Seeking advice here. How would people rate the UW Foster Business School’s BABA program against Lehigh’s BS CS and Business program for a student interested in pursuing a career in FinTech? FWIW money/cost is not a concern because with grants and scholarships they will be about the same for my student.
The Foster admission is a direct admit meaning that the business admission is already certain, and the actual major (Finance, Marketing, Information Systems, …) is what will be declared in sophomore or junior year. It seems most students are able to declare as sophomores. With Lehigh it is of course a CS+Business double major.
But apart from the obvious degree-name differences, what are the real world implications? It does seem that there are grass from either program doing fintech jobs in the big firms.
Thanks! All advice and opinions shared will be gratefully accepted.
One plus from an academic standpoint that Lehigh has is that the CSB program is accredited for both CS and Business. At Foster, there would be only business accreditation (of course because the program itself is a business program). Not sure how Lehigh gets to make this actually work for real: not a lot of overlap exists between business and CS. One of my student’s worries is that Lehigh may have lightened the load in either programming to construct a special CS+B program. Is this a justified feeling?
The problem is, on paper everything looks great (of course, why will either university say anything bad about its course offerings)? Asking the professors and advisors also is similar — nobody is going to bad mouth their own univ or courses. It makes perfect sense to me the way these things are, and we’re not complaining. But it also means that we are left with seeking outside opinions from hopefully unaffiliated parties, and making it part of the research we do. Thank you for sharing your opinions. I do appreciate them.
You have to ask the right questions. It’s not about saying yes we are a good or not good school but a lot I want to get here or there and show me the path.
Honestly these schools are so different and you need to be there four years….day after day after day.
Which is best for you ?? Take out the academic piece as you answer that.
Fintech is a buzzword. I looked at the Lehigh’s minor program. Nothing looked special about the program. I don’t think that any specialization is required for fintech jobs.
If the student wants to do software development for financial applications, then a CS major is the best route to start with. Add appropriate electives (e.g. finance, economics, statistics, math). If that is the goal, then a program that includes CS will be better preparation than a program that does not include CS. However, the student should also consider whether the Lehigh program’s other business course requirements (e.g. marketing, management, organizational behavior, supply chain, etc.) could crowd out schedule space that could otherwise be used for finance-focused electives.
Note that the Lehigh program requires 136 credits, so some overloading is needed unless some requirements are fulfilled by AP or other pre-matriculation credit.