Undergrad: Will UChicago give me more opportunities than Michigan (Ross)?
Ross seems fun, where a strong GPA is somewhat assured, with defined paths to great jobs. Yet everyone is telling me to go to Chicago. I'm surprised I got into Chicago, safe assumption my GPA isn't going to be stellar, but maybe the Chicago brand is worth that downside? And while not as fun, perhaps the benefit to that is it forces me to grow more, become a better student? Chicago seems to have changed so much in the last 5 or 10 years -- trying hard to become the Harvard of the Midwest -- so it's tough for me to get a read on the modern landscape.
Easy ross. UChicago is not a fun school period. The name recognition is higher from people not in finance. But I'm pretty sure Ross is top 3 or 4 in sending kids to IB. The area around Uchicago isnt safe and you feel it.
Agreed. Hyde Park is close to Chicago but most people don't have much fun there. Plus the girls are fugly.
Are you both basing this off recent experience and insight? Chicago has changed a lot.
I have friends there and toured a few years ago. Plus I live in the suburbs of Chicago, so pretty recent. Everyone there kinda looked down on me for not going to a super prestigious school which was annoying.
While I'm aware, the safety thing isn't really a registering concern. I live literally right next to Detroit.
it's not about the risk, it's about the experience. Being in a school where you can't venture around the area sucks, at least for me.
Dude go to Ross are you serious? I’m from metro Detroit as well & had multiple friends go to UM. Best time of their lives. Probably a bunch of weirdos at U Chicago
I just turned down UVA for Chicago. Why? Every classmate is going to be super smart and ambitious, which will help me more in life than being blackout drunk three nights a week.
It's Chicago and it's not even worth a thought, and this is coming from a Michigan grad.
Ivies > Ross Stanford > Ross MIT > Ross Duke > Ross Northwestern > Ross Ross > Chicago?
Pure ignorance if you really think that.
Have you tried visiting either of the schools? If there's not a big difference in the price tag for you, then maybe you can base your decision on how you feel about the culture/fit/environment when you visit in person.
Ross is full of hardos who pretended to start companies in high school and got rejected from every top 20 university, including places like Georgetown. They're all status-obsessed and insecure (big chip on their shoulder), so they try to differentiate themselves by Greek life "tiers" and tacky new money flaunting. They would have thrown their grandmother off a cliff to get into a private college as prestigious as Chicago.
UChicago in 2018 is nothing like "where fun goes to die" U of C of even 2008. They brought in an admissions guy from Harvard to build classes full of outgoing assertive all-around future leaders. It's the "hottest" college in the US amongst wealthy prep school kids.
Both are obviously good schools, but to people in the know, Ross and Chicago aren't really peers. Chicago's acceptance rate is going to be 6% this year. The brand you have as a Ross alum is "pretty smart public U bro." The brand you'll have as a Chicago alum is "elite." Distinct difference in firepower for the next 50 years.
Takes one to know one :)
OP needs to get out of his comfort zone. Leave Grosse Pointe and broaden horizons in Chi town.
Can't disagree more. I have friends at Chicago and they brag about the juice selection at frat parties. Opportunity wise op will do fine either. But in terms of experience, UM is hands down better unless you don't want the traditional college experience
In honesty I don't think you'd see much difference to either one, especially on job prospects, academic firepower and prestige at least domestically. Factors that should be more relevant are city/campus living, recruiting distance, Engineering (Uchicago has none) and safety. For much against Chicago south side, UM sits next to Detroit and isn't too fun either outside of campus. You may avoid them different ly tho
Did you not mention the cost difference? A tangible one to grab if all else sits par
Are you from metro Detroit? Because Ann Arbor is not "next to Detroit".... lol. You're not going to see ANY hood rats anywhere near campus. It's a solid hour away from Detroit.
Also, multiple publications have ranked Ann Arbor as the #1 college town.
If you're not boring and into sports, I mean Michigan is a no brainer. Ross will get you the same type of jobs U Chicago will... with Ross giving you a 100x better college experience.
