If the field of work is finance, I would expect Fred to be more capable at every single step, 2000, 2003, or 2006.
Now if Sue had a degree in Physics …
Fred can work in finance for the next ten years- but if his GMAT score was 590 and Sue’s GMAT score was 720, Sue will be running rings around Fred after she takes a few finance courses and then uses what is arguably her deeper quant and analytical chops to work in finance.
Of course the reverse could also be true. But surely you’ve noticed many unemployed or underemployed MBA’s (and the online degrees have not helped this situation). Employers are not indifferent when it comes to the rigor of different MBA programs. A professor of finance teaching valuation to kids with weak math skills is not teaching the same class as he or she would be when teaching the same textbook to kids with strong math skills.
There are lots of jobs in finance that don’t require a high degree of analytical ability. Lots of jobs in private wealth management- you’re just downloading a module and plugging in a clients numbers and coming up with asset allocation models. Lots of jobs in municipal finance- you need to know what the numerator is and what the denominator is and you need a pretty good memory to handle some of the technical nuances.
But then there are jobs that require being very quant with or without a good memory. You’re not being hired because you remember a FASB ruling from two years ago (anyone can look it up); you’re being hired because you have deep mathematical and critical thinking chops.
Relatively speaking, the odds of a history major having such chops more than an accounting major is slim. If two kids went to the same school, had the same grades, but one had a major in Physics and the other in History, then both worked for a few years, the former in a quantitative job and the latter in a non-quantitative job, then both got an MBA from the same school and got the same grades from the school, I would hire the major in Physics over the major in History if I were hiring for a quantitative job (which I do).
The idea that most IB jobs actually require advanced financial ability is laughable. In most cases you are being hired because you came from the the right family background with good connections in the financial world. You can dress well and not use the wrong fork at dinner. Your golf game is decent. They hire grinders without that pedigree to do the advanced numbers. While you schmooze the client at dinner or golf they are staring at a computer screen…
Barrons, your description is approximately 20 years out of date but I do love the imagery.
KKR- yes, I’d hire the physics major also. But the single best finance hire I ever made was a BA from Princeton with a degree in philosophy. We had to put him through Finance Bootcamp but after that he was awesome.
I don’t find most accounting majors to be particularly mathematical. YMMV.
I was an accounting major and I was always horrible at math. I kept expecting to get caught out but I made it through college, passed the CPA, and started working in public accounting and no one ever really noticed.
I think honestly the critical reasoning portion is actually more important at least for accounting. A reasonably sharp History major probably could be just as good at that, and they might even come with better writing skills too. I agree that the quantitative skills are probably more crucial for the specific kinds of jobs that you are hiring for, but not necessarily all jobs.
PWM is essentially sales. Mind you, I think that they deserve what they earn because not everyone can build and keep a book.
@blossom, philosophy (especially at a place like Princeton) is actually a rather analytical major. I can’t say the same of most other humanities programs. Agree that accounting isn’t very quantitative.
@northwesty, if by recruit, you mean they hold presentations and meet-and-greets for internship recruiting, then yes. But the evaluation starts there.
"In most cases you are being hired because you came from the the right family background with good connections in the financial world. You can dress well and not use the wrong fork at dinner. Your golf game is decent. They hire grinders without that pedigree to do the advanced numbers. "
ROFL. You’re way out of date. The econ major kids who are getting hired out of Harvard and Princeton and so forth - the only forks they are using at dinner are the plastic ones they are using to eat the takeout food they’ve ordered in while they settle in for a few more hours, hopefully home by midnight.
" the former in a quantitative job and the latter in a non-quantitative job, then both got an MBA from the same school and got the same grades from the school, I would hire the major in Physics over the major in History if I were hiring for a quantitative job (which I do)"
Well, that’s very odd. Wouldn’t you actually, you know,* interview * these two students and find out which one appeared to have more leadership skills, communication skills, influence skills, people skills, more ability to work with others on a team, and had the most professional maturity? Not to mention complexity of thinking skills?
Come on, Blossom, if one has a much higher GMAT, we’re right back to apples and oranges. The point is everything’s the same except the undergrad degree…what difference does THAT make?
