Ross Minor with Engineering (IOE)?

thestudmuffin
Tue, 27 May 2014 00:20:05 +0000

I’m pretty confident that I could get into Ross as a pre-admit,

Keep in mind that the stats of the average pre-admit are comparable to most Ivy Leagues, and admissions are quite random.

From what I’ve read on CC, it seems to me that a BSE will give you more opportunities and is more versatile than a BBA (I’m not 100% sure what I wanna do)



I’m not sure why this is spouted so much here. Engineering degrees will get you jobs within Engineering, while a BBA job will get you a job in marketing/consulting/finance/accounting. Sorry to say, but you’re not going to be recruited for banking jobs out of Engineering. There’s literally no incentive for an investment banking firm to hire an engineer who likely has a lower GPA and no finance background when they can hire a 3.8 Ross BBA who has the requisite knowledge to hit the ground running. It’s not that the background is hard to possess or IB is inherently difficult (quite the opposite actually), but 99/100 times the firm will choose the person with the business background.



However, Ross just started offering a minor, which, from the website: http://www2.bus.umich.edu/MyiMpact/academics/businessminor , sounds like it allows students access to all the perks of Ross (recruitment, networking, etc.).

This isn’t true. There are no recruiting benefits from the minor, at least not yet. I don’t see this changing any time soon because it would completely disincentivize students from pursuing a BBA when they can just opt for an engineering/BBA minor combo or something else. You can’t drop your resume for Ross jobs, which realistically is the most important benefit BBA students get. Sure, you can show up to the corporate presentations, but anyone can. It’s all posted on the Ross website, so if you have a friend in the business school, you can just ask them when the presentations are.



Would tacking on the Ross minor to IOE make me more attractive to top IB firms/recruiters than Ross majors? Could anyone give me some advice?



Short answer is no, it won’t. The people who come back to recruit at the business school are almost always Ross alums. They recruit their own, not engineers. Not only that, but you won’t be involved in On Campus Recruiting throught Ross as of yet. All they’ll see is somebody who has an engineering degree, and they’ll wonder if you were too dumb to get into Ross (which is severely misguided and altogether wrong, I’ll admit, but just the way it’s perceived) or if you’re really even interested in business. Again, there’s no incentive to hire an Engineering student because they have the tried and true method of just hiring business school students instead, since it’s worked for them since the beginning of time.

Also, to address another point here…

I’m also interested in business/finance, though. I see myself working in i-banking/hedge funds down the road, but not sure about that



It sounds like you’re still in high school, and I’m not sure you know what exactly working in banking is like in terms of lifestyle. If you come in as an analyst, you’re working 90 hours weeks. If you come in as an associate, the hours are still probably 70-80 on average.

If you don’t come in to investment banking as an analyst (i.e. right out of college), then you realistically don’t have a great chance at working for a reputable hedge fund. This is a massive generalization and there are tons of exceptions which I could get into, but HFs recruit top analysts out of top banking programs. If you come into banking as an associate (which you would do after you got an MBA), then your chances of exiting to hedge funds are incredibly limited.