Are undergrad business majors/schools useless?
I have heard from many that students who majored in the liberal arts learn in a few months what undergrad business majors spent their entire 4 years studying. Is it then true undergrad bschools are useless in terms of actual knowledge? Don't get me wrong, I go to a top 20 semi-target and would gladly switch places with a Wharton student but in terms of actual learning isn't it more worthwhile to major in something else?
What you gonna major in... English?
I'm sorry but if you at least said engineering/comp sci students told you that, it'd be more understandable. But liberal arts? Honestly you should have learned what liberal arts students learn in 4 years from high school. English/poli sci/history/etc. were all Iphone classes to me. And by that I mean all I did when I took one was for an easy A and all I did all class was use my Iphone.
Also, it depends on your courses. MIT Sloan kids can take the same tech based courses as anyone else. CMU has a computational finance major that is pretty much unmatched in terms of rigor. And in general from what I've seen, NYU Stern kids are on average a much higher quality than their NYU CAS counterparts.
Short answer to your question is no, and stop talking to idiots.
SanityCheck has it about right. I've talked to a few kids in the CMU compfin program and they know their shit. Sloan undergrads, past the intro classes, take the same electives as the MBA students (and the same overall core as the engineering/science majors, for that matter). Is the major considerably easier than engineering/science? Duh. Is it a cakewalk? No. Especially if you choose to take legit classes (Financial Economics vs. "People and Change" or something).
No, I found my undergrad business degree very useful and it made my transition into my role smoother.
General rule for picking a major - if you can learn it from reading Wikipedia, don't major in it.
You can learn more in 1 day on Kahn Academy than you would in 12 years in school. By now I've learned that school/college/grad isn't meant for learning. It's meant for socializing/networking.
My FINANCE professor is broke, liberal, and doesn't know what a DCF is. You're on your own when it comes to financial knowledge kid, regardless of your major.
If you go to an Ivy League school study whatever you want. If not, you better study something practical. I think the guy at SBUX who made my coffee today had an art history degree from U Arkansas.
Undergraduate Business is a joke IMHO besides Wharton. I guaratee you the Philosophy courses at Princeton, UChicago, Duke, etc. are harder than the courses in the BBA programs at Ross and McCombs.
Who cares how hard it is though... are they more useful?
This ^^. Same thing I experienced in my pure math courses. Sure it can be difficult to comprehend but are you learning to apply what you are doing to the real world? I don't judge programs by academic prestige for this reason. If you are only a master of theory then academia is the only place for you.
This is what the philosophy guy would talk about.
My undergrad business degree was very useful. Also important for networking and job search. Why don't you just double major if you're worried about not actually learning anything?
I don't think it matters so much what you major in as what you do with your time at school. There are undergrad business majors who are going AWOL over an unpaid social media internship senior year at a random startup no one has ever heard of. There are liberal arts major interning at BBs and doing real work. The latter did more interesting things outside of the classroom than the former, in my experience. The former just shoved their resumes in important people's hands and begged for a photo op.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-57325132/25-college-majors-with-…
However, despite the employment statistics, an art history major at Harvard has a better shot of breaking into high finance than a finance major at the University of Bumbefuck,
Just to add my two cents... studying finance undergrad shows interest/desire in the industry which is more important when you are in a tough hiring environment. Even if it's a tier 6 school, better to have some focus and something to talk about.
I know mccombs kids who don't know preferred stock from livestock...
I know mccombs kids that run 5k marathons
Ha. I lol'ed.
Okay, rather surprised nobody has brought this up yet, but "liberal arts" isn't typically a major, it's a collection of academic studies that can be majors under both the BA or BS degree. So, if you're being told this by a group of physicists, mathematicians, and chemists, then perhaps their perspective is understandable.
Theater and gender studies BAs on the other hand, they're simply lying to you to justify their awful life choices.
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