The Final College List...

If possible I would recommend visiting as many as you can. That knocked out a lot for me and showed me the ones I really liked. You have a good list there so cant really go too wrong.

 

Any one of these will do you fine. What are your goals after graduation?

Geographically you are pretty spread out. Do you favor a particular area of the country more than than the other? Where do you want to work after you are done?

I know the Ross School of Business is building a huge new facility and they have top notch recruiters from all around the country come to seek their grads. For the midwest I would say UM>ND>UI.

 

I know some guys who went to UT school of business who are doing very well for themselves.

 

Agreed!

 

Booooo! Down with the Wolverines!

J/k. UM is a great school, even if maize is the color of pee.

(Sorry, I go to MSU, I can't help it.)

Seriously though, I was going to apply to UM as well and as far as academics go, they are just like Northwestern as might as well be Ivy League. All of those schools are great and you can't go wrong with any of them. Good luck!

Go Spartans!
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I have a friend who's goes to McCombs @ UT. It's a good school. Not to mention the city totally rocks, and the chicks are all hot. You can't go wrong with that pick.

 

If you go to Penn can you then get over into a Wharton program after a year or two?

 

IMO,

If you want to go the "corporate path" and go to a good school, get into a large corp upon graduation and then work your way up (getting an MBA along the way, at least) then make it up upper management by the time you are in your 40's and to a senior exec level position by 50, then go to the very best school you can. The best name.

Otherwise, go to the least expensive. Most folks will not consider your college of education when hiring you. Experience and past performance will be MUCH MUCH more important.

I was accepted to Brown, Carnegie Mellon, WPI, U-Mass (my safety) and some others. I was all set to go to Carnegie Mellon for engineering. Then I thought about the debt I'd have afterwards and decided to go to U-Mass for engineering. I am so glad I saved myself about $60k with that move. It put me SO much further ahead in my line of work than if I had gone to one of the high-priced schools.

Then again, if the 'rents are paying, do what you like

 

Right on!. Thank Allah McDonald's has pictures on the cash register. Rock on. Bro.

 

Grades, Grades, Grades. It's their school.

 

Where do you think you will be happiest? Don't think about the academics of the schools now. Choose a school that you will be happy going to. College would suck if you weren't happy with where you go.

 

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Sometimes.

I have a friend who switched into Wharton end of Fresman year. OF course this was 1974 and he was a quadruple legacy, which back then meant a lot.

Doesn't pull as much weight now, but I'm sure if you pull excellent first year grades you can move over there.

D<

 

Penn might be my first pick of those then, followed by Mich and then USC.

Are you planning on going to grad school? Are you thinking of a career where more schooling will be necessary? If so, then in a way you have a lot more freedom to go to whichever of those schools you want, because with a strong performance in UG from any of those schools you could go to the top grad school in any field.

Thus, if UG was to be the end of the road (or at least in the next 8 years), I'd go for Penn and get the Ivy notch on the belt. If I was going to grad school anyway, I would probably go to USC and have a nice 3 years in the sun, get good grades then think about Stanford et al for grad school.

 

It's soCal, it's sunny and a school is good, too. But for me Stanford would be the first choice. Have you tried CollegeConfidential.com, the people are sometimes a bit mean there, but their reccomendations are interesting.

 

I'm assuming you're in Penn right now and not Wharton. If you're planning to go to Penn and then transfer to Wharton after a year, don't hold your breath. I don't mean to discourage, but as hard as it is to get in your freshman year, it's quite a bit harder to do it as an internal transfer, just due to competition.
Since you mention U of M's business school specifically, am I right in assuming you're preferred admissions and will automatically pass in after freshman year?
If you're going for business (which it seems you are) I would obviously pick Penn/Wharton (business here is quite incredible), though I don't know if I would risk not making an internal transfer. A business degree from Wharton is worth quite a bit, an econ degree from Penn slightly less, though it is still good, the econ degree itself can be limiting depending on what you want to do.
Last year Wharton was #1 for undergrad business, and U of M was #3, so definitely don't consider Michigan as a "back-up"--it's top notch as well.

