in terms of finding undergrad jobs/internship, AND MOST IMPORTANTLYY getting into business school (GPA/ interest level)
Can you also list a few colleges/universities that have good business programs, but aren’t too hard to get into?
Accounting
Finance
General Business Administration
Marketing
International Business
Management of Information systems
Entrepeneurship
I’m not sure the exact hierarchy but here goes nothing.
Finance
International Business
Accounting
General Business
Marketing
Entrepreneurship
Management of Information systems
Indiana University Bloomington is great but selective. What are your stats?
I think accounting is the best. You learn concrete skills (like an engineer), and accounting is also the language of business, so you learn how a business functions. If your GPA is 3.5+ and you have decent interviewing skills, you would have a very good chance of getting a job at one of the big 4 firms. Lots of great exit opportunities if you can stick it out a few years. Even if you can’t get a job at one of the big 4 firms, there are other big firms you could work for, like Grant Thornton, or you could work in the private sector. Investment banks also hire accounting majors. An accounting major can do anything that a finance major can do, but a finance major can’t do everything that an accounting major can do.
International business and entrepreneurship are too broad. They would be better combined with a second major. I’ve listened to several business seminars by entrepreneurs, and one of the points that they focus on is the important of marketing when launching a business. You have to market your product/company to investors and to consumers. So if you’re interested in entrepreneurship, maybe double major in marketing.
Schools with good business programs that aren’t too competitive:
Brigham Young University(!!!)
Temple University
Southern Methodist University
Texas Christian University
Boston University
University of Wisconsin-Madison
The Ohio State University
Penn State University
UIUC
Baruch College (!!!)
Fordham University
San Jose State University
Cal Poly SLO
Babson College
University of Alabama
University of Alabama at Huntsville
Bentley University
Would be more helpful and specific if you posted your stats.
For MBA, none of the above. Your best bet is to major in anything technical like econ, math or a lab science and double major or minor in English.
GPA (weighted): 3.9
ACT: 30 (31 E, 33 R, 27 S, 29 M)
SAT Scores: 1980 (650 M, 650 W, 680 CR)
2nd time: 1950
Super Score: 2030
Class Rank: 31/160(around)
Activities/ECs:
Varsity Tennis (9th grade-present)
Drama Club/President (10th grade-present)
Service Club (9th grade-present)
School Senate (11th-present)
National Honors Society (11th-present)
Language National Honors Society (11th-present)
Science Academy (10th-11th)
Math League (11th)
Church youth group/Vice President (11th-Present)
AP Classes:
AP Biology (scored 3)
AP Physics
AP Environmental Science
AP US History
AP Literature
AP Word History
AP Statistics
Misc:
Attended Princeton Summer program (9th grade)
Missions trip to Honduras to teach (9th-present)
Internship at a theater company (11th)
Volunteer at a theater company (11th)
Volunteer at Special Olympics (9th-10th)
Fairleigh Dickinson Summer Teacher Program (11th)
Founder of children’s summer program at my church (11th)
Income bracket: Around $100k
Race: Asian, Female
I am assuming you live in NJ.
Lehigh
Bucknell
TCNJ
Loyola Maryland
Elon
Villanova
James Madison
TCNJ cannot be beat for value in the area and campus is very nice. The program is excellent. You would probably also qualify for merit money.
Stockton has a great business program too. Between the opportunity of working at the Seaview resort plus their hotel management articulation program with Cornell, Stockton has solid academics. Merit money can definitely be available there too.
It really depends on what kind of opportunities you are interested in. Accounting and Marketing are really not commensurable, for example, two totally different fish.
If your goal is a top MBA, you should have a combination Major/Minor that includes one quantitative (Statistics is great, but Math, Physics, Engineering, CS, all work) and one “traditional Liberal Arts” outside of the previous ones, such as History, Philosophy, Classics, a Foreign Language, Economics…
MBA classes include all kinds of majors and Business majors are a minority, whereas they often make up a majority of applicants, ie., your odds are minuscule if you’re not a Wharton/Stern/Babson/Mendoza graduate, whereas any strong major in other subjects has a better shot.
Stanford separates Business Majors from others, and you’ll notice they form only 14% of the total; Harvard lumps business majors with economics, which together form a large group, but the split falls toward economics. Penn has the largest group of business majors (27%) and it’s still quite a minority considering the percentage of applicants.
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/programs/mba/admission/evaluation-criteria/class-profile
http://mba.wharton.upenn.edu/admissions/class-profile/
http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/class-profile/Pages/default.aspx
I’m not really sure how one would create a ranking of business majors because as @NavalTradition mentioned they are all completely different subjects. The majority of MBA schools list “business” as an overall undergraduate major and don’t breakout specifically between marketing, finance, management, etc. so there isn’t really any way to classify a given major increasing your likelihood of acceptance. Additionally you would need to know how many applicants applied from each major to determine the acceptance rate (by major), and not just the top level breakdown of majors/industry experience.
As for specific schools, I would look into state schools such as UCLA, Penn State, Indiana, SUNY, and U Michigan to start.