You’re absolutely correct. Never mentioned MBA route because, as I said at the beginning, my comment was mainly about V’s business school. Although I did make some generalizations later on, I never mentioned other routes to the higher echelon business world (so as to stay on topic), like Tier 1 schools (Ivy’s and Ivy equivalents) and even Tier 2 schools like BC, ND, G-Town, et al. Our son attended a top ten business school, graduated in 2021, and is in IB in Chicago. He said (and I have consistently read over the years) that you can achieve the higher business world level careers from an average (non-target) school, however it requires a lot more effort, and is a lot harder with networking, cold-calling, etc. Some of his colleagues are Tier 1 school grads, some are Tier 2 grads and a smaller number are Tier 3 & 4 school grads. He said that a few of those from average schools had “hooks” by knowing someone in the industry, but some did not. His VP majored in Chinese Literature at Georgetown, and five years later entered University of Chicago Business School and earned her MBA in finance. And, as I’m sure you know, you don’t have to major in business or even a STEM field to gain entrance to these career paths. Liberal arts grads can make it, albeit in smaller numbers. Look at the CEO of GS, he graduated from Hamilton College, a liberal arts school. Think about it, if you’re holding an executive meeting in the conference or amphitheater room of your company, do you want all business majors? No, you want different perspectives from employees with different backgrounds, majors, specialties; this makes for better decisions and corporate proposals!
Finally, I’ll add something I tried to add in my first comment but couldn’t because I waited too long to edit. Even though I couldn’t find much objective evidence for Villanova (business school or any school there) placing “Very Well” in the higher echelon business world, I did find a decent amount of such evidence. I would categorize it as “good to very good,” but not excellent, and certainly not outstanding, like Ross, UVA, Cornell, et al. So, V certainly is at least a semi-target. Curiously, most of the evidence I found for V’s placement was from the 2015 era, give or take a few years. In that time frame they placed moderately well. All that said, I strongly suspect that V places better than they appear to; not everything can be quantified accurately by rankings and lists.
As an old Catholic school boy from Brooklyn, who attended Catholic grammar school, high school and even college (St. Francis) for one semester—(I had to transfer out after one semester because it was a tiny school, claustrophobic)—and then CUNY, I tried to get my son to apply to a Catholic college or two, and Colgate (I still believe a liberal arts education is best), but he wanted no part of it. Only business school for him, he said. Our daughter is more open-minded. My wife, an educator, and I love that Catholic schools focus on the Whole Person, and the fact that the better ones tend to have students from very good homes. As an old-fashioned, later in life father, I especially value that for our daughter!
Finally, a default path is Econ major if you can’t make it into business school. You’ll have an excellent chance of success.
There is no one path to success!
