, there is a great competition for the slots in the preferred admit program by which high school seniors can gain tentative admittance to the Ross School. (I say “tentative” because these students have to maintain a 3.3 GPA during their freshman year at Michigan before they become full-fledged students of the Ross School.)</p>
<p>This program was approved as a two-year pilot program by the Ross faculty in which we would hope to enroll about 70 freshmen per year. Last year got off to a great start and we were able to enroll a great group of students. This year has been even better. (The following numbers are tentative but are indicative of how competitive the program is.) UM received about 25,000 applications this year. Of those, about 2300 indicated that they would like to be considered for the preferred admissions program. 2300! I went to the Ross faculty and said that, though 70 sounded like a good number a couple of years ago when the program was approved, I’d like to enroll about 100 students this year. I showed them the evidence of the quality of these students and they were convinced. Thus, this year we should have an entering class of 100 preferred admit students.</p>
<p>We do not know if 100 will be the number of slots for this program into the future. I bet that it’s going to increase in coming years but we’ll just have to see how the applications look. For now, I’m glad that we have been able to provide an avenue for these students to get into Ross right out of high school. I look forward to seeing great results from them (and all Ross students) in coming years.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You were saying?</p>
<p>if i want to pursue a job with wall street or an investment path (banking possibly) would it be wiser to enter a business school and major in business finance with a minor in economics, or the other way around? thanks in advance</p>
<p>I apologize, but please explain the data found here... <a href="http://www.bus.umich.edu/Admissions/BBA/2006BBAprefadmit.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.bus.umich.edu/Admissions/BBA/2006BBAprefadmit.pdf</a></p>
<p>It clearly says 716 applicants. Has the number tripled in a year? if so, what does that mean for 2008 applicants.</p>
<p>Although Ross is #3 on the charts, the top schools understand that giving a busines degree is somewhat limiting, so this is the path that kids take:
Wharton, MIT (Econ), MIT (Management), Harvard (Econ), Princeton (Econ), Yale (Econ), Stanford (Econ)......Dartmouth(Econ), Penn (Econ), Duke (Econ), Columbia (Econ), Caltech (Econ) are all more highly recruited than a Ross grad. It is no wonder that Ross slips to #15 I believe in grad-school ranking.</p>
<p>Take this post by Shawbridge for example:
It's probably early to know what you want to do. Most people do end up in business, but I think you are better off learning how to think in college. The real question is whether you will want to end up in the elite parts of business (i-banking, private equity, management consulting). That's where a lot of money tends to get made, but you tend to work about 25 hours a day and if you don't absolutely love it, it can be very stressful. There are other ways to go into business, including learning about technology and becoming an entrepreneur.</p>
<p>I've never looked at this systematically, but my impression is that the people who go to undergraduate business school tend not to be at the high positions later on. There may be two reasons for this: 1) the smart kids don't go to undergrad business school; 2) what they teach ultimately isn't what you need to be extremely successful; 3) fast-track employers don't think for the first two reasons that they'll find what they want at undergrad business programs. There may be a couple of exceptions to this (e.g., Wharton), but I think that is generally true.</p>
<p>Let me give you one data point. Two days ago, I was talking to my nephew wants to go into business. He is studying economics at McGill. [All the bright kids from the Canadian side of my family go to McGill]. He said that he sat in on some management courses and was surprised that when they taught economic concepts, they did so in a way that people could appreciate them but not really understand them. He thought it would be both frustrating and not all that useful. It is kind of like studying physics without calculus -- you are unlikely to understand much in a way that would enable you to make your understanding useful. I agree with him.</p>
<p>I've been a professor at a prestigious B-school, an investment banker, worked in private equity, helped start a couple of hedge funds (though never made them my main activity), co-founded and run a boutique consulting firm; and do other stuff (write, sit on a couple of boards, etc.). My belief is that you are better off learning how to think as an undergraduate (be able to put on a hat as a micro-economist, game theorist, social psychologist; cognitive psychologist, neuro-scientist, transportation engineer, statistician, evolutionary biologist, etc.) than learning accounting and lower level finance and marketing. Then, get some work experience. Then, go back to business school. My experience as a professor was that the students without work experience hadn't wrestled with enough difficult decisions to understand why what they were learning in B-school was valuable. The older students tended to get more out of the experience.</p>
<p>I've hired folks who studied business as an undergraduate. They've gotten the less interesting jobs -- like back office in the hedge fund. The best employee I've ever had was an undergrad math/econ major at UMass Amherst (and I hired kids from Harvard, MIT, Princeton as well as Babson, Bentley). He could figure out a function that he was performing and find a way to automate big parts (via software) so he could focus on just the parts that required judgment. He also was always teaching himself new things, which he would then bring into the job. He's now a foreign currency trader at a big bank and doing very well. We didn't trade foreign currencies, so again he's prospering by learning. I taught myself finance and business strategy during my year as a post-doc at a business school. I later put these to work as an investment banker and consultant. If your education enables you to learn how to learn, you'll be well-served in life.</p>
<p>Anyway, the moral of my story is simple: If you want a career in business and are not going to come at it from the technology end, I think that at the undergraduate level, it is better to a) learn how to think well; and b) learn how to learn than to learn specifics about business. I'd say this is true with respect to the high end jobs, but I'd also argue that the increasing competitiveness we are going to see in the global market for labor means that even the middle-level jobs are going to face lots of competition and wage pressure and being able to think and adapt, like my best employee, is going to be the major way to maintain decent wages.</p>
<p>Just my 2 cents based upon my own idiosyncratic experience and analysis.</p>
<p>In that regard, I feel that learning many method based tasks (e.g finance, accounting) is a waste of time at the undergrad level. If you are good enough for ross, you're good enough for the ivies. Go to a prestigious, highly recruited, top 15 school, major in econ, and learn how to think business-like rather being fed method based business. Experience is the biggest asset, and frankly, I don't see any undergrad business education except wharton providing that.</p>
<p>ALSO: <a href="http://www.bus.umich.edu/Admissions/BBA/Prospective/Program/HowToApply.htm#HS-Seniors%5B/url%5D">http://www.bus.umich.edu/Admissions/BBA/Prospective/Program/HowToApply.htm#HS-Seniors</a>
right under high school students it says for 2006 they had 16% acceptance rate. 100 on 2300 is around 4-5% while 100 on 700 is around 16%</p>
<p>The number has tripled in a year, clearly you're not with the times. The 2008 applicants who apply to the preferred admit program can expect stiffer competition. </p>
<p>And no one had asked for opinions on whether BBA at Ross is the way to go or not. You needlessly bring up an age old debate with these posts.</p>