<p>Hi, guys. If i am pretty set on business, which school will best pave my roads to the real business world? I am kind of struggling now since Columbia enjoys a much better overall reputation but SEAS seems irrelavent to business, plus Ross is pretigious in the world of business.</p>
<p>Thank you for all the opinions.</p>
<p>^In seas the industrial engineering & operations research department is geared somewhat towards business, in particular you could major in engineering management systems, which is possibly the easiest major in seas, but still considerably more mathematical and technical than a normal business degree (which is kind of worthless). What do you ultimately want to do? - if it’s something like consulting or finance, I’d say an IEOR degree from Columbia beats a degree from Ross in terms of job placement - consulting and finance is what most business majors get into.</p>
<p>Seas also has a minor in technological entrepreneurship which might be what you are looking for, many people who want to do “business” in seas, major in ieor, and get a minor in econ and in tech entrepreneurship. I think this combination gives you a pretty solid platform to understand business, while still giving you a real education. Most people will agree that a bachelor’s degree in business is close to worthless, a business degree makes sense after some work experience, this is why MBA programs almost never takes student straight out of undergrad.</p>
<p>^hi, thanks for your opinion. However, from my own investigation, in terms of job placement, Ross seems to do better in placing students in top IB or Consulting banks. The number of students get into top firms is half of those of Wharton(while Ross has a class of 350 but Wharton has a 600, the percent is about the same). Frankly, i am just afraid that the industrial engineering focus too much on quantative, but can not resist the location and reputation…</p>
<p>hey biz </p>
<p>there are a lot of variables you are working here, and some things more important than just ‘placement.’</p>
<p>the first is the location you want to be - ann arbor and new york are very different places. the size of the university. the skill set you’d like to have (a more broad based quant background honestly is probably the most useful skill set in about every industry at the moment). but also know that me and concoll are skeptics of biz schools and their purpose. and ultimately you have different student cultures - umich is big, vibrant, but ultimately a bit more homogenous, columbia will be international, diverse, and i guess the best word for it is cosmpolitan.</p>
<p>also, there are intangibles that both places have - football weekend at mich is legendary for a reason, every weekend in new york is full of something wild and unpredictable. and it is this later aspect i gravitate to. four years in new york and at columbia will honestly be one of the greatest experiences and growing experiences you’ll ever have in life. i really can’t emphasize enough how much the city makes you better (even in the most subtle of ways). you can live in new york of course after graduation, but it is not the same - working 80 hrs a week as a consultant, spending most of your time away from the office cannot compare to the candy store that is being a student in the city. its an experience i highly recommend.</p>
<p>you’ll do fine with placement at either school - i mean all that matters is that you do well at either school. ross might place you in chicago first though and chicago is not new york. you can have on the scene internships while at columbia.</p>
<p>i hope you choose columbia, it is a decision i don’t think you will regret. and even when you’re complaining to folks - just watch the nostalgia reel in when you graduate, for all the growing pains you go through - columbia will better prepare you than most schools for the real world.</p>
<p>It depends on what you mean by business. If you mean business development and corporate finance in a Fortune 500 company, then Ross is the place to go.</p>
<p>As for the engineering department at SEAS, especially Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, the school is a feeder for the top Wall Street firms. Thus, it depends on what you want to do, business or the financial services. As long as you have a 3.7 by the beginning of your junior year in engineering (not that easy), you have a great shot at being recruited to the top Wall Street firms.</p>
<p>That said, engineering has little pertinence to many of the careers in financial services. Being able to solve Ordinary Differential Equations, solve kinematic equations, as well as programming won’t be useful in Investment Banking, Equity Research, and Sales and Trading, though it shows that you can add, subtract, multiply, and divide.</p>
<p>come to columbia!
[YouTube</a> - Columbia University!](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZG7gThoGME]YouTube”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZG7gThoGME)</p>
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<p>Wall street still loves engineers and science students, because they work hard and are analytical and quantitative. Also you don’t need to get a 3.7, kids with 3.4s get into top divisions at top investment banks, because Columbia is strongly recruited. (like investment banking or trading at bulge bracket) Kids with 3.2-3.5 are even recruited by top consulting firms like Booz, Monitor, Oliver Wyman etc. </p>
<p>Finally, statistics on job placement don’t tell you much. It’s actually very easy to make it to a top bank if work in a back office division or are not in a top tier city. But ask around, and ask on wallstreetoasis.com for opinions on Columbia seas vs. U Mich ross, you’ll get a much better perspective on which recruits better for what.</p>
<p>I agree with confidentialcoll that Wall Street loves engineers and science students. I second that you should ask wallstreetoasis rather than College Confidential. </p>
<p>A caveat to engineering is that being quantitative is only one facet of recruitment. Engineering is a much more difficult discipline than most at Columbia, and your GPA or social life will suffer. Keep in mind that you’ll be competing against humanities and social science majors who have a significant GPA boost from the Core Curriculum and language classes (for example, teachers need to fill out a petition to give a student a B- or lower in core classes and 70% of students receive an A in language classes), while in most engineering classes, 40% of the students get a B- or lower.</p>
<p>Furthermore, once you get an interview, your engineering background won’t matter because it’s up to your background and how well you can speak. Just some caveats, but I totally support going to SEAS if you want to do financial services.</p>