Suggestions for business major in the Northeast?

College Search & Selection
1

My son is looking at schools in the Northeast that are strong in business. He’s applied EA at several schools and now we’re looking at RD. Even though I’ve looked through lists and books and maps and posts here on CC I find myself thinking we may have missed an obvious good choice and we’ll be saying “Why didn’t we apply to ___ ??”

These are his criteria:

Good business programs (he’s thinking of accounting or finance) but not a business college so that he doesn’t need to transfer if he decides that business isn’t for him. (So Babson & Bentley are out)

Relatively large and near or accessible to a city, doesn’t want a small LAC or a school in a “middle of nowhere” college town. (Therefore not interested in Penn State, which he liked at first, or Muhlenberg, which would give him decent aid.)
½ day driving distance from NYC suburbs [or, less desirable, 1 day drive but near a major airport]

Tuition $35,000 or less, or brought down to that amount with merit aid / scholarships

Internships available, good career services and strong alumni networking.
(His first choice would have been Villanova if not for the financial issue. We visited 3 years ago with my daughter who was more competitive for merit there but we told him straight out that we can’t afford it.)
(Our EFC is 34K for next year while we have 2 in college; D is a junior at Mt Holyoke where she got good merit aid. She plans to go on to grad school (research science) and while many schools would consider her as a fulltime student in grad school, the Villanova site says specifically that their EFC is calculated according to undergraduate siblings)

He wants the “College experience”, so not a commuter school. (So CUNY Baruch, which would be a cheap practical choice, is out)

A school with school spirit and some kind of name recognition/prestige. (So Adelphi, Molloy, Hofstra which are near us and give a lot of merit to kids from his school, are out)

About him & us

He has decent stats and scores, 92 / 3.8 GPA UW at a selective Catholic college prep school that has a good record of getting kids into top schools; it’s regarded as the best Catholic school in the area. It doesn’t weight or rank and says “all our courses are Honors courses”.
33 ACT (and 1360 SAT which he’s not going to submit)

Some ECs but nothing spectacular, 4 years of track & field, Economics Club, some part-time work and volunteer work. His essay is very good.
No hooks, not 1st gen or URM. EFC is 34K for next year while we have 2 in college. We have enough in 529 and other savings to see him through 4 years of dorm, fees etc and part of the tuition and enough in our retirement accounts to stop contributing for the 4 years while he’s in college and pay the rest of the tuition.

Apart from Naviance his school also publishes a complete list (without student names) of acceptance/waitlist/rejection decisions all the schools where kids have applied based on their GPA and SAT/ACT stats, so we have a realistic idea of his chances.

So he’s applied EA at several schools and now we’re looking at RD.

His top choice so far:
EA Fordham, where his scores make him eligible for their 15K merit scholarship, and hopefully he’ll get more, including work-study etc. He liked the fact that many students we spoke to had NYC internships as well as the campus, athletics, dorms and atmosphere.

Other applications:
EA Fairfield U in CT, Providence College in RI, Loyola Maryland–all a bit small for his taste but he liked the students there and they give good merit aid to students from his school

EA U of MD College Park: he liked it and on paper it was his 1st choice but when we visited he thought it was a bit too big for his taste. OTOH he likes DC and got a good vibe from the business school

EA SUNY Binghamton: his in-state safety but he doesn’t like the town of Binghamton much. OTOH we know business school grads who’ve gotten great NYC jobs.

EA St John’s, Queens: his local safety, gives big merit to kids from his school, good connections with NYC companies and he likes their basketball team

RD William and Mary: when we went over his list, the guidance counselor agreed about Villanova being unaffordable and said that for an affordable “name” school, he suggested W&M which takes kids from their school with his stats, and OOS tuition is $36K. We did a tour this summer and for a while it was his first choice; hubby and I were willing to stretch our budget and do overtime and take loans since we’re big Williamsburg fans ourselves and when we visited Colonial Williamsburg years ago when the kids were little we did find ourselves dreaming “wouldn’t it be nice if one of them were to come to school here”
He wanted to apply ED to W&M but was dissuaded when we saw that OOS tuition is actually $36K + 6K mandatory fees, therefore $42K. He still wants to apply RD.
Also after seeing Fordham last month he found himself drawn to a school near a big city; we have a friend in a Big 4 accounting firm in NYC who says that they hire lots of Fordham grads.

So thanks if you read this far and if you have any suggestions.
We wondered about Boston schools but BC and NEU are too much of a reach, BU takes kids from his school with his stats but he wouldn’t be competitive for merit. I would be happy with Drexel (coops would be good experience) and Temple (he’d be eligible for lots of merit) but he turned up his nose at them and “doesn’t like Philly” even though Villanova would have been his top choice. He says that Marist is “not a good school” and U of Delaware is in too small a town, same for Scranton. In DC, Catholic U is also “not a good school”; we toured American U years ago with my daughter and weren’t impressed. Kids from his school with his stats get into GWU but again he won’t be competitive for merit there.

2

My S looked at a number of the same schools and went to Fordham as an accounting major (graduated in 2012). He loved it and is now at a Big 4 firm. If you have any questions specific to Fordham at any point in the process feel free to PM me.

I think your list is reasonable given that you are looking for merit aid, but FWIW I don’t think the b-school at St. Johns is comparable to the others.

Also keep in the back of your mind that to become a CPA one needs 150 college credits. Most undergraduate degrees are 120 credits so many CPA candidates now go on for a one year MS in Accounting directly after undergrad. Some students can get to the 150 credits in 4 years using a combination of AP and summer classes.

