Long Post Asking About Marketing (summary/cliffs at bottom)

brandmanager12
Sat, 14 Nov 2009 16:02:33 +0000

So the business forum hasn’t been helpful so far. Can someone help me out. I understand this is a long post, so I posted the key points at the bottom (cliffs section). Thanks:



Hi,

So I’ve been a long-time lurker on this site, and it seems like a common theme is that you have to go to a “target” school to have any sort of career in business. If you don’t, then you are basically stuck with accounting since that’s the only area where the top firms don’t just recruit from a handful of the top schools.

Well, my situation is that I know for sure that I want to do something in marketing, and eventually get my MBA from Kellogg. More specifically, I want to get into the managerial/quantitative side of marketing (i.e. brand management, consulting, market research) as opposed to the pure advertising side. The problem is, I don’t go to Wharton. I go to a school that is respected in my region (my region isn’t exactly a hotbed for finance/business anyway), but isn’t a target, so is it a bad idea to do marketing since I don’t go to an ivy? I absolutely WILL NOT DO ACCOUNTING (I hate my accounting class so much), and aside from my minor in econ, which is basically set, the only other field I would be willing to pursue outside of marketing is finance, so is it possible to get into marketing with a finance degree? Basically, I don’t want to get a marketing degree and end up with a 40k sales job that has nothing to do with the area of marketing I’m interested in, and then be screwed out of a top-tier MBA.

So what should I do:

Major in marketing, minor in econ: take some extra quant classes (I’m thinking CS rather than math or some more stats) to show I’m not like most state schoolers in marketing and pray I get a good job in something that isn’t sales or advertising.

Major in finance, minor in econ: try and break into marketing (if possible with finance degree), or else do a job in finance, pray I get into a good MBA and use the MBA to make a career change.

Otherwise, if all of this goes to ****, I think I’ll just get a MAcc from a program designed for non-accounting majors and just be a damn accountant if that’s my only other option.

One more question: Aside from marketing, can people with marketing majors also pursue strategy/operations consulting as well?

thanks

Cliffs:
-Don’t go to target, read on these boards that you have to go to target for good jobs.
-Want to get into the non-sales/advertising part of marketing, but don’t go to target.
-Hate accounting, refuse to do it, willing to do finance major.
-Need help deciding between finance w/econ minor or marketing w/econ minor in terms of which offers more opportunities in quant marketing, and if I can do marketing from finance.
-One more question: would marketing majors be able to do strategy or ops consulting in addition to marketing consulting, or is that restricted to finance/supply chain people?