My daughter got admitted into University of Maryland(UMD) Smith, Indiana University Kelly and Urbana Champaign Gies school for undergrad. She got Presidential Scholarship to UMD , Dean’s scholarship to Kelly and none at Gies. She is unsure of her career path and is planning to join into General Management and switch to either MIS /Management consulting. With current scholarships all the universities fall into similar tuition and they all are out of state.Looking on some advice on pros and cons and which would be her best option to get into with regards to securing internship and eventually job upon graduation.
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Congratulations! She has some great choices. Has she visited all three? And perhaps you can share where she’d sees herself working in the future(geographically).
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To which major at Smith University of Maryland was your D admitted?
Agree with @Momofthree24 , consider geography of interest for internships and for future employment.
My daughter got into UMD and UIUC for accounting. I don’t know much about Indiana. But between UMD and UIUC, we are leaning towards UMD due to geography.
UIUC is ranked high for accounting and no. 1 on some lists over even some private schools. So I dug into the accounting rankings a bit more and discovered that UIUC and UMD are very similar and what was giving UIUC a slight edge in the rankings was job placement rates, which honestly was barely different.
I think if we lived closer to the midwest, and my daughter wanted to work in the Chicago area, we would’ve picked UIUC. My brother-in-law works in the Chicago area and says they get tons of UIUC grads there. We also looked where most of the kids worked after graduation, and UIUC grads seem to work in that region. It may just be because UIUC has a lot more in-state kids. So my daughter is leaning toward UMD because she is most likely going to target the D.C. area for employment.
I know that UMD is ranked high for MIS, so you may want to see what’s driving that, like I did for accounting at UIUC. Also, if your daughter wants to do management consulting, you may want to take a look at what management consulting firms recruit at the job fairs. Consulting kind of gets lumped into this big bucket, but there’s different types of consulting buckets.
I’d be less concerned about the geography - because you can get to anywhere from anywhere - but I’d see which campus they liked best.
I’d also look at career outcomes. Consulting is varied - and if she wants to be in MIS, who is placing in roles similar to what she wants? They all have career reports down to the job title.
All are fine schools - but the schools - the environments, the campuses, the surrounds are very different. Even the business school size is different - Gies is heavily grad with 6K kids, but only 3K undergrad) where IU is over 10K undergrad, for example.
It could be the student would like one campus far above the other two (have they been to all three)? My student had a clear favorite of those three and wouldn’t have been happy at the other two - just from the environment. I don’t know how yours would be - but visiting (if you haven’t) might provide instant clarity - do I want to spend four years here?
Best of luck to you.
[I would like my initial post to be removed from this thread.]
Just to clear up, college location does not matter for CPA requirements/jobs. (I’m a CPA as is my H and S). You can take the exam anywhere for any state, you can look up all requirements for your state in advance and be sure to meet them, and recruiting for the Big 4 is national.
HOWEVER, the OP has no interest in accounting, so it isn’t relevant here.
To the OP – I’d focus on fit and career placement to choose between these colleges. If possible, consider revisiting the top contenders – those revisits helped my kids make their final choice…
Congrats on the great options.
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[Deleted]
IMO this can be managed quite easily AND more importantly it is not the OPs question or area of interest. Feel free to start a new thread if you wish to discuss CPA requirements.
ETA: The comment this was replying to (above) has been deleted.
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See above quote
Smith has its own robust career services center. Internships are important. One may get a good idea of how Terps got their general management jobs.
FYI UIUC Geis has no business grad students on campus. It is only undergrad. (MBA is entirely on-line.)
That is a real point of distinction between UIUC and the other Big 10 programs (that and it is much smaller). Illinois has about 750 grads from Geis a year, MD is around 1,000 and IU Kelley is 2,000+.
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It seemed odd it said 6,000 grad and 3000 undergrad - but that explains it. When they flew me in to look at the MBA, on line didn’t exist.
So that augurs the point more about size - all three are large - but maybe different levels of large.
I’m not sure how the “major” populations are broken out.
Thanks for clarifying.
This is where I got it - if you scroll down to Gies profile.
UIUC has plenty of business grad programs on campus, just not an MBA.
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I stand corrected!
On the topic of other business grad programs … I think I always assumed that the people doing these +1s were students staying for a 5th year at their undergraduate institution. Do people move around for the 1 yr MS degree? Is it something people go back to school for?
Please move on from the grad school conversation or start a new thread. The OP is looking at making a decision for undergrad.
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Thank you all for the help and the detailed responses… Much appreciated… In the last few days, she has been accepted to Northeastern London Scholar’s Program ( London campus for the first year and the other years in the US). We are open to sending her if need be and wanted to hear other’s thoughts and if they have been in a similar situation and what they decided.
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What would the net cost be?
(Tuition fees room board) - (scholarships, grants) = $
And how does that compare to her favorite choice so far ?
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Yes we did visit Geis and Kelly. Have not been to UMD yet. Kelley put up quite a show on the direct admit day and we were impressed with the effort that was put in and details provided.