What are your thoughts?
What do you want to study? Are you a Michigan resident? Do you need financial aid, or did you get any from any of them? Does weather matter a lot to you? Do you want to live in the Miami or New Orleans area after graduation?
Overall, Michigan has significantly higher rankings/prestige/national recognition than the other two, but that never should be the only factor in a decision.
Michigan
@Mikemargo11 The pecking order in US News and Workd Report 2017 edition is Michigan #27, Tulane #39 and U of Miami #44. However, other rankings like the Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings for 2017 differ, listing Michigan at #24, U of MIami at #37 and Tulane at #75. Forbes 2016 edition has an even different ranking with Michigan at #44, U of Miami at #112 and Tulane at #129. They are all good schools and your decision should come down to fit and cost and strength of the particular major or program you are interested in. However if you want to study business and you don’t get pre-admission into Michigan’s Ross undergrad school of business (ranked #4 by USNewsWorld Report) I recommend you go to Tulane Freeman school of business (ranked 48) or U of Miami (ranked 63). Because you would only be taking economics in Michigan’s LS &a A school whereas it’s easier to get into the business school at Tulane and Miami.
^ With that said, an economics degree is perfect for a kid who wants a career in undefined business. Sure, if the kid wants to be an accountant, you need to get into a biz school.
All else being equal, I’d rather have an econ degree from Michigan than a biz degree from Tulane or Miami. That is, to me, a no brainer.
^ I’ll add, if a kid wants to be an accountant, you have to get into a biz school, and it really doesn’t matter at all which one.
It depends on what you’re looking for, as these schools are in very different locales and all have different characters. In terms of the strength of the student body, they are all pretty close to one another. Tulane has a mid range 30-33 ACT while U Michigan is very close at 29-33 ACT, as is U of Miami at 29-32. In terms of the experience, Tulane is all about public service and addressing the needs of New Orleans. It has a great emphasis on interdisciplinary studies. Almost all students go on to graduate and professional schools. For that matter, all three of these schools will set you up just fine for law or med school and send tons of graduates in that direction every year. Both U of Miami and Tulane are very strong in anything relating to Latin America, whether it is languages, archeology, anthropology, history or whatever. U of Michigan has quality programs across the board, and has much more of a big school feel than the other two. Tulane always scores very high on the quality of life indicators, usually due to its wonderful locale and all of the access to the unique culture of New Orleans that it offers. Miami is very close to the wonderful culture and night life of the city. AnnArbor, while very much a college town, is a magnet for great speakers, high powered academics, and all of the cultural and intellectual heft that comes with being a large, highly respected university. These are three great choices. Do your research and listen to your heart. Best of luck!
So @MiddleburyDad2 to become an accountant you shared it doesn’t matter what business school you attend.
Can you please share why you feel this way?
^ yes. Because the Big 4 (EY, Deloitte, KPMG and PWC), or the Big 5 if you count Moss Adams, as many seem to do now, don’t give a damn where you went to school. And as a young accountant right out of undergrad, you’re best off starting at one of those firms.
If you follow me in this forum, you know I’m careful to qualify what I say when I’m speculating and/or when I’m basing a point of view on impression alone. This isn’t one of those times. Prior to taking the permanent dive into private equity as a principal, I was corporate counsel for several large, publicly traded companies, and I am SEC/Corp. Fin./Corporate lawyer by training. I’ve worked with all the big firms, other than Moss, at one time or another, and I’ve advised public company audit committees and have been in charge of '34 Act reporting, wherein the outside auditors are right on my hip.
Trust me: they don’t give a damn where you went to school. Good grades, good interview, and you’re there. Take EY Seattle for example, the independent auditor at the last public company at which I served as GC. They are loaded with kids from Seattle Pacific, Seattle U, Gonzaga, UW, Washington State, Western Washington … all kinds of schools. Just look at the roster on their website.
If we were talking about the law and law firms, or analysts and iBanks, then it would be an entirely different conversation.
But if you want to work for one of the big accounting firms, which, by the way, is a wonderful way for a young person to get their start in the business world, then go to school and get your accounting degree at the place you’re most likely to earn good grades, and you’ll be be recruited. Remember, these are HUGE organizations with a truly global presence. They can’t just insist on hiring kids from top 10 schools, and most of those schools don’t teach accounting anyway. You can’t become an accountant, for example, at any Ivy other than Cornell or Penn, at none of the top LACs, and of course not at Stanford.
If you want to get onto the consulting side of these firms, or get on with firms like McKinsey, then that’s also a a much different matter.
^ Yes.
A little off topic, but if you are a bright driven kid at a no-name school (in the US), accounting is the field to enter.
In fact, almost all the folks I know who have gone far in my current company and started in accounting went to a school that has . . . less than stringent entry requirements.
@MiddleburyDad2 I appreciate your extensive response. I would kindly disagree with parts of it because that is assuming there is one career path for accountants and their outcomes are the same regardless of their education.
Big4 firms provide excellent training and from there the professionals diverge onto many paths. The network they can tap into from their college can aid them along that journey. The quality of their degree could open the door to a top graduate program which then could launch them into their next career, or ultimate career.
