<p>So I got accepted into these 3 colleges, along with Babson. However, my top 3 are UW, Carleton, and Boston. Hopefully I get direct admit to Foster, and for Carleton I think I will major in econ.</p>
<p>I have my eyes set on a career in business (yes, I know that is really broad), but I'm not 100% sure that is what I want to pursue, and I definitely don't know what I want to do in the actual field of business.</p>
<p>So given that information, which of these 3 would be best for me? Especially important is job placement, as I plan to work one or two years before going into grad school. I was also wondering how each of these schools would look to grad schools too. </p>
<p>There are financial considerations for me, as UW is instate and I got no grant money so it will be 24k. Carleton gave me 8k in grants, so it would be 46k, and Boston gave me none at all so it would be full price. But, I am appealing at Carleton and Boston as there are special circumstances in my family.</p>
<p>Regardless of financials though, how would these schools rank in best preparing me for life after college? I know there are lots of benefits to a liberal arts education, but does an actual business program prepare me better? And is Carroll Honors that much better than Foster?</p>
<p>Benefits after college? Don’t know. I assume this correlates closely to the quality of the education you will receive while at college. I made this exact same choice last year, and I didn’t even consider BC or UW for a second. I think that Carleton is just that much better.</p>
<p>So a liberal arts education in Econ at Carleton will allow me to have good job placement and look good for grad school. As opposed to a specialized business school?</p>
<p>On a per capita basis (adjusting for institution size), Carleton is the 4th most productive school in the country for generating PhDs in economics. Boston College and UW are not among the top 26.</p>
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<p>Prepare you better for job placement and financial success, you mean? There does not seem to be a whole lot of good, conclusive data. You can consider the payscale.com tables. These suggest that in terms of starting and mid-career median pay, an undergraduate economics degree is more valuable than an undergraduate finance degree, and much more valuable than an undergraduate marketing, accounting, or generic business degree. </p>
<p>Note that the payscale tables are based on large data samples, but the information is self-reported. It includes only data on alumni with terminal bachelor degrees; people with graduate degrees are deliberately excluded. Also note that many of the most selective universities and colleges do not offer undergraduate business degrees at all. Therefore, the apparently greater earning power of economics majors may be more attributable to stronger average academic performance (or to social connections, or other advantages, associated with the more selective schools) than to the market value of the degree, per se.</p>
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First, the LAC population sizes are very small, especially per major after subtracting for students going directly to grad school. So it could be very misleading to post information about specific, one-off hiring outcomes. Second, it is not really the mission of liberal arts education to prepare students for specific jobs. </p>
<p>Wow, great post TK! If I were to major in another Business field at UW or BC, would you say Carleton has an edge still or is it too hard to compare?</p>
<p>With a small population it should be easy to have a good survey of all the grads post college plans.<br>
East coast top LACs such as most of those are still wired into the east coast establishment and they can compete with the Ivy grads. Midwest LACs have no such connections and are the subject here. If you asked can an Amherst or Williams econ grad work on Wall Street I would say sure. Midwest grads have no such options to any extent outside family connections etc. I don’t know where they go except grad schools in big numbers (relatively). That could be because their other options are limited.</p>
<p>Yeah, my concern is that being in the Midwest, Carleton will not have the exposure that these other better known LAC’s will enjoy. My biggest concern actually, is with on campus recruiting.</p>