Try off campus late nights if you wanna.
All I say is there is no real winner. Two of my best friends went to each.
I’d go to Michigan. It’s a top school, fun and real college experience.
Chicago great, but probably not the best experience.
As for “elite” schooling and that shit, do realize that literally no actual adult will give a shit once you work for a bit. More people will actually want to talk about Michigan sports.
Some of the crap said on this site is just high comedy. When you read obviously awkward stuff, just try and imagine the 145lb nerd on the other side of the keyboard. Not someone you want life advice from.
Why the fuck is personal attack needed just because they like UM maybe a little less
Because.
1) those weighing on on Chicago are arguing based on prestige and this idea that Michigan doesn’t come close to Chicago UG.
2) the opinion of the vast vast majority of posters is skewed by the fact they are the following
A) young
B) anti social or barely social
C) lacking in experience
As someone who has been to countless meets ups in numerous cities and have read endless posts that cringe with the most daft statements, I want to let th OP known who is most likely giving an opinion and where they are coming from.
And when I see people shitting on a top business school with a much better college experience because of prestige, it’s probably relevant that those giving opinions probably wouldn’t know a good time if it blew them.
You’ll be successful from either school. Neither is an Ivy League. Chicago, the likely end point, is full of Michigan people. You’ll get zero shit for going there. And no one gives a fuck about Chicago on the east coast. But they do care about Michigan football and basketball.
Here is a hint to all those who read. If you go to a school with good sports and someone starts talking about prestige or ranking, first, walk away. Same people who want to talk about finance at the bar or think “sleds” make them cool. Industry is full of people who are social rejects.
Edit
Before you cry that I am an asshole (I am) think about this. The OP is trying to make a huge life decision. This isn’t a fucking joke. Someone gives you a recommendation and they get fucked, that burden is partially on you. I see some toilet advice on this site and people get fucked from it. Luckily I never came here for advice and took time to seek proper council. I try to pay that forward. Sometimes I’m brutal.
Only people who didn't go to an "elite" say shit like this. How do you know what you've missed out on? Your scope is narrower than you think.
Graduate college before you give advice where to go.
Children advising children. This site should come with a disclaimer.
thats right
This
Wall St recruits at UChicago because it's prestigious and students are known to be smart. Are there smart kids at Ross? Of course. Is it automatically assumed a Michigan kid is smart? No. Too many in-state charity cases and out-of-state jerkoffs who only got admitted because they were full pay. I would advise on UC, it's truly one of the top 10-15 colleges in the world and it's on the rise. Ross will never be anything more than a solid public university business college.
You're from Grosse Pointe which means in-state tuition to UM... The choice is obvious. You'll have the time of your life.
With all his high school friends from the same area? Um, sweet, high school 2.0. He also said money is a non-factor.
Kid could end up hating banking. He could hate consulting. He could hate the econ finance accounting requirements at Ross. Then he’s at Michigan with 29,000 other kids, most of will go live normal middle class lives.
Lock in the prestige now, which is what every Ross kid would have done if they had prestige options on the table senior year.
lmfao dude I have multiple friends that went to UMich from high school and most of them didn't even talk to/see anyone from high school. Are you really going to die if you have a class or two with 1-2 kids you went to high school with? Cuz that's about as bad as it'll get.
Out of all my friends, the ones that went to UMich had by far the best college experience. 30 friends flying in from around the country for the UMich/MSU game etc.
If OP is even slightly social, Ross is the way to go.
Public flagships are full of upper middle class high school cliques who room together, rush the same houses, eat lunch together, party together.
Good upper middle class Metro Detroit high schools each send 40-80 kids a year to Michigan. You're going to see a lot more than 1-2 familiar faces once in a while. That said, some kids like that.
Legit future leaders? They don't exist at Michigan as well? We're not talking about Harvard or Yale here, or this would be a different discussion.
The choice is clearly Chicago. All those commenting otherwise in this thread are regretfully misinformed.