So while the Big4 might fill their class from local schools in addition to top programs, that doesn’t mean all hires are treated equally. They dont get the same assignments or the same opportunities for promotion. But if one looks just at the goal of a first job, then maybe it doesn’t much matter what school one went to.
@ClarinetDad16, look, I only have anecdotal experience, but I have seen more Big4 alums who went to easy-admittance colleges rise high up than I have seen Big4 alums who went to more prestigious colleges rise high up.
That elite college network doesn’t seem to be of big use in the Big4 world.
Perhaps you didn’t understand what I shared?
And maybe I don’t quite understand yours. A Big4 alum means they left their firm, which perhaps 98 out of 100 do. But if you mean those who rise up, where did the first big4 female CEO go to school - don’t think it was an easy admittance.
@ClarinetDad16, those who rose up in corporate ranks after they left, is what I meant.
In any case, you piqued my curiosity about whether internal promotions at the Big 4 match what I have seen in their alums so I went to check on where their heads went to school.
John Veihmeyer went to undergrad at ND.
Punit Renjen went to undergrad in India and then got his Masters from Willamette.
Dennis Nally is a graduate of WMU.
Mark Weinberger went to undergrad at Emory and picked up a JD from Case (and LLM from Georgetown).
@ClarinetDad16 , no offense, but I disagree with your response to both my post and that of @PurpleTitan 's.
By the time these people leave their firms to go in-house, whether it be as a CFO at a smaller company or as Controller or CAO or Assistant Treasurer, etc. elsewhere, what gets them those placements is their professional network established through work.
As an attorney, I’m comfortable saying that, sadly, my profession’s obsession with academic pedigree is exceeded only by that of the top iBanks. And even in the law, once you start working, where you attended law school tends to matter less and less over time.
But that’s the argument side of it. Ultimately, the proof is in the pudding for me, and in this area, I have too much experience, on both coasts, to write it off as “just anecdotal”. I know these people, I’ve worked with them, I socialize with them … yeah, you get the occasional person who attended a prestigious business school undergrad, but mostly you don’t. My best friend is the CAO at a promising private company that may do an IPO in the near future. University of Idaho. My son’s potential future father-in-law, UC Davis - a good, but hardly elite or super prestigious school.
The Haas and Ross kids tend to chase the brass ring right out of school, and sweating it out as a junior accountant at Ernst & Young is NOT the brass ring. It’s a stepping stone to it if you’re willing to work hard, but it’s not like being placed at a top consulting firm or hedge fund or VC firm or the like.
With all that said, I’d take the higher horsepower degree. Why not?
The main point I was making was that, if you want into this world (accounting), you can do it from anywhere. And that is beyond dispute in my view. But if you want to work at Goldman, or if you want to practice law at Cravath, you’re not going to get there from the University of Idaho. They are very different paths to travel.
CEO of US for Deloitte is Cathy Engelbert and she is a Lehigh alumni.
So Lehigh, Emory, Notre Dame and one outlier (who got an executive MBA? from Columbia)
Again @MiddleburyDad2 I appreciate your lengthy reply but let’s agree to disagree. The “exercise” would be to gauge outcomes for accounting graduates from “elite” schools and non-competitive schools.
We agree (I think) that many of the elite school kids don’t stay in accounting.
They leverage their degree into a law degree. Or an MBA degree. Or a consulting path.
Again we agree the elite school kids will have more doors open to them. The local kids if they work hard can have a long lasting career in accounting and they is great too.
@NJDad68 Tulane ACT mid-range is 29-32…not 30-33, according to US News ranking.
UofM does have better reputation (almost in every field) than the other two schools mentioned here.
ok. agreed. we disagree.
to clarify, my view is that many of the elite school kids don’t start in accounting to begin with - they go straight to consulting/ibank then elite MBA. one doesn’t “leverage” one’s degree, elite or otherwise, into law school. you go or you don’t - that’s GPA and LSAT driven. MBA is a little different, but i won’t get into that.
i think the point where we have a complete misunderstanding is captured in your last comment. first, everyone needs to work hard. you don’t move anywhere but out in the work world if you don’t, no matter where you attended school.
no, I didn’t mean to suggest that the local kids can only look forward to long-lasting careers in accounting. many do, and many go on to be CFOs, CAOs, CIOs, Treasurers, Bus. Dev executives, etc. etc. the CFO at Weyerhaeuser is a Seattle U kid who worked for another public company in IT, Bus Dev and Ops at the executive level.
my point is that once you’ve spent four years or so at, say, EY, you can go on to other positions outside the firm, become a subject matter expert and stay at the firm, or both. but once you’re experienced at those places doing whatever, your mobility really doesn’t tie in any more to where you did your undergrad work. nobody cares.
yes, elite school kids have more doors open to them initially and, in a few lines of work, longer than that. no doubt, the Ross kids will field more offers than the Idaho kids. agreed. but the accounting firm route, over all, effectively offers the non-elite kids many similar opportunities. a CFO is a CFO. if he/she came out of Goldman, then we can guess at that person’s schooling. if they came out of PWC, we can’t.
It’s a shame that this thread went so far off topic that the OP had to open a new one with the same question.