Hi WSO,
I have recently completed my first year at Villanova University’s School of Business. Upon entering Villanova, I was immediately set on transferring to a different school for a variety of reasons. I really enjoyed the atmosphere and social environment at Villanova, however, it did not fit my academic needs. I was looking for a school that would prove to be a greater challenge for me and a target for investment banking positions. After grinding for the full year, I finally got accepted into Georgetown McDonough School of Business and Columbia. I am now deciding what school I should transfer to or whether to transfer at all.
The reasons I have against transferring from Villanova include losing my ~3.9 GPA and restarting, not being positioned near the top of my class, and losing leadership positions that I worked extremely hard to obtain. Perhaps I am just trying to justify my fear of transferring at all.
I believe Georgetown is most fitting for the type of school I want to attend and a huge benefit is that it has a business school as opposed to Columbia. At this point I think the only factor that is holding me back from denying Columbia is how prestigious it is. Would choosing Georgetown over Columbia be a mistake? At Columbia I would surrounded with some of the brightest individuals in the world. At no point would Columbia hurt any of the potential career opportunities. I would much rather attend undergrad in Washington D.C. than in NYC; I also think I would fit in better at Georgetown than Columbia.
So, is valuing location and prestige over fit and a close to ideal college experience stupid? My gut tells me yes, however, I would like to hear from you guys before I make my final decision. Any and all advice is welcome.
you'll regret going to Georgetown when you have to take a 4am bus to do a 15 minute coffee chat with someone every friday. imagine how easy it is to network from columbia, plus way more prestigious.
Columbia seems to be a more intelligent choice than Georgetown simply based on prestige and location, but I'll let someone else chime in on that.
What I want to tell you to do is make sure you transfer. I had the opportunity to transfer early on and didn't - picking friends, a girl, and leadership positions over a different school. It was a dumb decision - girls come and go, I would have made new friends, and I would have gotten new leadership positions. Life ended up working out for me, but it took far longer than it otherwise could have. Wherever you decide on transferring, just make sure you decide.
Your advice is greatly appreciated. I made sure not to get too attached to Villanova and I still find it hard to make the final decision. I think in the long run I can't find myself regretting transferring so that is probably what I will end up doing.
Study abroad too. I never did that and I regret it.
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Is your non-target a well known state school? If not...
I would argue that if you're able to find such good friends and have gotten acclimated to the lifestyle at your non-target easily, you will be able to do the same no matter what school you go to. The only person holding you back is yourself.
If you are positioning yourself for IB, Columbia. I know someone made a comment above about definitely transferring, but Villanova is also a great semi-target to be at if you are considering scholarships or something along those lines.
Since you posted in the IB forum, I will assume you want IB.
Go to Columbia. Not just because of the "preftige"(which will help you a lot); mostly because it gives a MASSIVE networking advantage if you can take the B-line down to meet people for lunch rather than having to rely on school visits or fly out to New York.
Columbia
Columbia. Aside from the obvious, (prestige, location, network, access to NYC, academics) the people I have met from Columbia are generally very nice. Idk if its the type of people that the school attracts or what the deal is, but I've worked with some Columbia guys, played basketball as part of a young professionals league (unrelated but still), and gone to some finance happy hour mixers and in general the people are so fucking nice. Not nice in the loser/pushover kind of way but just nice, easy to talk to and willing to help out if you need them. Maybe my experience is anecdotal, but the people there seem very chill and they all seem to enjoy their school. Either way, my personal experience aside, I think you'd benefit a lot from going to Columbia considering your goals.
As long as he doesn't sleep with any mentally unbalanced blue haired girls anyways.
With a 3.9 GPA, good ecs and I'm assuming good internships to come. It should be pretty easy for you to get into IB out of Nova. If you want to transfer, go to columbia over georgetown no doubt, both great schools though.
Don't transfer if you think your going to be miserable somewhere else, Gtown and columbia have a similar campus experience from what ive heard. not being happy for 3 years of college would be brutal and definitely weigh down your grades. Congratulations on your acceptances, both really impressive schools.
Definitely Columbia. Although I do not have personal accounts in regards to Georgetown, I can say with certainty that all the factors listed above whether it is prestige, location, convenience, higher volume of firms doing ocr are all very true,
Columbia, unless there is a reason you really want to go to Georgetown. Also, the 3.9 GPA is always solid, but it should reset at the new school.
I've seen people from both Columbia and Georgetown on the Street. I would personally recommend Columbia given its reputation, but you can't go wrong with either choice. Fit is an important decision in your decision, but don't let the fact that Columbia doesn't have an undergrad business program deter you from going there - a lot of Ivy league kids do just fine in business without an undergrad business degree (Harvard, Yale, Columbia, etc.)
Can comment on your situation specifically:
I transferred into Columbia from a no-name liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere into my junior year. Difficulty of classes is a notch higher but shouldn't be too tough of a jump- I did just fine here comparatively.
Most importantly is, as others mentioned, networking. What they haven't mentioned besides proximity is OCR- and how robust it is. Seriously- Goldman, Blackstone, etc come onto campus regularly. If you're halfway competent, it's difficult to NOT get a decent summer role. Especially since you seem to be into leadership there's a beastly pre-professional undergraduate scene at Columbia that yields dividends in networking.
Social integration after transfer is never easy- CU's elitist scene that has coalesced in your class's freshman year will make it even tougher. But you'll figure it out. Columbia is without a doubt the choice here. Instead of working your ass off for a chance to have a seat at the table over at Nova you will have someone pull a gold-inlaid one out for you to sit on at CU. Congratulations.
