Recommendations for Majors/classes

Hi guys!

I was recently admitted and plan to attend Emory, and I was hoping I could get some help in planning for my classes and major in my time there.

I plan on applying to Goizueta in the hopes of getting an investment banking job. However, I believe I’ll eventually try to exit into a career more intellectually stimulating (like buy-side, corporate, or entrepreneurship) which would require more from me than the regular finance shenanigans. In a way, I’m grateful because I’ll be pushed to challenge myself and to grow beyond the bare minimum.

QTM:
I was looking for ideas for this path and I came across the QTM + BBA program. I’m sure it’s rigorous enough, but it will probably eat up a lot of time (and my GPA). Does anyone know what careers in finance would help with? Otherwise, my time might be better spent on off-cycle internships and other stuff.

Entrepreneurship:
Can someone elaborate on the relative strength of Emory’s entrepreneurship secondary area depth? Normally I’d be all over starting a business but its really risky lol. If I decide to start one after becoming financially secure, I would want to be confident in my abilities and experience.

Bunch of electives:
If I don’t have a strong program to put a lot of time into (besides normal requirements), I’ll probably play around with electives on HF, PE, VC, and whatever else I think might be fun. This plan is a bit flimsy and weak for my taste.

If you guys have any ideas for what else I could do, I’d greatly appreciate them!

—side note
I’ve read online that Goizueta used to be ranked highly (by Businessweek) but it’s fallen from grace. Does anyone know why this happened? It now consistently ranks like 15,16.

Disclaimer: I don’t actually care much about rankings, just curious

Thanks yalalalalalalls

@kingloogie : I’m not gonna answer the other stuff because I don’t know enough (other than, I imagine that since jobs look for competencies and skills, most won’t over-rate GPA and will likely account for the intensity of something like QTM vs. a standard BBA for which many companies have an idea of what those GPAs should look like from a place like Emory. If you have a stronger quantitative and computational background than most students, that would likely be taken into account. Do NOT only focus on putting on a paper-based show of perfectionism. Do as well as you can in terms of that, but make sure you LEARN in the courses and via internships so that you can show off and discuss skills that separate you from other applicants. Note that it may also make you more versatile in terms of the types of jobs you could access post-grad), but the ranking thing is silly.

There is really no “fall from grace” with the rankings. I don’t know how they used to do the rankings, but I imagine that Emory was not as hurt by being a 2 year program as before because perhaps the “employer survey” (which means that, for one, the firms/employers must have experience recruiting the students) is weighted more than it used to, and Emory may have issues with the recruiting cycle because of this. I know one issue that they deal with now is that the recruiting cycle moved early, so this puts Emory at a slight disadvantage. There is also the “internship” metric that I imagine a 4 year program would have a huge advantage with. Despite all this, based upon the more holistic measurements and coverage done by say…a Poets and Quants, it seems Emory does as well or better than many of the schools that have been ranked the highest by businessweek. The placement is extremely strong and the start salaries are up there (especially considering the fact that it is in the south and that a huge chunk will place in the south), very close to all these 4 year programs that have ultra resticted admissions and cherry-pick high SAT/ACT scores from the get go (Emory just basically admits anyone that qualifies who has completed 2 years of college). It is what it is, the placement and starting salaries and whatever folks do afterwards matters, and it is doing pretty damned well in those areas (and this may be partly BECAUSE students spend 2 years in the college).

Here: Looks like I was right:https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-best-undergrad-business-schools/

The only area Emory hurts is the employer rank, which makes some sense. Not much you can do as a 2 year program. My guess is that some wished it was 4 years or something and that GBS wishes more were ready by time of recruitment (and the internship conversion rate would likely be better if more students perhaps interned multiple times for one company or something like that. Harder to do in a 2 year program).

Also, I’ve seen WUSTL in particular in some other rankings (and in some measurements done by P&Q) clean Emory’s clock, but it doesn’t in Businessweek. These don’t seem that reliable. Anything that is a strong ranking seems to suggest the school is doing fine. Like I am sure some of these places are fine schools and all, but unless I desperately value being housed in a business school for 4 years, I am not sure I would pick them over Emory just to say: “Well, it ranks high in X”.

Also, Penn is right below Emory (and performs even worse in “employer” surveys)! I wanna know how many students would use this information to pass Wharton over for Emory. I just wanna know. I don’t imagine Emory performing well in cross-admit battles. Make it make sense.