UCLA or Claremont McKenna? Or UC Berkeley?

College Search & Selection
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<p>^LOL</p>

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<p>I haven’t heard anything about money, is money the same on all schools? It’s hard to turn down Regents for Berkeley, everybody in my immediate family( and also my family) takes the money and run when receiving Regents at much less prestigious UCs.</p>

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<p>CMC does seem to have a fair share of Wall Street recruiting, according to <a href=“https://www.cmc.edu/outcomes/CSC_2013_OutcomesBrochure.pdf”>https://www.cmc.edu/outcomes/CSC_2013_OutcomesBrochure.pdf&lt;/a&gt; and <a href=“https://www.cmc.edu/outcomes/recruiters.php”>https://www.cmc.edu/outcomes/recruiters.php&lt;/a&gt; .</p>

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<p>An economics major aiming at a finance career would probably find CMC a better choice due to CMC offering more finance courses and being a target school for finance recruiters. An economics major looking toward mathematical economics as pre-PhD preparation would probably find Berkeley a better choice due to the availability of math-heavy economics courses there. (Of course, this assumes that cost of attendance is not a big deciding factor.)</p>

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<p>Is it Wall Street recruiting, though? I’ve heard that CMC is a target school for West Coast offices. Although still very possible, landing a banking job in NYC from CMC is probably going to take a little bit of networking and some internship searching.</p>

<p>On a side note: I like how they finish off their introduction in the second link with “Welcome to the major leagues.”</p>

<p>What a healthy display of badassery. :)) </p>

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<p>As a Cornell alumnus said in another recent thread, he wasn’t sure what was so comprehensive about CMC’s economics offerings, though I didn’t look at them in great detail myself. Most colleges put finance courses in the economics department because they don’t offer more of the pure bus majors or sub majors like finance, or marketing or some other. Doesn’t Cal offer its econ majors finance within that department, or do only Haas students get all the finance classes?</p>

<p>And I’m not sure what a finance emphasis in econ has to do with working in finance. I know of history and poli sci majors who work in high finance. They eventually obtained their MBA’s, but that didn’t stop their placement in this field as non-econ, social science majors. There should be and is a flexibility wrt majors in bus especially initially; otherwise, those u’s that didn’t offer pure bus and its specialties would be sunk. </p>

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<p>Most of these companies are likely limited to West coast branches. Companies sometimes limit what schools are targets for different parts of the country that they’re in. So Wisconsin might be a target school for Bain Chicago offices but not one for the Bain offices in the west coast. </p>

<p>c.f. <a href=“Which schools are targets at the top 3 consulting firms (Bain, BCG, McKinsey)? - College Search & Selection - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1206919-which-schools-are-targets-at-the-top-3-consulting-firms-bain-bcg-mckinsey-p1.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>A CMC graduate would likely have a harder time than a Stanford graduate or a Duke graduate heading straight into Wall St. Most of the ones that do eventually want to go there will probably have to go to business school first and earn an MBA first (ideally at a respectable east coast school or top MBA program.) It’s certainly not impossible, it’s just harder initially.</p>

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<p>^I think they’re referring to Wall Street IB versus consulting.</p>

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<p>CMC: 8 finance courses (134, 134B, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 193): <a href=“Program: Courses in Economics - Claremont McKenna College - Acalog ACMS™”>Program: Courses in Economics - Claremont McKenna College - Acalog ACMS™;

<p>Berkeley economics: 2 undergraduate finance courses (136, 138): <a href=“Economics (ECON) < University of California, Berkeley”>http://bulletin.berkeley.edu/courses/econ/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Berkeley business: 6 undergraduate finance courses (103, 131, 132, 133, 136F, 137); business courses may not be easy to get into by non-business majors, and some of these courses have overlapping material with those in the economics department: <a href=“Business Administration, Undergraduate (UGBA) < University of California, Berkeley”>http://bulletin.berkeley.edu/courses/ugba/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>On the other hand, Berkeley offers math-intensive intermediate microeconomics (101A), econometrics (141), and more advanced mathematical economics (C103, 104). CMC economics courses are significantly less math-intensive, based on their prerequisites.</p>

