<p>My son was accepted into UCI Paul Merage School of Business (business administration major) and Chapman University Argyros School of Business & Economics (business economics major). Chapman offered him a $25K/yr, renewable 4 yrs, scholarship. No scholarship from UCI. It will cost us the same for him to attend either school. What are the pros and cons of UCI and Paul Merage? Do many top business and Big 4 accounting firms recruit at UCI for internships and jobs after graduation? Are there a lot of resources and personal mentoring from professors for the undergrad business students? What's the reason why UCI limits admission to 100 freshmen/yr to Paul Merage?</p>
<p>The undergrad. program @ Merage is pretty new, I believe 2012 is its first graduating class. Thus, it isn’t ranked with the other undergrad programs at other business schools.</p>
<p>The big 4 DO recruit here at UCI pretty heavily. There are plenty of resources & opportunities for students to network and get mentoring. However, Chapman also gets their fair share of recruitment from the big4, but the # of students recruited are most from UCI in terms of the OC offices.</p>
<p>Reason why UCI limits the admission for Merage is because its NEW. The resources are a bit limited because its new, so there are limited class sizes and staff.</p>
<p>I would go with how your son feels about each campus. UCI will definitely have bigger sized classes, and also about 60-80% of classes will comprise of Asians.</p>
<p>Thank you so much for the info. A bit curious regarding why more UCI students (vs. Chapman’s) were recruited by the Big 4 when Paul Merage undergrad program is only 4 yrs old. Is it because Merage have a better reputation from its MBA program? Are there benefits that Merage’s undergrad students receive from being part of a school with reputable MBA programs? Also curious as to the undergrad business classes. With a small number of Merage students, are there enough variety of upper level business classes to choose from? My son has visited both UCI and Chapman, but we did not get enough info on both visits to sway him toward one school. Hoping that the UCI Stay Over program or Discover UCI day will help decide.</p>
<p>The firms don’t care how reputable the program is, just that the students will be CPA-eligible by the time they graduate. </p>
<p>UCI will have much more candidates that apply than Chapman; thus, more UCI students will probably be recruited.</p>
<p>I don’t see a reason for having an MBA program to benefit the undergrads, as they are entire different programs.</p>
<p>The level of variety at the upper class level is definitely enough, and there will be more variety from here on out.</p>
<p>Best of luck to you guys to find the best school fit for your son.</p>
<p>Hi,
I ran across this thread and wanted to provide some information to you about the UC Irvine Paul Merage School of Business undergraduate program. I previously ran admissions for the part-time MBA program at the Merage School and currently work in a different role at the business school.</p>
<p>I can answer a few of your questions and would like to, respectfully, disagree on a few points that junshink has made.</p>
<p>First, there are many benefits that our undergraduate students receive through affiliations with our MBA programs. Many of the same faculty that teach our MBA students also teach our undergraduate students. Our research-based faculty are very highly regarded in the industry and teach their classes (both MBA and undergrad) from both practitioner, as well as a research/theory based perspectives. There are also some shared resources between our undergraduate program, competitions (business plan competition, etc.), and some active undergraduate student clubs that work with the MBA student clubs and Student Association. </p>
<p>Just last week, an undergraduate student team presented to the Advisory Board for our Center for Investment and Wealth Management - with several CEOs of large organizations in attendance. Great exposure for the undergrads. More efforts to integrate our undergraduate students into the Merage School are currently underway.</p>
<p>Also, our Program is relatively young (first graduating class this year in 2012!) but we will be aggressively pursuing a top ranking for our undergraduate business major when we are eligible. We will be eligible for rankings in 2017 - we will need five years of alumni data to be eligible for the US News & World Report ranking. </p>
<p>Rankings do play a role in our limited enrollment. Based on overwhelming demand for our undergraduate program (our applications are in the thousands for the major), we have elected to keep the class small. The undergraduate major has the highest GPA and SAT scores of any school on the UC Irvine campus. We do plan to grow the undergraduate major slightly in the next few years, while maintaining a high degree of selectivity.</p>
<p>I would highly recommend that you contact the admissions office about any questions about the Merage School student experience: </p>
<p>[Contact</a> Us, Undergraduate Programs - The Paul Merage School of Business, UC Irvine](<a href=“http://merage.uci.edu/Undergrad/Content/Contact-Us/256]Contact”>Undergraduate Overview | Paul Merage School of Business | UCI)</p>
<p>I work with the Assistant Dean all the time and they really take care of their students. I’m sure that you can also speak with some current undergraduate students at the Merage School as well so that your son can get an intimate view of the experience here. While UC Irvine is a big school, the Merage School is relatively small and you do get personalized attention from faculty, staff, etc. </p>
<p>Best of luck with your decision!</p>
<p>Dear jmasciana, I really appreciate your valuable insider’s inputs. You answered many of my son’s concerns and I will forward your response to him. He now has a 3rd school on his final list: USC (Marshall and Leventhal). He plans to double major in accounting and finance/business economomics, and USC, UCI, and Chapman are all outstanding schools that will allow him to do this. Up to a few days ago, UCI was a big question mark because we didn’t know when Paul Merage will add the finance specialization. Now, it’s a non-issue with its addition in Fall '12. </p>
<p>My son will contact the staff at Paul Merage to schedule an appointment to talk to them, when he visits the campus in April. He (and we as his parents) feel very fortunate to have wonderful colleges to choose from. We know he’ll get a top rate education, whether at UCI, Chapman, or USC.</p>