My daughter was recently accepted to Wake Forest University under the early decision plan for 2024. She is very interested in majoring in business, but after reviewing the statistics, the average GPA for being admitted to the business school is 3.6! To my understanding, that is way above the Wake Forest University average. On that note, I have three questions.
What do students that want to do business but don't get into the business school end majoring in typically?
What is the percentage acceptance rate at the Business School?
For the Business and Enterprise Management Major, is it a pre-requisite to be accepted into the business school to take this major!
Thanks!
P.S- I have a few more specific questions for a current undergraduate Wake Forest business student. Please message me!
Congratulations on your daughter’s acceptance to Wake Forest. It’s a wonderful place. I have a junior son in the B school so perhaps I can answer your questions.
I would assume the alternative would be Economics. Plenty of Econ majors place well into the typical B School careers like banking, consulting, etc. An interesting aside is Wake has a few business related programs for non business majors: a summer business program (exclusively for non majors), an MA in Business Management exclusively for non majors (think of it as a 5th yr program for liberal arts kids who want to place well in business - some do anyway, but this is a plan structured to get a business job), and the MS in Accounting which doesn't require an UG business or accounting degree (they make you take a few prereqs in the summer if you come from anything other than accounting or finance).
For an idea of where econ majors go after graduation, look on the website under Office of Personal and Career Dev. (OPCD). They have a link to the first destination report broken down by yr and major. It has a mid 90s % knowledge base which means virtually every kid is accounted for. Interesting to look at outcomes for lots of different majors.
The B school acceptance rate is 65-75%. I wouldn't be too concerned about getting rejected. If D was a strong enough student to gain general admission and she works hard, she'll most likely get in. Classes are demanding but quite manageable for those that are serious about that (which is the vast majority at Wake).
The BEM major is one of the 4 primary majors of the B school, so yes she would have to be accepted in order to pursue that major.
There are 3 prereq classes and an additional 2 that are typically taken while applying to the B school. The prereqs are, Econ, Calculus, and Financial Accounting. The other two are Finance and Stats (which is one of the BEM classes). Accounting is typically the major weed out. S has several friends that decided to go in a different direction. But again, if your D is organized and puts in the work, she will likely be fine.
The first two years are really about exploring the core / divisional reqs and finding your interests. Lots of people come into any college with a preconceived major and end up switching. Lots of kids stay the course.
Most of the kids who want the biz school, get it, so don’t worry about that.
Just to offer a slightly different perspective, keeping in mind that some families here are preparing to spend life-altering sums of money or have their student take on life-altering educational debt in order to afford a private college:
With an acceptance rate of 65-75%, "most" applicants to the Business School will NOT be accepted. By definition, a quarter to a third of them won't. It seems unlikely that 25-35% of applicants are disorganized slackers, so it is inaccurate and possibly pejorative to say "if you are organized and work hard, you'll get in." Also, ED-accepted students may be at a disadvantage since there seem to be somewhat more lenient standards for ED acceptance to Wake.
Our daughter was not an Econ major, but she had friends who were, and their unanimous impression was the Business School students get great support from the OCPD, but liberal arts majors such as Econ, not so much. On a positive note, there's the option to do a fifth year at Wake in one of the B-school's grad programs, and those students do receive more help with career development.
Our daughter was interested in exploring marketing at Wake, but wasn't able to, as those courses are reserved for B-School students. That was a little frustrating. She ended up with a great job anyway, but it would have been great if she could have had the opportunity to sample the business world a little more broadly as an undergrad.
Comparing B-school to Econ major first destination outcomes is interesting. To summarize, if you have a student hoping to go into finance in the Northeast, their opportunities coming out of the B-school are significantly better than for an Econ major. If they want to stay in the Southeast and do other stuff, Wake will probably be fine.
Take-home: Wake is probably a great experience if you get into the B-school; if you don't, you have fewer options, it's a bit more of a slog and could cost your family more. Your kiddo will probably be fine in the long run, but your family may end up feeling they didn't get what they paid for.
Congrats @WakeForest132435! Wake is a great school that your daughter will hopefully love. It’s also a huge perk not to have that senior stress that plagues so many kids.
Take the theories presented by @WFUparent1 with a grain of salt. They seem to have an ax to grind.
My son is a freshman at Wake, so he’s still figuring it out. I’d encourage you to go to the B School presentation on the admitted students’ day. I really learned a great deal and heard from some kids that loved it and others that didn’t. Either way, I thought the introduction was helpful.