<p>So the choice, from an academic standpoint, comes down to whether the goal of the economics major is a finance job (CMC) or PhD study in economics (Berkeley).</p>

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<p>Speaking of which, I think the thing that limits most of the westcoast u’s in WS-IB would be geography. This is distinctly an eastcoast inst. I think, too it takes a mindset of wanting to work in a 80-hour + a week atmosphere in NYC, which I don’t think a lot of CA college -grads would want to do. So there is definitely a limiting factor for any applicant pool in those who would want to live this lifestyle, far away from their homes. More nationally based u’s, with perhaps natives to the eastcoast, with families nearby wouldn’t have as much difficulty with such a sched. There are some UCLA athletes who do well in placement, but they’re more international anyway.</p>

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<p>ucb, as I said to show a counterpoint to your strict road to a job in finance by studying such, I know of history and poli-sci majors who are in high finance and they got their feet in the door upon graduation. This is not in anyway unusual. </p>

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<p>History and political science majors from Berkeley, or from schools with more elite admissions selectivity?</p>

<p>While Wall Street investment banks do recruit at Berkeley, the impression I get is that they are much more selective about hiring Berkeley students than students from schools that have more elite admissions selectivity.</p>

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<p>History and poli-sci from UCLA, so maybe a slight step lower than Cal. They work in LA, did internships in college. So yes, I am hedging by not mentioning this, because it was the internships that helped them immensely especially based on their non-distinct non-related majors. (But this is quite prevalent at a U like UCLA, which does’t have a pure bus major.) </p>

<p>In more of the WS-IB world, undoubtedly, Harvard grads, with history and poli-sci degrees would do well, a high step upward. But lest carotid think otherwise, CMC (nor UCLA nor Cal) are Harvard. My Podunk example versus Harvard was an extreme opposite-poles example because he/she implied that CMC was in some way vastly superior. </p>

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<p>Let me further expound…</p>

<p>I agree that in a field like computer science, one should probably study CS or EE or something like this, although with the integration of computer classes in a lot of disciplines, majors like Cognitive Science and others would probably be attractive to recruiters. </p>

<p>The world of business is entirely different. There’s no set or more of set pathway to getting one’s foot in the door at a firm or company, especially by major the applicant chooses. The main thing would be that the applicant be intelligent to grasp whatever concepts are prevalent in the field in which he/she is placed. </p>

<p>That’s probably why Bain or whatever, would like engineering majors, even if this major were totally unrelated to the financial side. Or that social science majors can find placement in finance, or marketing, or certainly sales.</p>

<p>A theoretically based major in econ w/o a lot of finance is absolutely a great prep for something like finance. Why wouldn’t it be as long as the applicant is intelligent?</p>

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<p>Let me do a less comprehensive catchall of corrections:</p>

<p>‘The main employment inroads that the tippy top Ivies have that others don’t have would probably be working their shear nos. of working on Wall Street.’</p>

<p>Elide the first ‘working.’</p>

<p>‘CMC (nor UCLA nor Cal) are Harvard,’ s/b ‘[Neither is] CMC (nor UCLA nor Cal) Harvard.’</p>

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<p>I don’t disagree, but Wall Street has a rather school-elitist reputation in hiring. I.e. it will take a lot of HYP students, a few Berkeley/UCLA/etc. students, and won’t go anywhere near CSUEB/CSULA.</p>

<p>CMC seems to be a special case among LACs in being a school with elite selectivity in admissions that also has a high percentage of students interested in finance careers. These characteristics seem to make it an attractive place for Wall Street to recruit at. The many finance courses may not be the reason for that, but they are an indicator of student interest in finance (the courses are presumably offered because there are students to fill them).</p>

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<p>Absolutely…</p>

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<p>Wrt your first sentence, I’m not sure that CMC has elite selectivity. We probably know about their students’ high scores, but do we really know about their class rank? </p>

<p>We can look at public high schools, and see that it (CMC) rejects some with really good grades and high class rank. But many private colleges put public-school grads in the auto reject file anyway, because these colleges are beholden to private high schools (preps). </p>

