My child is interested in working on the business end of a tech firm. Looking at a degree in Industrial Engineering or business. My concern is that he is top 15% at a very competitive high school. He chose not to play rank race game and took athletic courses and PALS vs additional AP courses. He has a 33 ACT (34 on math) and 5s on AP tests. I am hearing even with these stats Mays will be a long shot due to limited spaces and would stand a better chance applying to engineering. Does anyone else have a kid in a similar position that can offer advise?
What is Mays? What is tech? And what do you mean by a business job? Useful for people to know this before offering opinion
Mays is the name of the business school at Texas A&M. The name is that of a major donor.
Note that admission to the engineering division at Texas A&M is not easy either. There is also secondary admission (ETAM) to get into specific majors for those starting at Texas A&M in the engineering division, although industrial engineering is not generally considered one of the more competitive majors.
Does the student prefer a more technical (statistics / math heavy) major focused on designing and optimizing business processes, or a less technical (applied social science) typical business major (finance, accounting, organization, marketing, etc.)?
If he is capable of obtaining an IE degree, I would say pursue that. Engineering graduates are almost guaranteed jobs.
Yes, May is the business school at Texas A&M. He wants to work at technology based firm (ie tech).
How technology based (however defined) a firm is does not necessarily mean that its need for industrial engineers and general business people is present or absent. What type of work would he be most interested in doing: designing and optimizing processes and operations based on statistics and math (industrial engineering), or the usual general business functions?
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The reason I asked is you mentioned Industrial Engg, and you mentioned tech – and in my mind those are not quite in the same space. The Industrial bit correlated with mechanical type engg fields, or manufacturing. Tech is more CS/CE related.
Coming to what you mean by business roles, I presume you don’t mean accounting, HR etc. There are broadly 2-3 kinds of roles.
- Sales. Soft majors would work – psychology, business etc.
- Product roles – at good tech firms, they hire in very small numbers – e.g. Google hires 50 new product people from undergrad every year, and until recently used to hire ~5000 engineers a year. Very hard to get hired into a product role at Google. They are very pedigree conscious, and very sensitive to GPA etc. Not just Google – hiring behavior is similar at other good tech companies – a year ago my kid enquired and found that Atlassian (a reasonably well known software company) was looking to hire 2 product people from undergrad the following year. Majors matter less, but a lot of tech companies want the kids to have some technical background – e.g. a CS major or a minor, or an applied math major etc.
- Corporate strategy roles – usually not direct entry. People often go into management consulting (MBB) for a few years before latering into these roles. So a business background doesn’t hurt for the MBB job. But they are very GPA sensitive.
Not sure where industrial engg fits into all this. Unless you mean tech to be someone like Caterpillar or General Electric or similar
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I should have noted we are very familiar with general engineering at TAMU. Husband is an Aggie Eng and we have a senior son in engineering there currently. I feel confident that my rising senior would be able to handle the course load of engineering but naturally fits on the people side of things as he is more of an extrovert and would not enjoy straight-up design work. He wants a job where he collaborates with others. When he talked with the Industrial Engineering Department he felt like it was a good fit for him. He had a good discussion with other students in the program and a professor. I made the post hoping someone else may have explored these two options and had advice etc. Simply put, he is torn between applying for 1/1200 spaces for Mays or a very competitive engineering program where ID degree is not guaranteed by ETAM.
He is absolutely more interested in optimizing/operations/supply chain management. He spoke to a student that interned working on the optimization of crowds at a major theme park. He spoke to other students that had internships working on supply chain as ID majors. He initially looked at the Mays business school for a degree in supply chain. Thus the reason he is trying to decide which route would be the best for him.
Seems like his interest fits better with IE than general business, regardless of the type of employer.
He may want to add other less competitive admission colleges with IE majors to his list.
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Google used to be that way in its early days, but it became less pedigree conscious (recruiting at dozens or hundreds of colleges) and dropped its GPA requirement as it became a bigger company. Its main focus is its own technical interviews.
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I meant for the APM program
My son is a senior IE at Georgia Tech. His first semester was business. There’s no shortage of business opportunities for an IE. He’s been customer facing for his internships and co-op. Consulting companies seem to like IE’s but so do the tech companies.
GT has several tracks from supply chain to analytics. I’m assuming TAMU is similar. In his case it made sense.
It’s actually very math intensive. All the typical engineering Calculus plus stats/probability. Depending on track he would add some CS math like Discrete.
Unless he hates math there’s really no downside.
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Why don’t you look at the top supply chain programs - ASU, Michigan State, UTK - they’ll be easier to get into then Mays and they’re the creme de la creme. And yes, they’ll come with money.
I would apply to the major of interest, not the easiest one to get in.
You should, in my opinion, choose major over school. So if he’s interested in supply chain, apply to Mays.
As for type of industry he’d work in, that can happen (tech) if you want…from any school. Doesn’t mean it will - but it can.
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What makes those the top supply chain programs? I don’t know otherwise, just curious.
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Like anything else tops - rank.
Supply chain is a strong major. From anywhere. When I was an mba I had an elective - one - and FedEx offered me.
Just dumb luck - pulled a rank and they are top 3. I just know they’re best known.
https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/business-supply-chain-management-logistics
@NTXMama i have a recent Mays grad. Mays is outstanding, can’t say enough great things about it!
Has he taken SAT, or just ACT? 33 ACT is solid, but uncertain if strong enough being 15%. If he were NM Commended or Semi, that would help for sure.
Mays also looks at leadership, activities, jobs held, etc. How many AP courses has he taken?
He needs to decide-does he want to be an engineer, or go to business school? Two completely different majors, vibes. If he wants to pursue Mays, I suggest working with a teacher, or professional college prep person, to help with essay and application. Application needs to be turned in August 1-regardless of major.
Has he thought about MIS? That’s more ‘tech’ vs Supply Chain, and perhaps more similar/comparable to Industrial Distribution.
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You nailed that!
On this site, US News rankings are often attacked, for many reasons. Are their department specific rankings (supply chain, engineering, etc.) considered more valid than the overall US News school rankings?
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These three have always been renowned in supply chain / logistics. As noted when I was at ASU in marketing, just one elective got me an offer. There were more companies than students.
That said I’m sure A&M is strong in supply chain too. The major is hot in general but those three are known commodities.
@NTXMama As long as he turns in his app early (by mid or even late aug) he has a great chance of being offered admission with an ACT like that. Based on what has been reported on this sight, going from general admission to general engineering is just a formality - dont recall anyone on here getting offered admission but NOT getting into general engineering because most kids wanting eng show aptitude in science and math. (however, Christi knows of someone who had a relatively low math score which affected their admission to general engineering)
The real question will be…if your son choses engineering - will he like the classes? So many decide after that first semester (or first year) of chem, phys, calc, and eng102/116 especially, that engineering is not for them and switch out of engineering. It is possible to switch to mays from eng but gpa really needs to be perfect, which might be hard if one did horribly in eng.
If he starts in Mays and decides he wants to switch into engineering, this is easy as long as he doesnt want a super competitive eng major like computer, aerospace, biomedical, etc.
btw, there is a five year program in eng called stem to stock which gives a minor (oops, not minor but MS) in business. An engineer can always work in business but unlikely a business major can work as an engineer. hope this helps
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