Admissions Difficulty to Undergraduate Business Schools

Applying to College
1

Undergraduate Business (Finance) is one of the most sought-after areas of study at US colleges. I took the new US News Top 10 ( note 4 and 5 and 6-10 are tied) and rated undergraduate admissions difficulty 1-10. For state schools, I assumed OOS admissions. If in-state, assume .5 less.

US News Top Undergraduate Business Programs: Competitive Applicant Profile

The schools are listed in US News ranking order. My 1-10 score is not a ranking of program quality (or IB placement); it simply estimates the overall strength you generally need to be meaningfully competitive for admission.

  1. Penn Wharton - 10

  2. MIT Sloan - 10

  3. UC Berkeley Haas - 9

  4. NYU Stern - 9.5

  5. Michigan Ross - 9.5

  6. Cornell Dyson - 9.5

  7. UNC Kenan-Flagler - 9

  8. Carnegie Mellon Tepper - 9

  9. UT Austin McCombs - 9

  10. Indiana Kelley - 7.5

10 = UW 3.95+ GPA / 1550+ SAT, plus truly differentiated achievement, leadership or impact and an exceptional application.

9.5 = UW 3.9+ GPA / 1530+ SAT, plus exceptional extracurricular depth/impact and a highly compelling application.

9 = UW 3.85+ GPA / 1500+ SAT, plus very strong extracurricular depth/leadership and a strong application.

7.5 = UW 3.7+ GPA / 1400+ SAT, plus strong extracurricular involvement/leadership and a good application.

These numbers should be guidelines, not cutoffs. Course schedule, school context, class rank, institutional priorities, residency and other factors matter. A 1520 instead of a 1530 obviously isn’t meaningful.

Meeting a school’s threshold does not mean you are likely to be admitted. It means your academics are strong enough that the rest of your application can realistically get you in.

The biggest takeaway is that great numbers are needed but not enough as you move up this list. At the most selective programs, a 3.95 and 1550 don’t make someone a standout. They establish that the student can compete academically. What separates successful applicants is meaningful achievement, leadership, impact, intellectual curiosity, personal qualities and the ability to communicate all of that on the application.

The grid can also help you decide where to spend your time. Once your academics clear the competitive range, another 20 points or AP may matter far less than making an impact in something you care about or submitting a much stronger application.

Bonus Schools 11-20

USC - 9

UIUC - 8

UVA - 9 (must apply to business after)

Wash U - 9

Emory - 9 (must apply to business after)

Georgetown - 9

OSU - 7.5

ND - 9

UW - 8

GT - 9

I hope this helps somebody.

2

So repeating something I also mentioned elsewhere, but hopefully a little more concisely . . .

I agree that this is a potentially useful framework, particularly if people take seriously your comments about guidelines, thresholds, and so on. But one additional caution I would offer is I think there can be subtle but important differences between when, say, a 9 might be a bit more compromising on basic numbers than business-activity stuff, or vice-versa.

That is because I think the overall selectivity of the undergrad program in general typically still applies to undergrad business programs, at this level at least. So, say, if a 3.85/1500 for an advantaged-domestic or International applicants would in general be low for a successful applicant–as it might be for some of the 9s on your list–then I think that is still going to be true for the advantaged/International business program applicants to those colleges.

Conversely, where such numbers would in fact at least be generally competitive for the college, maybe even strong for the college, then I think they are likely to be relatively more picky about the business-activity side of things to compensate. Which doesn’t mean they are more, or less, selective overall than your rating, but how they get to that level of selectivity could be a bit different, in ways that could be relevant to some specific application cases.

I’d also suggest as a very rough rule of thumb that privates are often more likely to fall in the first category, publics in the second. Including because in-state admissions policies often result in a somewhat wider range of acceptable grade/test combinations toward the lower end at the institutional level, but then they still need to ration access to particularly popular programs, including popular business programs, in other ways.

So what is the practical takeaway? Well, I am basically agreeing you always have to assess whether you are competitive on numbers, understood in context, before getting to ECs. I’m more just noting what that means exactly can vary in detail between different business programs with similar overall selectivity but then somewhat different institutional contexts.

Then if your numbers are competitive, you can apply, but understand actual admissions chances may vary depending on how picky they can be about business-activity stuff even among the sufficiently-high-numbers kids.

But don’t necessarily talk yourself out of applying, if you really feel like you are a good fit for their program at least. Just understand you need a suitable range of programs on your list to make sure you will get some great offers to consider. And/or, maybe apply somewhere rolling and see if you can get an early offer (Pitt, Minnesota, and others being potentially important rolling options).

1 Like
3

Good points. Wanted to capture nuances like that (which I agree with) but could not pull it off and keep it simple. The number of kids who ask questions about UG Biz online is so significant that it prompted me to try and capture my thoughts.

1 Like
4

I didn’t think getting into undergrad business school was hard. In our school with a high school class of 140, 0-1 kids of the top 20% go to undergrad business (the occasional one person going to Wharton), and usually 5-7 altogether.

5

I think an additional note here is that MIT doesn’t admit by major/Sloan (you declare second year/end of first) and has very few primarily undergrad business majors Only 136 out of 3400 eligible students (non-first years) declare a business major in Sloan… In comparison there are 98 in humanities and social sciences - so not that different.. it will be a bit of an unusual thing as an undergrad…There are few second majors too but NOT many.

Obviously PLENTY of MIT students go into finance (and similar) as do many people from lots of schools not on this list…

1 Like
6

IMO, most people who study business are looking at career outcomes. If so, what is their career path?

