Cornell Hotel or Berkeley Econ

Which would be the better school for IB? Berkeley is my top choice because it's 100% free for me; on top of that, they give me money by taking a full semesters worth of credits. BUT, I feel like Econ alone at Berkeley is not competitive enough for IB. As for IB, I really like the fact that Cornell Hotel is within Cornell's business school. I also like the fact that it's focused around hospitality, which I think is a good break from all the business/finance courses. I will not be considering Berkeley Haas, as I am no longer eligible to apply; however, I am able to take courses from Haas.

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Would you recommend taking on a minor if it means you have to compensate your GPA a bit? I really don't wanna have to take a bunch of vanilla classes just to fulfill the minor requirements. I really want to take the most important classes—like the accountings, financial econ, CS 16A-B, and data science. Will employers know about the specific classes I took? Could I list these as skills in my resume?

 

PM me. Biased, but I think Berkeley is the better option here. I was a student who considered some non-business major ivy schools too. I'm also not in Haas so I can speak to recruiting and taking courses outside of the business school.

Summered at a MM and then an EB (Evercore, PJT). It's not too difficult to recruit if you have good experience and I think Berkeley's proximity to SF and the valley gave me good opportunities for work experience before recruiting.

Keep in mind that most Cal students do go to SF for FT banking opportunities, and that the school is only a real target for west coast banks. However, the hotel school at Cornell might be considered worse on either coast imo.

 
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Good lord: Berkeley econ, hands down. If you are interested in hotel management it would be different, but it doesn't sound like you are. You also may change your mind about IB, or not get into it (and chances of that happening are about even between your two options) in which case do you want to be out hunting for a finance / non-hospitality job with an econ degree or a hotel management degree...?

 

Plenty of kids do hotel school with no intentions of doing hospitality. Finance is very common, as is real estate but you can pretty much use it as a regular business major.

The alumni network for hotel specifically is extremely strong / loyal and there's a lot of very wealthy and connected alumni (also as a result the hotel class in particular has tons of nepo kids as well)

I'm biased since I was Cornell (econ, not hotel) so I won't weigh in but just giving OP some additional data points

EDIT: also just realized this post is 6 years old lol...

 

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