Tough but fair.
Wow what kind of shit is this
If you have in-state tuition and turn down Michigan you're an idiot. Your social experience will be 100x better and you get the same opportunities as Chicago kids (uChicago isn't HYPS it isn't going to give you a significant leg up on kids from schools like Michigan)
He said cost is a non-factor.
Perfect case of shitty and biased recommendations
https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/21-ross-bba-or-gap-year-to-apply…
Fucking UG giving life advice. Jesus this site.
please stfu. that is the dumbest thing i've read in a long time
LOL i see you edited your post and deleted what you wrote
The tuition isn't a concern at all. I think Chicago is considered a peer to HYPS and Duke, at least that's what everyone telling me to choose Chicago is saying.
It's a peer to duke yes as i think uva michigan notre dame etc are too. def not comparable to HYPS when it comes to recruiting opportunities. HYPS kids get looks at buyout funds and top tier hfs coming from undergrad, something 99.99% of kids at the schools i mentioned above don't get
UChicago is objectively a better school in every academic dimension.
Except, I believe, it's devoid of social life and babes.
Choose whichever one you think you resonate best with (whether it be culture, academic interests, social interests) and you'll do better at that location. Both are undoubtedly good schools that will set you up well for the future as long as you perform well in either scenario.
One word of caution that another person pointed out earlier in this thread is that you have a lot of your peers (fellow high schoolers) and trolls making this decision sound like you're deciding between Michigan & Harvard. Chicago is a fantastic school and I think sets you up well into the future in regards to the types of firms that recruit on campus and the academic rigor needed to do well. I think the plaudits its received in recent years in national publications is more than well-deserved and the vast majority of students who attend there are of great caliber.
However, Michigan likewise is an impressive school in regards to the wide variety of academic disciplines the school is highly ranked in and just the whole social atmosphere. Quite simply, when you meet guys from Ross in the workforce, you appreciate i) how well they place & perform and ii) the stories/experiences they had at a school that in general is a lot of fun.
Pick the one with environment you see your self most comfortable with. I don't think you can go wrong with either & try to seek advice from individuals slightly older than you/experienced in the workforce as many of your peers' only understanding in picking anything is based on a number they see online.
Just lol at anyone who thinks "college should be the best time of your life, bro!"
Go to Chicago.
The whole rah-rah football frat life shit stops being an obsession before you turn 20, so idk why anyone would pick a college just for what, 10 rowdy football pre-games? And if you're not a stud and/or verifiably rich, it's not like you have a chance with gold digging sorority babes anyways.
+SB for the runescape username
Isn't a very important aspect of college coming out of your shell, picking up some swagger, polish and social IQ?
Where do you want to go and why?
If you have good answers to these questions, just do what you want and you’ll probably be ok (or at least as well off as if you had chosen the other school). In life, you will largely determine your success, not where you went to school.
Write your thoughts down now and check them again in 5, 10, and 20 years. You will be shocked at how misinformed you were about many things.....I wish I would have done this as a senior in high school.
I’ve had the opposite experience. I think you need to take advantage of any edge you can get. True, you are still the one who determines your success, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to be successful coming out of a so-called elite school and/or company. I wish it weren’t true but it is.
For the OP: I asssume there are thousands of in-state kids from Detroit suburbs going to Michigan each year (even Ross). A lot of commentors seem to be approaching this from an out of state perspective- not sure they understand how many people from Michigan actually go to Michigan. Not trying to bash public universities; they are very important to this country and Michigan is a very good school and you should be proud. But I don’t really think it’s on the same tier as the university of Chicago. With that said this is a great problem to have - good luck.
you cant fly with incorrect information seems to be his point tho
Michigan is 50% in-state kids, not as in-state heavy as most flagships, but still approx. 10,000 of the 29,000 come from Detroit suburbs.
For undergrad, this for me is a no brainer. Chicago.