<p>What we don’t see is how CMC would admit from a school like Webb, which is near the Claremont Colleges. How low would CMC admit from a Webb graduating class? We know that most students from this prep would manifest more uniformly high scores, which would help a private college manifest and maintain high medians. Similarly, would CMC admit lower tier grads from the prestigious eastern preps? I would probably guess, yes.</p>

<p>We know that UC and especially UCLA and Cal admit from a pretty consistent tier of grads from all schools, moderate public hss and from top-tier preps. Actually, I would guess that Cal makes more exceptions from those preps that are deemed as esteemed.</p>

<p>This is my only contention with your remark of ‘CMC seems to be … a school with elite selectivity in admissions.’ This is because there is a large sleight of hand in presenting especially class rank and mean gpa in both unweighted and weighted that we cannot really see.</p>

<p>I realize that CMC has higher scores than UCLA and Cal, but that’s just because both of the latter are trying to even out the playing field by both taking more from class rank because poorer kids (poorer URM’s) cannot buy a high score. If both UCLA and Cal admitted based on scores, there would be a disproportionately high amount of non-URM’s in both student bodies. It’s just a different focus on what each set of u’s like to educate, but neither set is inferior. The quest of UC is to educate the state within all of its ethnicities. (I don’t disagree, but at what point does diversity become a diminishing return in the system’s quality?)</p>

<p>CMC may well have a decent placement in WS-IB, but I agree with beyphy, that it really isn’t consequential either way because the collge is so small. There’s a reason why Harvard has ~ 7,000 undergrads and ~ 14,000 grads. Over the three centuries it has in existence, H’s board has deemed that this would be the right enrollment mix to affect various industry wrt placement of leaders.</p>

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<p>Cal with Regents beats the other two options hands down. CMC is a known liar. It fillets only the best of ACT or SAT test scores on common dat sets and plays USNWR rankings to the max. Haas undergrad alone has a better reputation than CMC.</p>

<p>If OP’s son switches from economics to math, then CMC will have been a mistake.</p>

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Just FYI, technically Gates and Zuckerberg are not alums since they didn’t graduate.</p>

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This makes no sense to me. The pool of “average” individuals at Harvard is miniscule. So how could one even do such a study? It isn’t even the question anyway. The specific premise of this side discussion was can a person of Ivy caliber do just as well for themselves attending a school that is less selective. The answer still seems to be yes, at least for undergrad. If you want to get onto the Supreme Court it appears that going to Harvard Law or Yale Law is still a requirement ;)</p>

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<p>@rhg3rd One admissions director at CMC does NOT make the entire school a bunch of liars. There are many great schools that have hired a person who slips up, and it makes news. That doesn’t represent the whole school, and especially in this case, where the SAT/ACT really doesn’t affect your experience there. CMC still has a great economics program, still united with the other Claremont Colleges, and still a politically active school. Those aren’t lies.</p>

<p>Another thing, sure if the OP’s son switches to math, CMC will be a mistake, but Cal doesn’t “beat the other two options hands down.” If the the OP’s son happens to be a leader with deep interests in economics and prefers smaller classes, CMC easily beats Cal. </p>

<p>More importantly, he still needs to get into Haas for the better education in anything finance at Berkeley. Sure, if he doesn’t like the feel of CMC, don’t go there. But, if he’s neutral about fit, Berkeley doesn’t beat CMC. </p>

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<p>^LOL! Old habits die hard. CMC represents on its most recent CDS § CD exactly 58% of students submitted SAT’s and 42% ACT’s, as if no one submitted both. </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.cmc.edu/ir/CDS_2013-14.pdf”>http://www.cmc.edu/ir/CDS_2013-14.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>However with Cal, 90% of students submitted SAT’s and 39% ACT’s. </p>

<p><a href=“http://opa.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/UC%20Berkeley%20CDS%202013-14%20(June).pdf”>http://opa.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/UC%20Berkeley%20CDS%202013-14%20(June).pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>With CMC you get one liar after the next massaging test data. A public institution like Cal isn’t so brazenly dishonest and neither is Pomona College.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.pomona.edu/administration/institutional-research/common-data-set/13-14/c-admissions.pdf”>http://www.pomona.edu/administration/institutional-research/common-data-set/13-14/c-admissions.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;