<p>i know TONS who are applying to schools that provide undergraduate business programs. i don't understand why? don't engineers make the MOST money? do business majors make a lot of money (maybe in the long run, but starting off, do they make a lot)?</p>
<p>Another how much does x make thread! How original!</p>
<p>Business is very general and is more transferable than a specialized major. The average person does not want to major in something where you actually must learn a lot of math, sciences, and programming.</p>
<p>Some business majors do get paid well but the average compensation expectation is completely inflated. Only about 5-10% of the population is going to make 55k+ out of undergrad with a business degree. The rest will make between 40-50k if they can even land a job.</p>
<p>Because people are either lazy or are limited their their innate ability. Engineering requires good quantitative thinking aka being good at math. Have you ever heard of the phrase, the hatred of mathematics if based upon the hatred of thinking? Many (but not all) business programs only require one course on business calculus (super watered down calculus course) which a trained monkey can probably do. You can be a business major and do very little studying or effort and do well. But most business majors will become accountants and their salaries on average will easily top out at a much lower ceiling than engineering. You do know that the largest percent of top MBA programs consist of engineering majors. Do not get me wrong. Not all business programs are weak. Some are actually quantitative and require a good quantitative background and skills not just anyone can easily obtain.</p>
<p>^^Wow. I don’t think I have ever heard that many generalizations in one post. Let me knock you off your high horse Mr. Engineer. </p>
<p>"Have you ever heard of the phrase, the hatred of mathematics if based upon the hatred of thinking? " </p>
<p>No, I haven’t. If you can find me ONE example of any respectable person saying that please do so. I’d like to know what respectable person I should now call an idiot.</p>
<p>“You do know that the largest percent of top MBA programs consist of engineering majors.”</p>
<p>Proof?</p>
<p>I guess they don’t teach you physics majors how to make a sound argument? You sound like my brother-in-law. Anytime that guy opens his mouth you know some statistic or fact is going to come out of his mouth that has no proof to it.</p>
<p>Harvard:</p>
<p>Undergraduate Majors
Business Administration 26%
Engineering/Natural Sciences/Technical Disciplines 33%
Humanities/Social Sciences 40%
Other 2%</p>
<p>Sloan:</p>
<p>Undergraduate degree area
Business and Commerce 25%
Computer Science 8%
Engineering 29%
Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences 30%
Science and Math 9%</p>
<p>Booth:</p>
<p>Business: 29.4 %
Engineering: 18.4%
Lib Arts: 33%
Econ: 19%</p>
<p>Kellogg:</p>
<pre><code>Undergraduate Majors
</code></pre>
<p>Business Administration
31%
Economics<br>
18%
Engineering/Mathematics/Natural Sciences<br>
34%
Humanities/Social Sciences<br>
15%
Other<br>
2%</p>
<p>Stanford:</p>
<p>46% Social Sciences.</p>
<p>NYU Stern:</p>
<p>Undergraduate Major<br>
Business and Commerce 26%
Social Sciences 21%
Economics 19%
Engineering, Math, Science 18%
Humanities, Arts, Other 16%</p>
<p>MIND YOU…Engineering is lumped together with Natural Sciences.</p>
<p>I could get you more or is your foot deep enough in your mouth yet? It’s okay, you’ve still got payscale that says you have the best salary potential!</p>
<p>Here’s a couple more for you.</p>
<p>Wharton:</p>
<p>Undergrad Major
Humanities/Social Science 44%
Engineering/Math/Science 26%
Business 25%
Other 5%</p>
<p>Kelley:</p>
<p>Undergraduate Majors
Business Administration 37%
Social Science and Humanities 30%
Science and Engineering 31%
Other 2%</p>
<p>I’m not going to get into the salaries argument - you could probably find a thread about it on the very first page of this Business forum (though i am not going to bother to look). I am a business major and it is certainly not true that you can do very well LEGITIMATELY with very little study/effort. However, if you do a lot of cheating and professor schmoozing (both of which I see happen a great deal among people with both low and high GPAs), you can get by ILLEGITIMATELY with very little study/effort.</p>
<p>Also, Engineers may have to study harder and longer their first two years, but Accountants have to study just as hard their Junior and Senior years to get that high GPA. Obviously in both cases, there are people that are just naturally talented in their subjects, but on average this is the case. Engineering is obviously harder than all the rest of the business majors.</p>
<p>As for that silly quote, well yes it is stupid for people to avoid mathematics just because they are lazy. But to equate mathematics with “thinking” is just as silly. Mathematics may be difficult, and it may require thinking, but the ability to think conceptually and philosophically is a far superior human trait than the ability to think quantitatively/mathematically. Science and math are increasing at ever growing rates in our global society, yet at the same time our social problems are growing even faster. This is because there are too many people that can’t think either way, and most of the people that can think quantitatively cannot think conceptually or philosophically. And this is not due to an innate problem, but due to people choosing not to think conceptually or philosophically.</p>
<p>“But most business majors will become accountants and their salaries on average will easily top out at a much lower ceiling than engineering.”