Speaking as a Ross kid who applied to both UMich and Chicago in HS (didn’t get into Chicago): Knowing what I knew at the time, I would have gone to Chicago over Michigan if I had the option. However, knowing what I know now I would have chosen Michigan over Chicago if given the same choice. Professionally, you’ll be well-off from either school provided you hustle (and are in Ross), but Ann Arbor is much more fun than Southside Chicago, plus Michigan is big enough to provide opportunity to explore anything else you’re interested in (so you’re not tied to one “crowd” of people). The only legitimate reason I’d think to choose differently given your goals is if you don’t want to major in business and want a more “traditional” liberal arts education (which is perfectly valid for a lot of people, but even then you can go out of your way at UMich to get that as well).
To each their own though.
This is good advice. But I wonder what happens to kids in the bottom of the Ross class, who either can't hack it or just sort of hate it and mail it in. Can you speak to that? I assume shutout of all good offers – end up in HR? At least if you're in the bottom of the class at Chicago you still end up with a T3 credential.
Speaking anecdotally, the Ross kids who end up in the jobs that are less coveted on this forum (i.e. marketing, corporate rotations, HR) were never interested in IB/PE/MBB to begin with and therefore never really “mailed it in” or failed to “hack it”. There’s definitely a big bloc of kids who aggressively gun for finance/consulting, but by no means are they the entire Ross cohort. Based off anecdote again, those with middling GPAs/credentials aren’t automatically “shut out” of “good” jobs - you definitely still need to hustle to get what you want, but that’s no different at any other target/semi-target.
Can’t speak as much about the experience at UChicago, but I imagine it’s no cakewalk academically.
There are eight Ivy League schools, + Stanford, and no way does Chicago calm as the regular number three. Stupid rankings don't impact as much
Wanted to give my 2 cents having just gone through the recruiting process at Uchicago. If you’re completely set on going into IB, then I agree there likely isn’t much of a difference between the two schools if you’re willing to work hard. However, this page has really understated the changes that have taken place at Uchicago over the past decade - it really is considered among the top 5 nowadays along the lines of HYPS in terms of prestige, and if your goal is to go into the buy side directly out of college thereby avoiding selling your soul in banking for years, UChicago blows Michigan out of the water. Most of my friends who are good at math here are recruiting exclusively for top hedge funds, mutual funds, or prop shops who never even bothered looking into banking since they knew they’d have better options
What happens to kids who are in the bottom quartile of the class at Chicago -- screwed? Because getting a decent gpa at Chicago is far harder than earning a respectable gpa at Michigan. Has the vibe of the College really changed THAT much in the last few years -- as in, more normal polished outgoing kids that you'd find on an Ivy campus? Still seems to have that weird rep but that may be dated if there really are rapid changes going on.
Yes. It's changed a LOT even in the past 4-5 years. I graduated 5 years ago, when it still had that vibe. Sibling is there now, completely different feel. With the new dorms going up and the school actively trying to change its image, it is a very very different school.
Was thinking about saying something like this about the buy side stuff but those buy side and prop shop jobs require some actual quantitative ability and most people like that don’t express the same sorts of gpa worries and preference for broiness that op has. Plus I think you’re misunderstanding the value of prestige. Chicago has always been very prestigious from the academic perspective (a lot of undergraduates go on to get top phds, they admit and produce a lot of top quality phds from their own graduate programs and have a gaggle Nobel laureate professors) which is also roughly the same as the prestige that quant shops are looking for. The way they moved up the rankings was by playing the rankings game which includes things like alumni giving and acceptance rates (they used to use the academic reputation and “where fun goes to die” to self select so their acceptance rate was always inflated). Now this improved ranking combined with their academic prestige means that to the layman they probably really are considered to be as prestigious as a place like Columbia or Dartmouth or brown (unlike say wash u which played the rankings game but never had the top quality academic prestige base to build on) but in bro finance (I.e non-quant) this is only important in so far as it reflects the size and quality of the alumni network plus a little bit of a wow factor for the people in finance that went to other schools. From the responses of older people in this thread it’s pretty clear that they don’t yet possess that wow factor (at least relative to an ivy or beyond that of Ross), and while you could maybe make the case that the increasingly “well-rounded” student body will mean that in 4-5 years when he graduates both the wow factor and the network will have caught up somewhat with the layman’s impressions, that’s a pretty sketchy reason for choosing uchicago over a school that currently offers comparable exit opps on the path he wants and that he’ll enjoy a lot more.