Good luck.
Also - thanks to @rickle1 for the above post. It’s nice to hear from someone in the B school.
@WFUparent1 I certainly didn’t mean to imply that the students who didn’t achieve admission to the B school were “disorganized slackers”. Sorry if it came off that way. Perhaps a better way to put it is (and I get this from S) those that don’t get in sort of self select out because they feel it’s not for them. Either they don’t enjoy the material, find it overly burdensome, or have developed other interests. S actually knows several kids that dropped out of Accounting (therefore dropping out of the B School process). He also knows several kids that started out as STEM or Premed and have moved to the social sciences.
The fact is Wake is an academically demanding school. The profs are excellent but they are not easy.They will go out of their way to help you if you show interest. Not that HS was a breeze for these high stat kids, but they basically were straight A students while juggling all these activities. Hard to get As at Wake. It’s doable, but just takes a lot of work and dedication.
Interesting. I just took a closer look at the first destination report broken down by major. In 2018, there were 103 Econ majors. 35 of them are employed in Banking (Investment, corporate, private, etc.), Financial Management or Consulting. So a third of the kids wound up with similar jobs to their B school counterparts. When you add typical Management Training Programs, Marketing , Internet, Advertising Jobs, etc it’s more than half (closer to 2/3). Of course some went on to grad school.
I would say that’s a pretty healthy outcome of leading business school type jobs for kids outside the business school.
Now it’s true that the finance majors are primarily gunning for Wall St. gigs and many of them get there. But so do some of the econ kids. My guess is much of that is based on self selection. Not everyone wants that lifestyle.
@rickle1, inspired by your good example, I took a closer look at the First Destination reports for both Finance and Econ majors and did some counting.
Interestingly, the differences are fairly significant. In 2018, Finance majors were accepted to grad school at Duke, Cornell and Columbia, while Econ majors were not. Out of 110 Finance majors, it looks like 31 of them snagged jobs in finance, consulting or i-banking in NYC. Only 7 Econ majors got comparable Wall St. jobs.
I think statements about “self-selection” with respect to desirable jobs and B-school admissions are a little facile. If 25-35% of applicants are rejected from the B-school, by definition they are not “self-selecting” out of b-school–they were rejected. If liberal arts majors are not getting the same career support as the B-school students, they are not “self-selecting” out of the Wall Street “lifestyle,” they are just not getting the same opportunities. However, interestingly, I see the “self-selection” argument has been a feature of the CC Wake forum for several years now.
I am sure that students from well-off and well-connected families like ours do well at Wake, as our daughter did. I do have some concerns that this forum, for whatever reason, is not as transparent as it could be about possible negatives at Wake. It’s great that some students have had such positive experiences. But the level of personal animosity towards those who offer a contrasting opinion seems a little suspicious to me.
Every school has weaknesses along with strengths. We should all just try to be honest, since the forum is read by families from all walks of life, some of whom can ill afford to participate in the college tuition arms race, and who are making decisions that will have lasting implications for their child’s social and economic mobility.
@WFUparent1 I certainly agree with you that every school has weaknesses and strengths. I also fully support the idea that each of us is entitled to our own opinion, has our own circumstances, etc. The “Wake experience” comments I make are solely based on conversations with my son and observations of his relationships with his primary group of friends. His experience is his , and I’m sure every student has their own twist on things.
Regarding facts such as first destination reports, the information is there for all to see and draw their own conclusions. It’s tempting to look at raw data and make assumptions, but that’s hard to do without knowing the variables. An example: S is a finance major. Per the destination report (and from what I know of many of his finance based friends), it would be easy to assume that he’s gunning for IB on Wall Street. And that assumption would be 100% wrong. So he’ll show up as a different data point (because he has no interest in IB and is not particularly keen on NYC - would prefer the Boston area, DC, or Charlotte). If he ends up in Private Banking or Consulting in a city of his choice, that’s self selection. You could look at the data and say only 10 (making up a number) Finance majors landed in consulting. Must be something wrong with that program. No, self selection. The goal was IB for the vast majority.
And regarding the personal animosity towards those with differing viewpoints, I agree there is no room or place for that on CC. I’m all about transparency, full disclosure, robust debate, and when necessary agreeing to disagree.