Wow, two insane statements in one sentence.</p>
<p>I think the most ridiculous thing in this thread is the focus on starting salary. Even if someone was extremely good at math and science, it would absolutely be stupid to automatically major in engineering because of that. What if they were extremely good at math and science but hated the idea of an engineering career? Silly.</p>
<p>BTW,
I am a business major, it isn’t one of the “fluff” concentrations, it does not have a lot of math in it, and although I do not like math, I do not dislike/avoid it either. Yet I still chose a business major. However, in most cases people just choose it because they have no passion, want a job, and hate math because it requires extra study/thinking (this is not the case with most people on these forums though). These people normally end up choosing Marketing, Human Resources, Management, International Business, Entrepreneurship, or some generalized business degree. But I am not saying <em>everyone</em> chooses those majors for the same reason lol.</p>
<p>Why are engineering majors so desperate to get congratulated on the business major forum? I don’t get it. Do threads like this pop up in the journalism major forum too?</p>
<p>I think it is funny that engineering is brought up in almost every thread. Not only because it is the business forum, but also because everyone seems to think business and engineering are the only two majors out there…</p>
<p>Well to be honest, majoring in math gets u better positions…but only few actually Enjoy Math…</p>
<p>I don’t know if math majors are all riding the gravy train. I really don’t care to spend the next half hour finding citations to support my intuition, but I’m not at all convinced that the math majors that don’t end up as quants really do all that well. I’m sure quite a lot end up as actuaries, I saw some math major resumes on the desk of a HR person the other day when I was interviewing for an accounting job(giant insurance company). But the rest? </p>
<p>I’ve seen way too many math and science major’s quant scores weaker than mine on GMATClub’s forum to believe that majoring in math makes you any better at simple problems which require intuition, quick thinking, and simple cleverness for lack of a better word. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t kick my ass if there was multi-variable calculus on the exam, but my sense is there aren’t that many jobs that require that…less jobs than there are math majors anyway.</p>
<p>
.</p>
<p>I disagree. Although philosophical thinking is valuable, it is less rigorous because it allows for high levels of subjectivity, multiple forms of interpretation and no reliable standard for evaluating the quality of philosophical statements over others. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is a ridiculous statement. Do you have any proof of this?</p>
<p>I would say that math does not require a high level of thinking. In order to do good in math, you have to know rules, principles, and samples. When I was taking math classes I didn’t even think hard, and thats how I got my As in those classes. The only time when you need to actually think in math is when you didn’t see any samples, and you have to figure out a way how to solve a problem yourself. Otherwise, you just need to follow the instructions and you will be fine.</p>
<p>On the other hand, English probably requires more thinking than math. Just think about it yourself, when you were writing essays, responses, and research papers: wasn’t you straining your brain? Moreover, there is no right or wrong answer in English, unlike in math, which obviously makes English harder.</p>
<p>I know that I will get flamed right now, but this is my opinion, not the fact. Anyone agrees with me?
English>Math=level of thinking.</p>
<p>I don’t know about higher level math classes(beyond Calc II). I assume they are very hard. I just don’t think they are a prerequisite for being able to “think quantitatively” outside of the hard math/science field. An earlier poster is correct when saying that the average person has serious problems dealing with numbers. You see that with politicians that say things which makes you think they really don’t know the difference between a million and a billion. The average person does not take a few seconds to consider whether the best way to evaluate something is with a percentage or the magnitude of the thing. Multi-variable calculus won’t help you with that, just like it won’t help people figure out many unstructured problems that require no advanced knowledge but lots of “puzzle solving” skills. </p>
<p>So while I agree that being able to think “quantitatively” is important, I don’t think you need to major in math or hard science to do it, nor am I convinced that just because you have taken a lot of math classes that you are necessarily going to be able to figure out a puzzle or make a worthwhile observation about a case study that might require 10th grade geometry applied in an clever way.</p>
<p>Toshtemirov- Either you are just freakishly smart or you have never taken a real math course (proof based math course). Sure calc I,II,III, etc. is very easy, but when you get into more theoretical side of calc like real analysis, it becomes very hard easily.</p>
<p>“English>Math at level of thinking”? </p>
<p>Sure, writing a 20-page research paper on the works of James Joyce and modernist literature in the early 20th century requires a great deal of thinking, but advanced critical writing is an upper-division courses at most colleges and universities. Differential and integral calculus are only lower division courses popularized by the fact that most engineers have to take them.</p>
<p>Mathematics, on the other hand, gets very abstract rather quickly in upper division once you start taking analysis, number theory, topology, etc. In those courses you are no longer solving problems but expected to do rigorous mathematical proofs.</p>
<p>It sound clich</p>
<p>Pretty sure Tosh is a foreigner, in which case his statement about English>Math would be true. =P</p>
<p>^lol…you are right.</p>
<p>Although I agree that when you analyse something, or solve logical problems, you have to put some thinking to it, but when it comes to practical math, you don’t need to think. Lets put it this way: pretend that you were given a sample problem and then another similar problem with different numbers…do you need to think in order to solve that problem? I guess not; or you were given a problem and a formula, in this case you just need to plug in numbers and that is it.</p>