<p>I'm very interested in business, but I love Harvard. I know that Harvard doesn't have an undergraduate business degree, but it does have economics. If I do an economics major, can I still take any business courses as electives, or even pass/fail, from the graduate school?</p>
<p>Yeah. It's possible to cross register to take classes at HBS. Not the easiest thing in the world though, because the two schools' calendars don't match up.</p>
<p>EDIT: Also, some Harvard students take accounting/finance at MIT, since it isn't offered by the Ec dept. (too vocational, I guess).</p>
<p>Yes, I asked about that when I was on a tour and when I talked to a person in the Econ Department. I gather that the MIT accounting course is fairly popular among Econ concentrators, but that cross registering at HBS borders on impossible in most cases (especially for accounting).</p>
<p>It's definitely something to consider. But, one enters Harard (or any of the Ivies) with the understanding that grad school is pretty much going to be a necessity, so hey.</p>
<p>UPenn would probably be the best place for undergrad Ivy business.</p>
<p>I don't know much about Wharton, but there are tons of business opportunities at Harvard. All the big ibanking + consulting firms do a ton of recruiting, and extracurricularly, things like the Crimson business + HSA are really great opportunities to get hands on experience. There's also a lot of entrepreneurship among students.</p>
<p>How hard is it REALLY to cross register with HBS and take some courses there? Is it really just a schedule issue or are there other factors that prohibit students from taking courses and attaining a sustainable amount of business knowledge during College?</p>
<p>When I asked, they made it sound as if most of the problems came from getting approval, since it has to be approved by both colleges. However, just<em>forget</em>me makes a good point about HSA and the Crimson. Check out HSA's Web site; it has a lot of interesting information on it (<a href="http://www.harvardstudentagencies.com)%5B/url%5D">http://www.harvardstudentagencies.com)</a>.</p>
<p>You can major in anything and go into business and all of the top schools will be feeders into almost all the same companies.</p>
<p>I would be more concerned about whether you want to study Econ (or anything else) or whether you want to study Business, because the curriculum for a BA in Econ is extremely different from a BS in Econ/business curriculum. If you really are interested in the theory of economics, go to Harvard or any other top Ivy+ for econ. If you want to study business or applied economics, go to a business school.</p>
<p>At Wharton undergrads can take MBA and PhD level courses (which happens quite frequently and is easy to do). Also, a lot of your upper-level classes might be cross-listed with MBA courses, meaning that undergrads are side by side with them in the classroom.</p>
<p>Don't worry about it. If you want to go into management, you can get in from any top college or university (especially Harvard) majoring in just about anything. Especially true because if you're going into business you'll be getting an MBA somewhere along the line, and out of Harvard you'll probably have your pick of top MBA programs.</p>
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and out of Harvard you'll probably have your pick of top MBA programs.
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<p>I don't know about that. There are plenty of Harvard grads who can't get into any top graduate programs. </p>
<p>Since Harvard refuses to publish its data online, I'll have to argue by analogy. I think we can all agree that there isn't that much differernce between the student bodies of Harvard and Stanford. So consider Stanford prelaws. According to the Stanf0rd data, the average Stanford prelaw who applies to law school has a GPA of 3.5 and a GPA of 164.2. Those stats are roughly good enough, on average, to get that average Stanford prelaw admitted to Lewis and Clark Law School (for which the average admitted Stanford prelaw had an average 165.4 LSAT and 3.39 GPA). Lewis & Clark Law is a pretty good law school, but not exactly the best either (ranked #77 according to USNews). All of the top 10 law schools admitted Stanford prelaws that had stats that were significantly higher than the average Stanford prelaw who applied to law school were able to present.</p>
<p>What I find most shocking is that some Stanford prelaws applied to a 4th-tier law school like California Western Law School, and didn't get in. According to the data, 4 Stanford students applied to California Western, and 2 of them actually got rejected. </p>
<p>Let's also keep in mind that the data only talks about those Stanford students who actually applied to law school. Every school, including Stanford and Harvard, have some students who do extremely poorly - so poorly that they don't even bother to apply to law school because they know they won't get in anywhere. Hence, the prelaw data actually represents students who tend to be above average for that school. </p>
<p>The point is, just going to a school like Stanford or Harvard clearly does not guarantee admission into a good graduate school, or even into any graduate school at all. I doubt that Harvard students 'probably' have their top pick of MBA programs, just like the average Stanford prelaw clearly does not have his top pick in law schools.</p>