<p>As an economics alumni, there is something more fundamental you have to grasp. The business entities that students really want to go after, top notch finance and consulting firms, care very little about whether you studied business proper as an undergraduate. Certainly, places like big four accounting firms do, but you are not going to meet many Chicago alumni who are jumping to work as a paperwork jockey for 40K a year, 9 AM 5 PM, in middle market city like Denver (e.g. General Mills, Ernest & Young, D&T, Countrywide). The only business schools that target firms really value at a UG level are those that are affiliated with elite universities, of which there are four: Michigan / Ross, Berkeley / Hass, MIT / Sloan and UPenn / Wharton. Otherwise, they are seeking economics, mathematics, statistics, computer science, physics, and engineering majors from top schools broadly, knowing they will have to go through a training program prior to starting work. This largely has to do with the fact that it is less important that you know how to build a leveraged buy out model in Excel than it is that you are able to rapidly and effectively learn the elements of finance and several other fields that are directly applicable to your position. That is why ultimately the placement record for lesser ug business schools like Notre Dame, Wash U or Georgetown, are simply not as good as places like Dartmouth or Stanford (neither of which offer business). Further, once a non-business major gets their MBA or other quantitative graduate degree which levels the playing field with those that studied say accounting in college, the value of the formers UG degree will go back to being evaluated on the more broader basis of its rigor and selectivity, in which case the more vaunted the school the better. </p>
<p>However, certainly within their band of competition ug business majors do well. A NYU / Stern alumni is on average going to win over entry level jobs from the Emory math major, other things equal. The same goes with Wharton / Sloan alumni, who are going to beat out the average Columbia graduate. </p>
<p>The moral of the story: never go to a lower ranked school to study business, since in the long run it will not be that beneficial. However, if you have a choice between a truly solid UG business school and an equally esteemed art and sciences type program, then you have real decision to make on a whole host of personal factors.</p>