PM me if you have any questions about process.
Go to Alabama! Roll Damn Tide!
Can't believe this is a thread. You realize a smart person can teach themselves finance basics in a few hours right?
Columbia
I would choose Columbia. Being in the Ivy League grants it a lot of prestige among employers, and the location makes it easier for you to network with people in BBs and industry insiders in the university itself (if I am not wrong, there is an MBA destined for executives).
All else being equal, Columbia > Gtown > Villanova.
You haven't said anything about scholarships, though. Columbia's hella expensive, and living expenses in NYC are no joke, either. If I had the choice between paying full ticket to go to Columbia vs a free ride at Villanova, especially at the undergrad level, well... that might swing be in Villanova's direction.
BB IBD honestly isn't that hard to get into these days. Everybody wants to work in big tech or at a startup because they wanna be cool kids going to work in shorts and t-shirts and being surrounded by inflated balls and ping-pong tables and whatnot. I have no idea how anyone gets any work done in these places.
In my opinion, Villanova is a great school and if you have the grades alongside leadership positions then I don't see a real need to leave. That said, if you have the chance to go to Columbia and not worry about being in debt then transfer out to Columbia. But it seems to me that you are one of the top guys in your class at Villanova and would get into IB easily.
First off, on whether to transfer or not- transferring should almost be out of the question. Villanova is a good school, but Columbia and Georgetown are just on a whole different level in every aspect- prestige, connections, student caliber, etc. Absolutely transfer. They cost more but they WILL give back so much more in the end. You’re paying for the connections, opportunities, and prestige with these schools. I think everyone on this thread would agree with me on that. No-brainer. My other opinion might be slightly more controversial- go to Georgetown. This one is clearly not a no-brainer. First of all, last year, Georgetown put more kids into BB banks than any university in the world except Penn, according to a LinkedIn survey.
http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/02/investing/investment-banking-job-linked…
According to the survey, Penn, Georgetown, and Yale got the most kids into banking, respectively, followed by Princeton, Columbia, Duke, and Harvard. No surprises here. All of these schools were fairly close in the number they got had go into banking, but this was the exact order.
Second, here’s the thing. At the level that GU and CU are at, prestige is irrelevant. They’re both great schools and neither will leave any doors closed to you. No one in any field, ever- even something like science which is a definite strength of Columbia- will look at a Georgetown grad and say, “darn, you only went to Georgetown.” Conversely, no one in any field, ever- even international relations which is a definite strength of Gtown- will look at a Columbia grad and say “darn, you only went to Columbia.” It just doesn’t work like that. You know why? Because most people in real life and even on Wall Street- potentially the most prestige-obsessed industry today- including those recruiting, don’t share the mindset of the typical angsty WSOer who has formed a perfect, one-by-one hierarchy of schools in their respective slots that, in his/her opinion- based off of hours and hours of scanning WSO from the local Starbucks at his/her university, reading a flurry of generally unsubstantiated propositions from other college-age kids- would be the best for getting him/her into the IBD role that they've been beating off to ever since they discovered that it IS possible to make 200k+ three years out of college.
But honestly, with any of these places, people on Wall Street are going to see that you go somewhere top-notch and they'll love you for it. The only exception to this is if they are a rabid alum from a particular institution who will hire you on the spot if you went to their alma mater but give you no benefit of the doubt whatsoever if you went somewhere else- especially a rival/competing school. That does happen, and we all know it. This is why schools like Gtown and Columbia will probably maintain their places at the top, at least in finance- because Wall Street is clubby and, whether you like it or not, if your school isn’t part of the club, you have that much more to prove. Just look at the numbers- Wall Street placement is highly correlated with overall university prestige, and that’s why for every one kid shooting for Wall Street who takes a full ride from State School X over a Columbia/Gtown/etc, you have about 100 kids who sink themselves in loans going to a top-notch university over a free ride at a decent college because they know all that investment will pay off in the end.
Now, clearly, to say that either of these schools- or any of the seven listed in the survey, for that matter- are "targets" is almost an understatement. You're set to go for finance in any of them. Now, if you’re reading this in the future, of course there are other schools that will set you up perfectly fine as well that might not be on the list because there’s just less interest (Stanford, other Ivies, Northwestern, Chicago, Hopkins, etc come to mind). You could even say MIT/Caltech but at that point, the caliber of students is clearly there but I wonder if firms even bother coming just because so few at those schools care about finance.
Anyway, just go where you want man. They’re both amazing schools. GU is definitely more focused on politics/gov/ international stuff than Wall Street but clearly it plays with the big boys in finance, and last year it was two spots ahead of Columbia. If you get into either and continue to do well, you’ll be placed on an awesome trajectory. You’ll have offers coming out of your ears if you go to EITHER and keep up the hard work. But it seems like you clearly like Gtown better, so I think there is no reason you shouldn’t go, especially considering its placement actually beat Columbia’s the last time a survey was taken.
Also, it doesn’t matter that Georgetown has a B-school at the undergrad. This honestly shouldn’t be a factor for or against either of the schools. Yeah it probably helps- god knows it doesn’t HURT- but really Columbia econ is just as good. And anyway, at a school like that, major doesn’t matter. My cousin is an art history major at Georgetown and she’ll be working MS IBD next year. The same kind of thing happens at Columbia too- I toured it and my tour guide was a classics major who was lined up for an internship at BAML. Honestly, with the potential exception of gender studies, you can definitely get a banking gig coming from any major if you come from a school like Georgetown or Columbia.
TL;DR- They both rock. At this point, it’s all about personal preference.
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