Wealth or Waste? Rethinking the Value of a Business Major

+1

It's less about the undergraduate, more about the story. Banks like to see a well crafted (albeit bull-shit) story, and it's easier to talk about it when you majored in finance or economics over say biology, or art history. Yes, you can most definitely still land a job with those credentials.

Yes, having your undergrad degree in economics is fine. What matter more is if you want to a target or non-target.

No. just do good and come back with high GPA, strong recommendation and alumni networking.

In principal? Not really. A lot of top tier schools don't even offer undergraduate business majors. A good example is Columbia where the typical major for IB hopefuls is economics. It's not like they have a hard time getting jobs without a "business" major.

In practice it can differ by what school you attend. It's not a school I personally attended, but there's an old discussion on here somewhere about Wharton where one poster who majored in Economics from U Penn was complaining that he wasn't getting anywhere near the same interest from recruiters that the undergrad business majors from Wharton were getting.

Since this q is in the Business School Barrage thread, I'm going to give the answer on whether having a business undergrad matters for getting an MBA:

No.

The only think you need to know if why you want to be in business (or management) and how to think critically. That's not an either/or, by the way. I think you will find lots of people who have liberal arts degrees and have done quite well in their careers, in the MBA admissions process and AND are right here on WSO (I'm looking at you petergibbons )

If you like math/stats then just stick with that and minor in business/finance

Look at the US News rankings; go with whatever has the higher relative ranking, adjusting for the fact that EVERY school has a math program but there is less competition in finance.

On a relative basis, though, state schools tend to do better at the practical disciplines than the Ivies. With, say, a Computer Science or Actuarial Science background, you may have less competition from the target schools getting in. Berkeley and Michigan, for instance, have very strong CS programs that are beating most of the target schools. In either case, to have the most opportunities for positions in trading, it is most important to get a strong finance background and a strong math background. If you really want to blow the competition out of the water, you should shoot to get all the way up to real analysis and stochastic calculus while also demonstrating mastery of finance. In reality, though, a finance major making it all the way through differential equations and a calculus-based probability course is probably going to be impressive enough.

Usually you find that the programs (math/stats/econ/etc.) outside of the undergrad bschool get looked over during recruiting. If you don't attend their b schools, you'll have to network a lot more and can't just depend on on campus recruiting. However, that being said, it's not like you don't have a chance...

I'm speaking from experience, you definitely should have a major at the b-school. I went to a semi-target, but didn't have a major in their b-school. Even with my boutique SA experience, I was pretty much shut out from on-campus recruiting, and have had to do my own thing.

If you're really into your subject, just double major.

It's all about the recruitment/access to companies/ability to drop your resume for interviews = Go to the B-School

Ok, it is like this.

If you have can get into an Ivy for liberal arts then do it over a lower ranked business school.

If you get into a school that has a solid business program you are going to be at a disadvantage by not going to that business school. Breaking into banking with a liberal arts background works just fine as long as you went to an Ivy. Try that shit going to a T50 school and see what happens. If you at least have a business degree your story makes sense.

Delete, edit, re-post.

Wow, that is really difficult to understand but if what I gather is correct, you’re looking for Business schools. I’d recommend looking through various college reviews. I just finished reading a few California College of San Diego reviews that were really interesting since they offer career counseling which I desperately need. They also help students find financial aid which is always a bonus. Business is a very broad field so you have to choose between management, finance, economics and the list goes on.

Nope

A student from the business school will definitely be more up to speed and comfortable with the finance terminology that's being thrown around, but I don't think there's really any work that a SA will have to do that any non-business school student couldn't learn how to do on the fly or after asking a few questions. You don't need every single detail you learned in Accounting II or your Corporate Finance course in order to be able to succeed as a summer analyst.

Remember though that you could be an A&S History major and still land an IB SA internship if you A) Demonstrate a desire to learn and passion for finance, and B) Take the time on your own to teach yourself the technical work that anyone would need to know in order to make it through the interviews.

An A&S student will naturally have to work harder in order to secure a finance position because they lack the classroom experience, but if they have a high GPA, landed relevant internships, and actually know their finance shit then I don't see how they couldn't give any business school student a run for their money.

Especially when it comes to converting summer analysts to FT hires - if an A&S history major and a BSchool finance major were both summer analysts and are competing for only 1 FT position, the firm will simply give it to whichever one of them performed the best as an SA. If the A&S students work is 5x as good as the BSchool students then they would be silly to give the FT position to the BSchool student simply because he has "X School of Business" on his resume.

Your best bet coming out of Emory will be to apply for Goizueta. I'm 99% sure of this, but you can check and look on Linkedin to see if most of the Emory alumni who did investment banking went to Goizueta or did something liberal artsy; I'm guessing the vast majority did business.

DO NOT GET AN MBA DIRECTLY AFTER GETTING YOUR UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE.

Any worthwhile place is not going to accept you. You shouldn't get to an MBA which would accept you.