<p>Is Swarthmore a good place for business majors? I see profiles like this one <a href="http://www.swarthmore.edu/x19936.xm%5B/url%5D">www.swarthmore.edu/x19936.xm</a> but I'm not sure how typical this is? Is swat a good school if you want to work in business? They seem like such hippies generally...</p>
<p>Like many liberal arts colleges, Swarthmore does not have a business major, per se. It has a very strong economics department, however. There are a good number of Swarthmore graduates who go into business. I think that some of the major management consulting firms recruit at Swarthmore. If you want to take lots of finance and accounting courses in college, though, you won’t find very many at Swarthmore. There is one course in financial economics and one in financial accounting.</p>
<p>During Ride the Tide (admitted students program) I hosted a student who was really interested in business. He got rejected from the business school at the University of Pennsylvania and wanted to know whether Swarthmore was good for business. I told him, if you want to do business in the future, you’re pretty much going to have to go to graduate school and get an M.B.A. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. A good number of Swarthmore graduates do go into business, but a good number of graduates from most schools go into business.</p>
<p>Swarthmore has THE HIGHEST number in the country for the percentage of Economics majors who go on to get PhD’s in Econ. I’m not sure thats what you’re looking for as a prospective Business major, but Swarthmore sure sends a lot of students into unbelievable finance positions.</p>
<p>There’s a big difference between getting a PhD in economics and business or finance. Most economics PhDs work in academia or government. While a few econ PhDs do end up in finance, it’s a relatively small number. And getting a PhD in economics takes longer and is generally more work than getting an MBA.</p>
<p>Despite an academic focus, people certainly do go into business. I’m heading off to McKinsey next fall, and I know a handful of other people (possibly a significant % of the people with actual jobs, of which there aren’t many) who’ll be going to i-banks or other consulting firms.</p>
<p>Kohlberg (Swat grad) basically invented private equity, though I’m not sure if that reflects well on the school or not (moreover, Kravis and Roberts cashed out later than he did, too, and each has 5x the money).</p>
<p>arador: “I know a handful of other people (possibly a significant % of the people with actual jobs, of which there aren’t many) who’ll be going to i-banks or other consulting firms.”</p>
<p>what do you mean by that?</p>
<p>I don’t have any numbers, but it seems like very very few members of the senior class have jobs right now. Thus, a small number of people going into business could still make up a significant percentage of the people with jobs.</p>