Emory, UVA, or Tufts

These are my options for next year. I am from NY area and plan on majoring in econ or applied math. Is there a difference in IB opportunities from these schools? Obviously from Emory or UVA I would try to enroll in Goizueta/McIntire Any input from current students, alums, or anyone else would be greatly appreciated.

edit: worth noting that I do appreciate a decent greek life scene, but I feel like UVA might be too fratty, esp with a lot of kids from Va. Not exactly sure of the deal with Emory and Tufts, or if the UVA thing is just an overblown stereotype...

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Tufts student here and I would encourage you to not overlook Tufts. I think there is value in the liberal arts experience, and it makes you stand out if you spin it well.

The student clubs and training for IB at Tufts have also been phenomenal. I’ve had all the student resources I could possibly ask for. I had no issues landing multiple EB and BB offers, and my peers were all well prepared too.

Anecdotally, I have friends at UVA and Emory who haven’t had structured guidance and struggled to get looks/ land offers

 

While Tufts isn’t a finance focused school, there are definitely communities where finance is the dominant interest. A varsity sports team is exactly that kind of community, so I would encourage walking on to a team if you come to Tufts. It’ll be great for your entire college experience, not just for IB recruiting. About TFG, I will say that it’s only useful if you get into the selective IB club within it (not hard to do if you go to their open seminars freshman year). Their placement rate is pretty close to 100% and it’s the program that helped me the most.

 

Let me put it to you this way… are Emory and UVA poor options? No. Would any Ivy and/or Duke be worth taking were you to be accepted? Yes. As someone who transferred from a no-name state school to a top-tier university, I can tell you that the stratification is real. The better your school, the more control you have and the harder it will be to strike out in placement if you do all the right things. Could you place at a top firm/group out of UVA or Emory? Sure. Will you have to work harder and have less margin for error? Yes. It’s a question of being able to write your own ticket and being able to rely a bit less on luck. 

 

Emory is generally considered better than Tufts maybe other than Tufts' immediate region. Its hard competing in a region with so many top schools that they won't ever be a standout name. Emory, Duke, Vanderbilt have always been huge names in the south. Emory also has more standout programs that make it a bigger name. I really don't think the network you build at Tufts is anything special or more than Emory. If anything Emory might have a slight edge in that because it has very high localized prestige in certain parts of the country which Tufts lacks. All good private schools have the type of people you describe. My guess is you went to Tufts and saw those kind of people and thought that it was something unique to Tufts. The only non-Ivy+ school with a truly posh student body that stands out would be Georgetown.

 

Emory is the most prestigious school on your list, and Emory and UVa place the same. If you include campus fit then it's Emory. If you don't like frat culture you'll hate UVa especially if you want to do finance.  

 
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Agreed 10/10 that ”fratty,” culture is a massive plus for IB. High finance is basically a frat, and I would hire a frat guy who’s 5/10 on his technicals but an 11/10 personality over some hyper-nerd hardo who can build a paper LBO as a freshman but has never touched a woman. You can’t teach interpersonal skills, and I’d argue that a Greek life heavy school is best for developing those best suited for IB. Let’s not kid ourselves though, certain frat heavy schools place better than others. If OP could transfer into say, Duke, UPenn, Cornell, etc. (not impossible provided that the grades are there), his odds will be better. Let’s not confuse placement numbers with opportunity to place. All three schools that I just mentioned are finance heavy, Greek life heavy, and targets. However, they are all more selective, and they are smaller. The respective gulfs between Cornell and Penn’s business programs relative to their other undergraduate programs isn’t that big, and Duke doesn’t even have an undergraduate business program. All three schools, and others like them, are also smaller, meaning that they a) have fewer students gunning for allocated spots, and b) have a better ratio of alumni to students, which makes them infinitely better to recruit from. The greater diversity of interests at these schools also provides a release valve, as it were, for recruitment competition. 

 

If deciding between Emory/UVA, keep in mind that there's a 40% chance u might get rejected from McIntire and many other ppl are trying to get into really hard clubs whereas everyone with 3.3 is autoaccept GBS...

 

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