<p>I really want to attend the Harvard Business School for grad school in my future. Right now I am trying to decide between Duke University and Georgetown University. Duke is the better school and is a liberal arts undergrad while Georgetown is better for my major (International Business) and is a pre-profession undergrad. Is the liberal arts education at Duke or the International Business major at Georgetown as an undergraduate student going to look better and increase my chances of being accepting into the Harvard Business School?</p>
<p>Duke and Georgetown are pretty equivalent colleges. Neither one really has any advantage over the other in terms of applying to business school later, at Harvard or elsewhere. And for what it’s worth, I think you are way overstating any difference between Georgetown and Duke.</p>
<p>Majoring in business in any form is not a plus when you apply to elite business schools like Harvard, but it’s not a disqualification, either. What you do outside the classroom, and after you graduate, will be more important than what you major in no matter where you go to college.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how those two compare, but making college decisions based on grad school preferences is not wise. You have four years in front of you, and you should choose according to college experience.</p>
<p>Well here’s the figures for the most recently enrolled HBS class if you’re interested…</p>
<p>[Top</a> Feeder Colleges to Harvard B-School | Poets and Quants](<a href=“http://poetsandquants.com/2011/08/15/top-feeder-colleges-to-harvard-business-school/2/]Top”>http://poetsandquants.com/2011/08/15/top-feeder-colleges-to-harvard-business-school/2/)</p>
<p>Duke: 23
Georgetown: 16</p>
<p>I would generally echo JHS’s advice though. Duke’s Political Science department is in the top 10 so I wouldn’t worry too much about graduate school since either school will prepare you well.</p>
<p>On a related note, Duke is the 2nd best feeder to Booth and Tuck. It is ranked as the 3rd best feeder to Columbia and Kellogg. These are all phenomenal business schools, I would say Duke would definitely put you at an advantage for HBS, but, having said that, it all comes down to individual initiative.</p>
<p>I suspect the difference is that Duke attracts a higher percentage of students who want to go to business school than Georgetown. Lots of people at Georgetown want to work in the federal government (including, of course, the State Department and the Foreign Service). An MBA isn’t an especially useful degree for that. There are students at Duke with similar ambitions, of course, but far fewer of them than at Georgetown. Conversely, Duke has more people who want to work for investment banks and hedge funds.</p>
<p>Woah. Cornell only sent 14? Princeton sent 26 and has 2.5 times fewer students.</p>
<p>So, roughly speaking, does going to Princeton multiply your chances by 5 as opposed to if you had gone to Cornell?</p>
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I’m actually surprised that the Princeton number is that low; it must have been a down year at HBS for the Tigers. Princeton is a much stronger feeder into elite Wall Street/Consulting jobs than Cornell, as much as I would hate to admit it to a future Cornellian. The answer to your question: probably.</p>
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You know, I rarely disagree with anything you say on these boards, but I"ll have to make an exception here. The Georgetown student body is just as inclined to pursue careers in the financial industry as the Duke student body if not to a greater extent. The McDonough School of Business at Georgetown enrolls about 1,350 students which means that each graduating class has between 300-350 students. A vast majority of these Georgetown grads will seek an MBA sometime down the line in addition to a select bunch of students from SFS and the CAS school there. There are probably at least 500 Georgetown students from each graduating class for whom an MBA is most likely in the cards. At Duke, typically a quarter of the undergraduate student body pursues careers in consulting and finance. If we assume all 400 of these students will look to get an MBA down the line along with maybe a 100 or a 150 more students who did something entirely different after their undergraduate studies, that would give us a figure that’s pretty close to the Georgetown one.</p>
<p>The real difference between the student bodies at Duke and Georgetown is the interest level in medical school as well as government as you aptly point out. Twice as many Dukies apply to medical school according to the link below and I wouldn’t be surprised if at least twice as many Hoyas vied for careers in think thanks, the foreign service, NGOs, and the like.</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/86042/table2.html[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/86042/table2.html</a></p>
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<p>The notion of “feeder schools” makes no sense, because the relevant measure is NOT “what % of the grad school’s people came from school X or school Y,” but “of those at school X who wanted to get into this program, how many got in” vs “of those at school Y who wanted to get into this program, how many got in.” Mathematically, you guys are looking at horizontals when you need to look at verticals. Or, if you’re going to make any conclusions off “what % of the grad school’s people came from school X or school Y,” you draw the comparison to “what % of the grad school’s APPLICANTS came from school Y or school Y.”</p>
<p>All your feeder-school analyses do are “reward” schools in which the student bodies are so boring, uniform, and “prestige-driven” that they all flock to exactly the same graduate schools and/or careers, so tons of them apply and get in. A school in which people have a variety of career and grad school interests is so much more rewarding than a school in which everyone flocks to the same thing, and it’s amazing that more of you don’t see that. But you will, when you grow up.</p>
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<p>Guys - some basic math facility is called for here.<br>
The Cornell - 14 and Princeton - 26 only makes sense in the context of the # of applicants from each school, which you don’t have.</p>
<p>Saugus - let’s say 28 Cornellians applied and 50% (14) were accepted, just for the sake of argument.
How can you conclude that the 26 from Princeton means “Princeton multiplies your chances by 2.5”?<br>
It might be that 26 from Princeton applied and 100% (all 26) were accepted.<br>
Or 52 from Princeton applied and 50% (26) were accepted - same ratio as Cornell.<br>
Or 260 from Princeton applied and 10% (26) were accepted.</p>
<p>The actual size of the school is immaterial. The only thing that matters is the size of the applicant pool for the grad school (or career) in question, relative to the size of those who got in. This mistake is made over and over and over again on CC, and it’s super frustrating to observe bright kids making it.</p>
<p>Anyway, JHS is completely right, as usual - schools at this level are all equivalent for the purposes of getting into a good b-school, and b-schools care about what you did after your undergrad, not about your undergrad per se. You guys way, way overthink the impact of these minute differences in the real world. In the real world, which includes HBS, Duke and Gtown are both excellent, first-rate schools, end of subject.</p>
<p>Duke>Georgetown</p>
<p>Duke simply has the prestige required to get into HBS.</p>
<p>And you “know” this how, exactly, being a hs senior or college freshman?</p>