<p>I've done a lot of searching on the college confidential forums, but it's come to a point where I needed to make an account and ask.</p>
<p>I've gotten into USC Marshall School of Business and Emory's Goizueta Business School. But I'm aiming for a career in the music industry, and USC has a music industry program to accommodate that.</p>
<p>At this point, it's my choice to decide on what's worth more: USC's music industry program or Emory's superior business program.</p>
<p>I'm not discrediting USC's business program but from I've heard/know, Emory's is better.</p>
<p>This is a cut and paste of my response to a similar question, I’ve updated the names of the schools:</p>
<p>*Undergraduate business programs are predominantly if not exclusively regional when it comes to hiring. Local companies and the local offices of large companies will send representatives to screen candidates for opportunities in their region which only makes sense given the time and cost involved - Why would a Chicago based company send people to Atlanta or Los Angeles to recruit undergrads when it has a perfectly good pool of candidates in their own backyard? From time to time large businesses will offer exceptional candidates the chance of picking a location to start their careers in, but that is comparatively rare.</p>
<p>The real value of an undergrad business degree rests in the career center and alumni network that grads can tap into. Typically that means the area geographically closest to the college. So the real question is not which school is the best? It is where do I want to first work after you get out of school? Emory will obviously have its strongest connections in Georgia and the Southeast. USC will be especially strong in Los Angeles and the rest of California. This doesn’t mean you can’t get a job in California if you go to Emory, but the USC grad is going to have substantially bigger-stronger network to tap into in LA than you will.</p>
<p>Finally a word about rankings: They are irrelevant. The hiring is regional, so the local office will have its pick of the handful of schools available to them; it doesn’t matter if Emory is higher ranked than USC because the LA company isn’t going to Atlanta to interview. Managers in the real world don’t look at rankings, we look at individual performance. I was a hiring manager for over 20 years, during that time one of the hard and fast rules was, no interviewing anyone with less than a 3.0. We simply assumed that if you had attended a reputable college and had performed well that you therefore probably possessed the requisite skills to get the job done. In 20 years I never once heard a discussion about one school being ranked higher than another; if it came down to two otherwise equal candidates we would usually choose the higher GPA. Schools are like horses, candidates are like jockeys, smart companies choose winning jockeys.*</p>
<p>LA is a major center for the music/entertainment industry, therefore the advantage of proximity to internships and ultimately jobs makes USC a no-brainer. The differences between some arbitrary, annually changing rankings is pointless. Go where the jobs are.</p>
<p>vinceh: excellent post; should be required reading on the business school forum…and while we are at it, it would probably apply to top communication schools as well…</p>
<p>@vinceh - Wow, thanks! That really put it in a different perspective for me. All my dad does is look at the business rankings and my mom’s into prestigious schools, so I’ve never gotten a fair perspective on anything.</p>