Given the nature of my work I need deep quantitative thinkers who have very strong opinions and are not afraid to call anyone an idiot if the numbers are in their favor. I don’t need much of leadership skills (small org, few to lead), communication skills (numbers speak for themselves), influence/people/teamwork skills (see prior reasons in combination). Frankly, I don’t put much value on an MBA. I prefer PhDs. But that’s just my line of work.
Probably because of this:
I know at Columbia, at least, the focus is on a broad and rigorous liberal arts education. Columbia clearly values that, what with the Core Curriculum (even SEAS students take a modified version). Elite universities do not see themselves as vocational preparation for a narrow range of positions; they want to train their students to think critically and answer big questions; to read and synthesize and analyze information. You can always learn the nuts and bolts of finance and accounting at the actual job.
Furthermore, one of the reasons graduate degree programs in business usually require some work experience is because students benefit more from the education when they have some experience.
There are plenty of times, though, when it is handy to have someone who knows a nut from a bolt, so to speak. So it seems a little extreme to say the undergrad biz degrees are useless.
Because they don’t have to. At Northwestern, the MMSS students have gone to work for some of the top firms in the “business” field.
http://www.mmss.northwestern.edu/undergraduate/employment-placements.html
^^^That just means these companies come for OCR. You need to know the job descriptions/categories of these placements. For example, an admin assistant and a investment banker…they can both work for Goldman.
@cbreeze, MMSS is a pretty quantitative program. If you still are skeptical about where their grads head, just check out the LinkedIn profiles of grads. They’re not hard to find.
I’ve said this before in other threads so sorry f I am repeating myself and typically agree with much of what @blossom says. I was a professor at a prestigious business school after getting a PhD in Arts and Sciences, worked in investment banking and private equity, helped start a hedge fund, and now run a boutique consulting firm that works for a number of major companies so I have some limited perspective on the OP’s question. I still teach on occasion at executive classes at said business school and every once in a while a class session at the MBA level.
Based upon my limited but I think useful experience, I think you should learn to think as an undergraduate – major doesn’t matter but I’m partial to studying some classes that train you to think systematically. Most undergraduate business classes don’t do that. [In fact, most graduate business classes don’t do that either, but don’t tell anybody]. Wharton may be an exception. Economics classes in an undergraduate business school can be more like economics appreciation than economics (I highly doubt this is the case at Booth or Wharton). I believe that is why the prestigious schools mostly don’t offer undergraduate business degrees. [Plus, they might have said, sniffily, “We are not a vocational school.”] I’ve hired people from many good schools over the years. The two weakest I hired were from undergraduate schools. Both were fired. That said, I have hired from Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Brown, Wesleyan, the Technion, and a couple of Chinese universities among others and the strongest employee I’ve ever had went to UMass Amherst. I’ve also had someone great at a lower level from University of Edinburgh. Some undergraduate business courses could conceivably teach serious thinking and may do so at Wharton or Chicago (although I have no firsthand knowledge) but most business school courses do not appear to be great at this (indeed, not all business school professors I talk to are that great at thinking either, and I suspect that the proportion in that category goes up as the prestige of the schools declines).
What to study? As I said, I don’t think majors matter much if you are learning how to think. As @blossom pointed out, statistics is probably very good for much of life and if you are going into some areas of finance, learning how to code in one language is also likely to be useful. Learning to do proofs in math is good training for thinking – in contrast, studying accounting is not. Learning accounting is like learning a foreign language – incredibly useful if you are going to visit that country but not much of a crucible for clear thinking. Philosophy can be good training as well (but need not be – I attended a stunningly sloppy lecture on philosophy at Brown when my son was looking at college)s. But beyond that, I don’t really think that majors matter that much. Art and literature majors can get jobs in many fields, but I suspect that without some kind of technical skills on their resumes, they will have a harder time as resume sorting software will screen them out at an entry level. Therefore getting a job (for such folks) may rely more heavily on connections. @blossom can comment on this.
It might have something to do with wanting to get an education.
One of the earliest MMSS-ers here!
Above, I meant to say that the two weakest kids I hired turned out to be from undergraduate business schools and were pretty much the only ones whose employment we terminated because they just weren’t up to the job.