Yea I agree with most of what you said which is why I clarified that those looking for buy side opps tend to have pretty strong quant skills. I guess my point was that, like the OP, when I was going through this process I thought originally I’d want to do banking. Choice for me came down to UChicago or UC Berkeley, and I went with uchicago thinking it’d be better for IB.
Now that I’m here, I see that yes, uchicago may be slightly worse at what you understandably call “bro finance”, but the opportunities for more interesting and challenging lines of work with higher income potential and less hours really do make up for it. As someone who didn’t come from some super elite background where I grew up doing math in my free time, I still found that the harder majors at Uchicago aren’t as bad as people make them out to be. I guess my advice to the op having gone through a similar decision is to challenge yourself and realize that if you got into uchicago, you’ve probably got what it takes to do something more rewarding right out of UG. And if that doesn’t work out, you’ll have tons of other options. Very rare that a decent student at Chicago ends up doing accounting or something, at least to my knowledge. Granted, it won’t be as fun as Michigan or Berkeley, but again it’s not as bad as people make it seem
Uchicago is the easy choice here. The two schools aren't in the same league.
If you have the choice between two school that offer very similar value in terms of a career in finance... choose the more fun one . There is something to be said for getting the "college experience"
Many kids can't handle party culture. The kids who work hard, play hard and crush it are most frequently the Stuyvesant, prep and boarding schoolers whose high school experience was as cutthroat as a top university. Or rich connected kids from Tri-state area who don't really need a top gpa for dad to line shit up for them.
I don't post here often, but holy fck. I have a question for the people suggesting Michigan over UChicago - how did you get this far in life being that stupid? Who gives a sht about whether a school is "fun" or not (whatever that even means, are you 12?) when you can get a prestigious degree.
Chicago 100%
If a kid went to Chicago with good friends at Notre Dame, Michigan, Northwestern and wanted some social life, are they going to have many opportunities to go and visit those friends? Seems almost too intense to get away for a weekend. But having a chance to go party with broskis at other schools could go a long way in offsetting the lack of fun on campus.
They definitely could. South Bend is less than 2 hours away. Evanston is 45 minutes up the L
How does a carless stu get from south side Chicago to South Bend for a weekend? I don't think an Amtrak goes there.
Hey man (or lady, idk): I'm in Ross right now, and have friends in UChicago. If you want student perspectives, feel free to PM me so you can get away from the noise of 90% of this thread being composed of people who have no personal ties to either program whatsoever yet still are giving you advice.
I went to UC but ok.
Ross because Michigan is going to have a hell of a football team this fall.
What did you decide OP?
OP feel free to PM I’m a Ross student with a good friend at Chicago. My view is that life is meant to be lived, and that we work to acquire the resources necessary to have fulfilling life experiences. If you have a different value system and view college as a means to acquire knowledge and a true education go to Chicago. But if your goal is let’s say GS IB or McKinsey or some such finance job, pound for pound it’ll be easier at Michigan. People aren’t in the library on Fridays and Saturdays, so things like a high gpa won’t be hard compared to Chicago.
I also think as an in state student you tend to underestimate your own school. Realize that there may be kids from your hs going that you don’t view as smart, but I assure you the top quartile of Ross kids are really impressive people.
As an Ivy graduate and current IB Associate, I think UChi is a tier above Michigan. Remember, Booth is usually the best MBA program in the world. Ross isn't even Top 10.
You can go to Ross and have a great time. And then you'll have tons of free time once you start work in the back office and you have to call the UChicago graduate things like "Sir."
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