old guy- thanks for clarifying.
JarJar- there are lots of fantastic careers that don’t involve finance and banking. You know that, right?
The basic issue might be one of semantics. Many of the courses that might find a place under the umbrella of “business” are offered in other disciplines, with the most prevalent being under economics. Check a few curriculums and look at the differences between applied and theoretical economics. A good place to so is at … Wharton by checking the distinctions between their BS and BA.
The road to jobs in “investment banking” or “finance” are equally multiple with paths based on quants or more generalists’ subjects. All in all, one does not need a degree in business. As far as the path to an MBA, a undergraduate in business is neither required nor warranted in most cases. Purple offered some history as the MBA having been created to complement the education of liberal arts majors, and plenty of technical middle managers who sought advancement.
It is safe to assume that the schools that did not offer UG degrees in business did not feel their curriculum would be enhanced by creating a specific department. It is also safe to assume that the thousands of colleges in the country have different opinions and business models.
In the end, there are no reason to believe that a student interested in “business” or “finance” cannot pile up the necessary courses and “badges” at almost any school, be one with a business major core or LAC or a RU.
JarJar- how to get a good job in banking-
1- Major in something you love and do really well in it
2- Take statistics (much better prep for a lot of entry level finance jobs than actual courses in finance) and do really well in it. Extra credit for taking the version that math majors take, not the version that the nursing students and sociology majors take.
3- Become fluent or nearly so in a strategic language. Mandarin- extra points.
4- Make sure you do well in the traditional micro/macro sequence (just two classes which will leave you time to become a philosophy major or whatever else floats your boat).
5- Read. WSJ at least a few times a week; the Economist, Financial Times frequently. Develop a relationship with one of your econ professors so when you don’t understand an article or a graph, you can pop in during office hours and get someone really smart to explain it to you. Whether it’s tax policy or what happens to employment when the minimum wage goes up or why unfunded pension liabilities are a bad thing in Illinois- have someone with a PhD explain it to you (he or she may even offer you a job as a research assistant. if so, take it).
There you go. I’ll have more specific suggestions on your job search come junior year, but this is what you need to know as a pre-frosh.
Oh- and learn what banks do BEFORE you interview. Understand why there is such a thing as Municipal Finance, and that it’s not the same as Trust Services which is different from Commercial Lending which is different from Risk/Basel II.
Namaste.
@SomeOldGuy I lost interest in investment banking/consulting once I discovered the general consensus was you’ll make loads of money, but you’ll be working 80-100 hours weekly. Money isn’t worth wasting your youth - [in my opinion].
In any case let’s get the thread back on track to answering the thread’s question.
IBanking has those hours.
Consulting generally doesn’t.
Consulting in effect does as you are on the road 4 days a week so there is not much time for social activites.
Not all consulting jobs have you on the road 4 days a week. I know a young woman who works at one of the largest, most prestigious consulting companies in the country. She does not travel. In fact, she can telecommute a great deal… which allows her to fly home to California and hang out in the back yard while working online with her office in Washington, D.C.
Please allow me to restate then. Consulting in effect does as most of the consultants are on the road 4 days a week so there is not much time for social activites. But there are a handful of exceptions.
@KKRSCG:
True, a social life is hard, but to me, there are 2 key differences:
- Usually, you can get an adequate amount of sleep each night as a consultant.
- Your weekends are free (except in extreme situations).
That is very true.
@Jarjarbinks23: Sounds like you’ve done some homework, and that’s good. I think the generalizable advice you are getting here is that, absent an interest in something quite specialized like accounting, your early career employers will care more about the analytical and writing skills you develop in college than any particular content knowledge. Quantitative coursework obviously helps for finance jobs, but there are lots of ways to get that. Heck, a lot of the big banks hire PhDs in physics and math for the really heavy duty modeling.
I think the good news for you is that you should feel liberated to pursue a lot of different interests in college, as long as you are stretching yourself to improve those analytical and writing skills.
"For instance, the “newer” degree at Cornell is the general business degree program called Applied Economics and Management. "
If 1909 is considered “newer”, compared to something else, then sure.
“Since its inception in 1909, the Dyson School (formerly the Department of Applied Economics and Management) has earned a national and international reputation for its unique combination of quality and breadth in research, undergraduate and graduate education, extension, and outreach.”