Our experience has been exceptional. S came from a small public charter HS in Tampa. One of very few to venture OOS. Literally didn’t know anyone attending Wake. Started a whole new life (albeit after a very successful, engaged HS career), and is thriving - in Barcelona as we speak (actually could be anywhere as we get pics from different destinations every weekend ) He has met kids from all walks of life, and from all over the world. Has made great friends including those who come from very modest means (significant financial aid) and those from serious wealth. A bunch of sharp kids, with majors all over the spectrum, that will all do well because that’s who they are.
Is it perfect? No. Would he change some things? I’m sure he would (don’t know what). Personally (not that my opinion really matters as it’s his life) I wish it was closer to a larger city like Charlotte. In fact, for my taste, it would be closer to perfect if you put it on wheels and moved it to the Boston suburbs as he’d have more access to employment in that part of the world. But the southern charm and weather is also a great mix.
@WakeForest132435, DD was admitted to the B school in February with a 3.3 GPA. She is a double major and has some friends who started with the business core and later self selected into different fields of study. Last week she told me about two of those friends who had received 2020 summer internships with major financial and technology firms. I don’t want to get involved in the back and forth going on the WFU threads right now, so feel free to PM me and I’ll share our experience with you.
@vegasdad123 if true, the above statistics are interesting, as they suggest Wake presents one set of data to students/families who have been accepted but have not yet committed to attending Wake, and another set to families who have committed. I have a very clear recollection from the B-school information session during my D’s Freshman orientation and we were told the B-school acceptance rate is about 70% which is in line with Rickel1’s impression.
Why different information would be presented during Freshman orientation is hard to understand unless it’s being done to manage expectations once a family is there.
I double-checked with D just now and her response was she knew “a ton” of kids who entered Wake planning to apply to the B-school but then did so badly in Accounting and other classes that they didn’t bother to apply. Of the kids she knew who did apply, “everyone” got in.
Another source on the internet independent of Wake states its B-school acceptance rate is 25% which makes sense if it’s based on 70% of the 35% of students accepted to Wake.
+/- 70% is the number I have heard several times. I have also heard that some kids plan on going to B school upon admission to Wake but have a change of heart during prereqs. No different than a premed or engineering kid deciding it’s not for them after a couple of classes. That’s the good thing about the divisional requirements as the student will get exposed to many subjects outside of their intended major.
S decided to minor in Politics & International Affairs because of an interest he developed in the divisional classes. Many of his friends are double majors or have a minor.
They say your internships are more important than your major. Liberal arts students from Wake enter the business world. Another thing: you can take marketing classes if you take the prerequisites which are Acct and Eco.
@“compassionateparent&&&” unfortunately I suspect some of the excessively positive commentary here, and the ad hominem attacks against parents who post differing opinions, are not necessarily coming from parents in all cases.
A university is free to say whatever they like about themselves on their website, in the media, and to families touring the school. Anonymously posted disinformation on a supposedly neutral social media platform crosses a line, as that’s when innocent families will suffer as they make life-altering decisions based on statements whose origin is not transparent.
The fact is that a 2017 study by the New York Times which looked at the socioeconomic origins, and subsequent socioeconomic mobility of students who attended Wake, found that students at Wake, disproportionate to similar universities, came from the top 10% of median family income. More disturbingly, only 8% of students from lower income groups who attended Wake, were successful in moving to higher income groups following graduation; again, Wake’s performance here lagged that of its peers among elite colleges and universities.
Wake is apparently trying to work on this, at least in terms of attracting a more economically diverse group of students. What efforts they are making to provide them with similar opportunities to their more advantaged peers once they are at Wake, remains to be seen, but I am hopeful. In the meantime, it disturbs me to see this forum being used to market Wake as a school where everyone has equal opportunities, because the statistics indicate that’s not the case.
Again, nothing personal here. Our family is in one of the highest income groups and we were able to use our resources to ensure that the barriers our student encountered at Wake amounted to annoyances rather than life-altering obstacles to success. We are cognizant that other families are not in our fortunate situation however. Those families might be better off electing to send their student to a state school, and they deserve the right to make that decision based on objective information.
Having had to delete another post, I’ll remind users of another rule: “Out of respect for both moderators and policies, discussion of moderator actions and forum policies is welcomed via private message or e-mail; these issues are off-topic for the forums.”
That said, I do not respond to messages questioning why I did not delete a certain post if the user has never flagged the post.
) He has met kids from all walks of life, and from all over the world. Has made great friends including those who come from very modest means (significant financial aid) and those from serious wealth. A bunch of sharp kids, with majors all over the spectrum, that will all do well because that’s who they are.