<p>Which undergraduate programs give students the best opportunities in business? In other words which schools have the best connections in getting their students high paying jobs?</p>
<p>Ivies and top LACs, the very top publics (UMich, UVA, UCB), NYU Stern.</p>
<p>Add: USC, UCLA, UT-Austin, Stanford, G-town. (These are in no particualr order).</p>
<p>Upenn, Dartmouth for sure (number one feeder school into Wall Street internships), HYPMS, NYU, Duke (well, for Goldman Sachs stuff), COlumbia fo' sho.</p>
<p>pretty much all of the best overall schools will provide you with the best opps</p>
<p>just major in econ and have lots of math and they'll like you</p>
<p>Then you get to put in 80-90 hour weeks for a petty tyrant boss with only a very slim chance of being made an officer/partner. You also have to lie about things you know to be false in order to help the firm dupe investors. See the late 90's collapse for details. Maybe you get to go to jail too.</p>
<p>How optimistic.</p>
<p>Just telling it like it is. I do plenty of work with IB types.</p>
<p>Hopefully the stereotype above will not influence you. There are many careers in business and many types of people. There are greedy, lying doctors, too. And lawyers. And journalists. And salespeople. And.....</p>
<p>Dartmouth is not the number one school for Wall Street internships. I'm not quite sure where you are getting your information from...</p>
<p>Any top university will have excellent connections to the corporate world. That includes but is not limited to the following schools:</p>
<p>Amherst College
Bowdoin College
Carleton College
Claremont McKenna College
Colgate University
Davidson College
Grinnell College
Harvey Mudd College
Haverford College
Macalester College
Middlebury College
Oberlin College
Pomona College
Swarthmore College
Vassar College
Wesleyan University
Williams College</p>
<p>Brown University
California Institute of Technology
Carnegie Mellon University
Columbia University
Cornell University
Dartmouth College
Duke University
Georgetown University
Harvard University
Johns Hopkins University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
New York University
Northwestern University
Princeton University
University of California-Berkeley
University of California-Los Angeles
University of Chicago
University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
University of Pennsylvania
University of Southern California
University of Texas-Austin
University of Virginia
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Yale University</p>
<p>Obviously, Business schools and schools of Engineering are probably the most effective at placing students into top jobs. So schools like Cal (Engineering and Haas), Cornell (Engineering), MIT (Engineering and Sloan), Michigan (Engineering and Ross), NYU (Stern), Penn (Wharton), Stanford (Engineering) etc... are probably best at placing students into top companies. However, I personally recommend studying a more intellectually stimulating subject than Business at the undergraduate level. It may require you to take more initiative, but it is certainly worth the effort.</p>
<p>What about finance, Alexandre?</p>
<p>The first thing a person must realize is that one does NOT have to major in Finance to get a job with a top flight IB. Otherwise, schools like Stanford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Chicago, Duke, Northwestern, Williams, Amherst, Haverford, Swarthmore etc... (none of which have Finance as a major) would not be such major IB hunting grounds. The fact of the matter is, any of the universities listed above will open doors. Obviously, a student who goes to Wharton, Stern, Ross or Sloan will have a better chance than a student at say Davidson or UCLA.</p>
<p>I brought up finance not from a career prospect angle, but for its "intellectual stimulation." Wouldn't you say that, as being arguably the most scientific of the business disciplines, it would be sufficciently stimulating?</p>
<p>I would not consider Finance to be "intellectually stimulating". It is challenging, but I find all Business fields to be void of passion.</p>
<p>Perhaps it depends on what specifically one is doing, within the realm of finance.</p>
<p>I can assure you that many people will find various corporate finance problems, e.g., determining optimal capital structure for a particular firm, what types of financing strategies to employ, etc., and then convincing a company to adopt your ideas, to be issues that are both challenging AND intellectually stimulating.</p>
<p>Creating a structured transaction in its totality (covenants, pro formas, credits, etc.), predicting how a particular such transaction or certain provisions will be received by rating agencies and various types of investors, and then successfully selling the finished product to all these people; this whole process employs more than a few brain cells before you're done.</p>
<p>At the more esoteric levels, the issues surrounding valuation of investment opportunities are highly complex. "Financial Strategies" groups at large banks, investment firms and energy companies are littered with PhDs. Structuring and valuing various options and other derivative products can be exceptionally intellectually demanding. This is true whether they appear on the trading/ buy side, or the "Sell" side where corporate entities and banks structure and issue these products in the first place. Someone has to figure out what all these things will do for the initiators of the instrument, and for the purchasers. And the concepts have to be understood and manipulated by a number of the parties involved in implementing these schemes, not just one lone valuation specialist.</p>
<p>Frequently the mere question of what discount rate(s) to use to value a particular investment opportunity can be an intellectually challenging (and contentious) problem. Particularly when leases of various types are involved. I've witnessed some "passion" and serious internal conflict surrounding some of these decisions, I can assure you.</p>
<p>Based on my particular set of work experiences over the years I Would consider Finance to be "intellectually stimulating". And challenging too.</p>
<p>You are correct monydad. Each person has a different definiton of interesting or intellectually stimulating. I personally find Economics fascinating. Many think it is boring to tears! LOL I definitely agree that Finance is challenging.</p>
<p>I think economics is pretty much a good thing to do if you want to go into business (and its pretty intellectually stimulating too).</p>
<p>yeah, I am majoring in econ along with maybe philosophy</p>
<p>yeah plenty about business can be intellectually stimulating, i suppose it is just your definition that defines it, but dont forget then to let people know that and not simply say that it isnt. </p>
<p>Especially considering as an undergrad you learn many different facets of it as and undergrad, from global economics, to marketing to finance. They are no less void of passion than anything else you coiuld major in if you dont care about them. Then you're required to take liberal arts requirments most places, frankly thats one of the better educations you can get.</p>
<p>I feel business is a much more stimulating and useful subject to learn over something like sociology, whether it is intellectually stimulating or has passion depends very much on the person, so no one person can really say definitvely what something lacks.</p>