 

IIRC he wanted to do engineering. I would reapply Penn Engineering if anything.

 

Put the academic aspect of the schools on hold, they are all great schools. Think about all the aspects of a school you have always wanted; big, small, warm climate, cold climate, suburuban setting, ubran setting. Try to figure that out, then to echo earlier comments, visit as many schools as possible.

Last year (my senior year of high school) I was going through this same process and had a list of about 8 schools that I had narrowed it down to and been accepted to. I visted all 8, and after visiting those 8, I crossed of 3 of my top 5 choices. I that I would love those schools, but after visiting them, I knew in a matter of minutes that I wouldnt want to go there, for varying reasons; from the campus, to the people, to the location, to things to do in the area (or lack there of).

Visiting as many as possible is really the best thing you can do, because no amount of pictures or virtual tours can give you a true feel for a school.

 

NOTRE DAME!!!

If you go or not, watch out for Golden Tate. He goes to my High School and will be playing football and baseball on scholarship at Notre Dame next. Charlie Weiss showed up at school a few months ago to announce. This guy truly one the best players I have every seen touch a football. Mark my words: Golden Tate will go far.

 

Sort of in the same boat as you. I was accepeted to both UC Berkeley and UPenn (college of arts and sciences) and am trying to decide between the two. I'm leaning very heavily towards Berkeley because I don't want to pray that I'm one of the ten or so students that makes the internal transfer to Wharton, and also because I realized that for me Berkeley was the better choice in terms of climate, location, etc. Plus they have the number 3 business program in the country and the odds of getting into it are very good. On the flip side though, some people have questioned why I would turn down an "Ivy League", but don't let the name be the only thing that affects your decision. I'm sure that whichever decision you make will be the right one for you.

 

Don't rule out engineering. two of the most successful business people I know are engineers. One is an EE the other a CE, both own businesses and are doing quite nicely.

According to another thread here, it would do you more good to be in a Fraternity than to pick a particular major. Not sure I agree with that, but I don't think what you major in always dictates success.

I was a Government major, ended up with my own company, not down in DC with the big wigs.

DM

 

Congrats on getting into all those schools.

Shame you can't visit the USC campus, weather is nice and you could stay over a weekend and go to C&C or some other event. Of course if you went to school there, you could do it every week.

 

Congrats on getting into a bunch of great schools! I would lean towards penn. Penn is an amazing school and a degree from there in anything will not close any doors. You could study art history and still have the opportunity to work on wall street. That being said, you can't go wrong with any of your choices.

In terms of not being able to visit. You might consider calling the admissions department and asking if there is financial aid for you to visit. Some of the schools you mentioned have large endowments might be willing to foot the bill for a visit.

good luck!

 

Heh, I haven't posted in quite some time, but I think its time to throw my hat into back into the ring.

I'm a junior at Penn right now in the College. Job-wise, Wharton vs. College is no where near as important as people make it out to be. Now that a lot of places have very formal training programs for their new recruits, the "value" of an undergraduate business degree has decreased dramatically. If you're a kid in the College, you are still very competitive with Wharton kids for any job you want. Sometimes even more so, because the recruiters get tired of seeing 100 Finance majors with nothing interesting about them.

That said, I don't think there is a single school in America that is better for placing students in top jobs than Penn (regardless of what school). When I was a summer analyst at a bulge-bracket investment bank, Penn was the most represented school with 14 kids in our summer class. The runner-up was Harvard with only 7 kids. I think Berkeley had 2. You'll hear this story over and over again. At pretty much every Wall Street firm, Penn is the most represented school. Similar thing in the consulting world (although I think we may be 2nd after Harvard here)

This summer I'll be at a Big 3 management consulting firm. Again, this is all without being in Wharton undergrad (I hadn't even taken accounting before my i-banking job!). Don't think that your opportunities are limited in any way by not being in Wharton.

That said, for ferrarikid355, I think the next best bet after Penn is Michigan. In my opinion/experience, they have by far the strongest undergraduate business program at a public school.