Accounting - most business schools have relationships with Big 4 accounting (or smaller regional firms).

Marketing - complete crapshoot and companies will probably hire locally so geography may matter.

IB, MBB consulting - target/semi -target schools.

I go back to D24’s experience. Rice is not “known” for undergraduate business. i think they moved up to #20 in USNWR. However, she and her friends have found summer internships in IB or MBB. And she knew previous graduates from business clubs who got jobs - not all the students of course but reasonable odds you’ll land something assuming you did the prep work.

3 Likes
7

Yeah, it is an unavoidable fact that any guidance simple enough to be useful among non-experts will also require all sorts of caveats, cautions, exceptions, and so forth.

But if people are willing to understand that often things like this are the beginning, not end, of a fruitful investigation process, that’s not a fatal problem. And we all had to start somewhere!

1 Like
8

Thanks for clarifying. US News list, not mine. Lots of nuances like that among the schools, like you pointed out with MIT. Note they have all been considered. The rating is admission to the school in MIT’s case. I didn’t mention MIT like I did Emory and UVA because no application process is required after year 1.

1 Like
9

Yeah, I think the unavoidable complexity in all this is there are many roads to Dublin, where Dublin is defined in terms of something like the peak period of a business career. In almost any such career, if you look back at the paths people took to getting there, there will be a lot of variety.

Which doesn’t mean I think aspiring business kids should be indiscriminate about where they go for college, but I do think it means they can weigh different sorts of options and decide what actually makes sense for them as an individual.

And I sometimes think some of them underweigh exactly what sort of undergrad experience they really want. Like, both Econ majors at College A and Business majors at College B might end up in similar business careers sometimes, but that doesn’t mean those would be harmless substitutes for any given individual kid. Some kids would love Business and hate Econ, and vice-versa for other kids. And if you as an individual try to go from A to B1 to C where you actually hate B1, you might not actually make it to C. But maybe you could if you went A to B2 to C where you actually liked B2.

Of course you also might not know in advance, which is also fine. If B1 is a business program, maybe you try that. If it doesn’t work out as you are hoping, ideally your college makes it easy to transfer to B2, say possibly Econ. Or maybe it isn’t related to business at all, maybe you now realize you would rather do law, or medicine, or engineering, or politics, or whatever.

Anyway, sort of rambling, but my point is if you want to try out an actual undergrad business program, great, you should give it a try, but maybe value the option to switch to something else at the same institution as the desire may arise. But if you don’t feel a desire to try out an undergrad business program, also fine.

10

Undergrad business is very different from other majors because you’re not just competing for jobs against kids in your own major (with the exception of accounting).

IMO, kids who have a strong sense of what they want to do early on have a huge advantage over those who meander through general business and don’t lock in summer internships until junior year, dont join clubs or coffee chats/networking. If you’re just taking business classes and not much outside of that, you may struggle getting a really good business job straight out of college.

Going to the right school may matter, grades and outside activities/internships, extracurriculars all matter.

It’s a combination of analytical skills, emotional intelligence, social skills/networking, and some savvy ambition.

2 Likes
11

Nice simple summary. Remember this is just the first step. The next step which is harder is making into those business/consulting clubs! Maybe they should make the club applications part of freshman admissions so the process is easy!

12

Funny you should mention. My son is dealing with those right now. Crazy that students in school for 30 days have to show they know technicals. Not how I would do it, but seems to be the way it works.

1 Like
13

This is where the rankings can be misleading. IU Kelly is a top ranked business school. But they have over 10,000 undergrad business majors and the clubs/workshops are supposedly incredibly competitive and the chances of getting in are small.

That’s a dog eat dog environment vs if you attended an elite liberal arts school, you probably have a better shot at joining a club and potentially landing a job in IB or MBB.

Not sure if kids are even aware but the really ambititious kids (who typically land at at these elite schools) probably know these career options if they chose to pursue them.

Of course not everyone wants IB or MBB and are fine doing accounting/audit or general finance but many are attracted to business because it offers some of the highest paying jobs out of college that dont require you to be a math genius.

14

Elite liberal arts schools, and even smaller T20s, have a huge proportion of students playing sports or whose parents are big shots at banks and consulting firms, so statistics for non-hooked students are much worse.

If you come from a normal background, state flagships + the absolutely elite schools (HYPSM / Wharton) give you the best chance at climbing the social ladder

1 Like
15

I have always felt that directionally but have never seen the proof. I guess there is no way to track it perfectly.

1 Like
16

From the MIT stats it is interesting to see how many students majored in math. It is third behind only CS and AI (and just ahead of ME).

I would expect that some of those math students end up in finance (in addition to a rather wide range of other careers).

I am wondering whether math is as common of a major at other universities.

1 Like
17

I think at most Ivys economics is MUCH more common…I am fairly sure that it is usually # 1 (or top 2) Harvard/Princeton/Dartmouth/Brown? I don’t think math usually is anywhere near that.. Too lazy to research more though… I would guess TOTALLY guess the MIT kids are a solid mix of academic math folks that and those that want to do finance/quant stuff..

1 Like
18

Confirming that this is your framework?

Surprised BC’s Carroll doesn’t hit your screen. That’s a hard direct-admit. Or so I thought.

19

I made it up, flaws and all. I used the new USN list.

20

next batch -

Rice - 9

UMN - 8

U Wash - 8

BC - 8.5

PS - 7.5

Purdue - 7.5

TA&M - 7

UF - 8

UGA - 8

UMD - 8