3

If the size of the city is not the most critical issue, you may want to take a look at UVM. This is from its business school website: “2016 UVM MAcc graduates ranked No. 1 in the nation on the CPA exam with a 94.4% pass rate among all first-time first-year candidates with advanced degrees.” “Ranked the #1 Green MBA by Princeton Review, the Sustainable Innovation MBA program is a bold new approach that fundamentally reinvents business education and the MBA degree.”

UVM does give out merits money (not quite sure how much) and has a well-run honors college.

4

University of Scranton

5

Miami U, Ohio University, University of Pittsburgh.

6

To OP. I think CUNY Binghamton is a great choice when considering bang for buck. It has a very good reputation and ranks pretty high for state schools.

If he does not want a dedicated business school then I think state flagships are the way to go. they offer all types of majors for him to experiment with if he changes his mind. UMASS also has a very good business school.

@prof2dad

“2016 UVM MAcc graduates ranked No. 1 in the nation on the CPA exam with a 94.4% pass rate among all first-time first-year candidates with advanced degrees.”

That is amazing!!! I did not think any school could provide a 95% pass rate to the CPA exam on the first sitting. That totally blows my mind away. The CPA exam is one tough exam.

7

University of Pittsburgh

8

Xavier ticks a lot of boxes on your list, but is similar in size to Loyola and might be too far away. U of Dayton and Duquesne are somewhat larger schools, perhaps less well known but with strong business programs. Dayton reminded me a lot of Villanova.

He would get enough merit at each to come in under your target (BTW, is $35,000 just for tuition, or does that include R&B and fees?)

9

Almost all the Catholic schools in the NE have good business schools if he is interested in accounting/finance. The further down the hierarchy/selectivity, the more merit $ you will get. Fordham, Providence, Loyola, Scranton, Fairfield, etc will all give him a significant discount on tuition, especially with a 33 ACT. Villanova probably won’t give any merit $, and his 92 average make Nova, BC, William and Mary reaches. If you have financial need, many of those schools will give a blended merit/financial aid award.

10

Check out Clarkson. He may get decent merit. Internships/job placement are fantastic.

11

Saint Joseph’s in Philadelphia or The College of New Jersey?

12

I think NEU/BU/BC may still be worth the application. Particularly for Northeastern, there is still a chance for merit I think given that your son’s test scores and likely weighted GPA are in or near the top 25%. It will be competitive coming from the northeast, but I think all three schools would be categorized as matches. Financially, different story. Did you run the NPC’s for each?

13

Thanks to all for the input!

@dtrain1027 About reaches and matches, they’re based on the acceptance stats published by my son’s school. No students with his GPA and scores were rejected by William & Mary or by Villanova. In fact Villanova accepts quite a few students from his school with lower stats than his, 90 averages and 29 ACTs/ 1300 SATs. Typically, 100+ out of 400 graduates from his school apply to Nova and around 60% are accepted. But yes, he’s not applying to Nova because we know he won’t get merit.

@PengsPhils Only one student with his GPA and scores was accepted by BC; it must have been someone with a compelling hook, a statistical outlier, because many students with higher scores were rejected. The same goes for Northeastern; I was surprised to see how competitive NEU has become.
About BU, I really don’t see that he’s competitive for merit when the average ACT of accepted students is 32, and he has a 33.

I hadn’t thought about UVM at all. @prof2dad that’s quite a statistic for UVM grads and the CPA exam! I have to say that for a “public Ivy” their 69% acceptance rate was higher than I expected but if they have a good Honors college that’s a plus.

@happy1 I realize that St John’s isn’t in the same league as the other schools but the HS insists on students applying to a “local safety” in case anything catastrophic happens to the student or family, healthwise or financially, and it was a free application.

@LuckyCharms913, re your question “is $35,000 just for tuition, or does that include R&B and fees?”, the answer is tuition. Of course if we can get tuition a bit lower than that, great.

@HootieA I’ve suggested Scranton a number of times and he’s said no. We spent 3 days there on a family retreat 5 years ago so we know the campus. We liked it but he didn’t. But I think it’s worth giving it 1 more try.

@mommdc I’ve also suggested those 3 schools. His HS GC said that Pitt was better for sciences than for business so we didn’t pursue it; Miami U and Ohio were both “I don’t like the area”. (He likes U of Miami but with their accepted students profile I don’t know that he’s competitive for merit

14

What about Bryant, Babson, and Bentley?

15

Wow, it must really be about the competitiveness of the high school or northeast location then. I have seen kids with those stats get merit at Northeastern in the past few years, though perhaps not any from the northeast but still, I would not expect that the average decision for those stats would be a rejection. Good luck to your son!

16

NYU, I second Babson and Bentley. For reach, MIT.

17

@preppedparent @Momma2018

18

Check out Northeastern University in Boston. Solid university, good business school with undergrad programs, I believe it offers financial aid of all kinds. It will give your son a campus feeling while still being a city university with two subway stations practically on campus. The school is very up and coming, it is growing and fighting to get higher in rankings, and its current president is a true visionary. I myself am an online grad student there (MBA), and I like it a lot.

19

@preppedparent @Momma2018
From first post: “These are his criteria: Good business programs (he’s thinking of accounting or finance) but not a business college so that he doesn’t need to transfer if he decides that business isn’t for him. (So Babson & Bentley are out)”

FWIW my S felt the same way about the business oriented schools. He wanted a student body with diverse interests and wanted to know if business wasn’t for him that he could seamlessly move into a solid liberal arts program at the school he was at. Schools like Babson and Bentley are fantastic for some people but are not fits for everyone.

20

@PengsPhils yes it’s crazy how selective Northeastern has gotten. I see from the list of admissions decisions that students who were accepted at Johns Hopkins, Notre Dame, Duke and Carnegie-Mellon, 97 GPA and 34 ACT, were waitlisted or rejected by NEU!! Could it be that they have a bad relationship with my kid’s school?