Hi! My name is Brooke and I am currently attending a community college in Maryland majoring in Finance with the hopes of transferring to a top finance school in Spring 2018. There’s one problem, I don’t know what university I want to attend. I’m not posting on this form for lectures about student loans and how I should stick to an instate school. There’s a couple of universities I am looking at as of right now; Ohio State, Mississippi State, and University of Maryland. As you can tell, there’s a good variety here, Ohio State having a top ranked finance program, Mississippi State having an accelerated MBA program, and then there’s my instate option which is UMD. I guess what i’m trying to get insight on is if I should attend the school with top finance program rankings (Ohio) and have more opportunities for a good internship junior and senior year, or settle for Mississippi State or UMD (both about the same price after scholarships) and spend more money on an MBA from a good school. I also have another question, should I spend more money on a undergrad degree or a MBA? And, do companies actually look at where your undergrad degree is from? I am very interested in Investment Banking if that helps.
- Transfer students get very little institutional financial aid so keep that in mind. Always apply to schools where you are guaranteed huge merit scholarships or that are in-state so they are affordable.
- Make sure the business school is AACSB accredited, that's the baseline requirement.
- There's these schools called "target schools" They're called targets because prestigious banks and firms recruit at them. Generally speaking, that's top schools like Ivy Leagues, NYU-Stern, UMich-Ross, etc. Transferring into these schools is VERY hard because not only are you competing against other transfer students, you're also competing against people INSIDE of the school trying to transfer from econ -> business or something like that.
- Some non-target schools have special investment banking programs that help them compete with better schools for spots at prestigious firms. For example, Rutgers-NB has a "road to wall street" program
- Because business is all about networking - you'll often find that schools place well into the areas that they're located in. For example, I hear UMD places into DC, and NYU will place more into NYC, and Ohio State will probably place better into Cleveland.
- Based on everything I've read and heard from professionals, getting an accelerated MBA is not very useful. A MBA is best done after a few years of work.
- If you're paying for all of this yourself, IMO you should try to save money during undergrad, because you might end up with a job where they will pay for your MBA or EMBA, or you might find you get an awesome job and you don't want the MBA. If you save money, you can take out some loans for a MBA from a top school if you feel like you're not moving up in the world as fast as you'd like.
If all else is equal, I would take UMD > Miss State. Save money, get the best GPA you can possibly get, and network. Utilize resources like:
https://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/programs/undergraduate-programs/academics/fellows-special-programs
investment & financing clubs
And take on internships, especially if you’re going to be doing nothing during summers anyways.
Plus, Ohio State isn’t worth more debt than UMD imo!
Thank you so much! Only reason why I considered Ohio State is because the finance program has solid rankings (#13 u.s news and world report 2017). UMD’s business school isn’t bad at all and there are a lot of opportunities in D.C. especially for banking.
I would still apply to all of them, and see what sort of financial aid packages you get. Ohio State - Fisher is a good school but it really depends on the cost difference.