There were plenty of business majors in the ag school back when I attended (relatively close to the 1909 founding). But back then the major was called “Ag Ec”, and it was not considered to be particularly prestigious. (well, the students weren’t. The faculty did great research in international resource economics, IIRC). It became a bigger deal much later, evidently. And yet more recently Charles Dyson gave the program a separate endowment (and name), to keep its budget somewhat insulated from the clutches of the rest of the ag school. I’m guessing.
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Many top Universities, especially private ones do not have undergraduate business for the same reason that they do not have undergraduate engineering.
Historically these were vocational pusuits not befitting the children of the upper class who would not think getting their hands dirty was appropriate.
Over time engineering and business have become viewed as much more respectable. so it seems odd now that many colleges still do not have them.
@Much2learn, well, as I noted above, you do see universities with prestigious MBA programs now offering more to their undergrads.
Starting a new school is a pretty big endeavor; you pretty much need a huge bequest, and even then, your b-school will take decades to gain prestige/alumni/donations/power. As an example, Yale SOM has been around for about 4 decades now and still isn’t considered part of the top tier (though it is top 15). This despite the fact that its parent university has one of the most powerful university brand names in the world.
Plus, I don’t really see many top schools that don’t have b-schools these days.
Of the universities that I consider Ivies/equivalents/near-Ivies, MIT, Penn, Cornell, Cal, Georgetown, UMich, Notre Dame, UVa, & CMU have grad and undergraduate b-schools.
Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Northwestern, Chicago, Duke, Columbia, Dartmouth, Rice, & JHU have MBA programs.
Princeton, Brown, CalTech, & Tufts have nothing. Princeton does have a Masters in Finance, Brown has some hokey joint-EMBA program for extracting money from execs. Tufts has a MIB. Caltech would obviously have nothing. None of those schools should be expected to start an undergrad b-school any time soon.
So what about the schools that only have MBA’s? One thing to remember is for universities with elite MBA programs, the MBA’s are more “bang for the buck” than undergrads, in terms of donations/faculty resources.
Of the 10 that only have MBA programs, only the first 8 have b-schools that would be enough of a draw that they may raise the desirability of the university, and really, that’s not really true for Yale (who’s undergrad is more prestigious than its b-school). Of the rest, Dartmouth is unlikely to break from the LAC-type undergrad experience they now provide. Columbia, Northwestern, and Duke (and Rice) already provide majors/minors/certificates/masters programs to undergrads. Chicago allows undergrads to take Booth classes. So your question seems to be more “Why don’t Harvard and Stanford provide business classes to their undergrads?” (though at Harvard, you can take business classes through the Extension School)
Though I guess you could argue that instead of a program here and there, Northwestern could have a full-blown undergraduate Kellogg and Columbia could have a full-blown undergraduate CBS, etc. However, there’s a key difference between business and engineering: You can’t really become an engineer straight out of undergrad if you don’t study engineering. Other than accounting (which isn’t a really high-prestige field, at least in the US), there’s really no business area that you can’t enter as an undergrad if you don’t go to an undergrad b-school.
And yes, the prestige/desirability of business as a major in general (at least at the high end) has really taken off. 20 years ago, Wharton wasn’t as tough to get in to as HYPSM.
@PurpleTitan would you consider USC Marshall and NYU Stern in the “universities that I consider Ivies/equivalents/near-Ivies” with undergrad b-schools?
I know an art history major who went into finance after college.
Traditionally, undergrad business was seen as training for lower level jobs. Candidates for upper management went to college to learn, get some culture, and then (sometimes, at some point) went to an MBA program. Even just 40 years ago a lot of this was class-based. Things have changed a lot in these decades. College has become all about career, for many. I wouldn’t be surprised if schools do add undergrad business ( but would not expect Harvard to join in. Recruiters there don’t require undergrad business, obviously, though economics is a popular major, along with government).
Jarjar, just my opinion: NYU and USC overall, no, but Stern yes.
40 years ago, my classmates and I thought of Wharton as a back door into Penn for kids who might not get accepted to the College. Not unlike the Ag School at Cornell. A lot has changed since then.
Monydad, I bracketed the newer term on purpose. There were, however, changes in the curriculum in 2007, and, of course, the changes related to the Dyson donation.