“Blackstone Group is one of the most prestigious PRIVATE EQUITY firms. Strategy& was formerly Booz & Co. AQR Capital, Analysis Group, and Bates White…etc. are also not “pretty standard”. AQR Capital is an asset management company specializing in equity hedge funds and other alternative (a.k.a. high risk high return) investments. It got $120 billions AUM, huge for a firm with only 500 employees. Analysis Group and Bates White are boutique economic consulting/research firms. These three firms particularly value the quantitative background MMSS students bring. Just because you are not well versed in that space and are not familiar with them doesn’t mean they are “pretty standard”. In fact, these three companies are harder to get in than many of the companies you mentioned in that they usually hire only graduate students, not undergrads.”
I included Blackstone in the 7 and 8 figure. But you should know that according to the Blackstone website, there are almost twice as many Michigan alums as there are Northwestern alums. And I am well versed indeed in the others as well, but I did not include them because there is no way of knowing how many Ross students accepted similar jobs since boutiques and PE firms do not recruit 10 or more graduates from Ross, and are therefore not listed. Do not assume I am ignorant simply because I did not graduate from Northwestern.
“Other than BCG, Bains, McKinsey, GS, and Google, all the other firms you mentioned are not necessarily better jobs than others like Accenture. For example, it’s not that difficult to land a job with IBM in DC for the Federal consulting. Many entry-level positions in big companies like those aren’t really the most competitive.”
Really, a job with Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Deutsche, Citi, Barclays, etc…is no better than a job with Accenture? If you wish, we can add Accenture to the list. Ross habitually places between 5 and 7 of its graduates in Accenture, but I do not think that it is comparable to a BB IBank, or one of the main consulting companies.
“Among the banks, you have no idea how many of those are not related to retail banking, commercial banking instead of INVESTMENT banking anyway. The numbers I got was 61 to be exact, not 70-80. Also, there’s nobody listed for Apple or Cisco.”
First of all, very few Banks recruits at Ross for their Commercial Banking division. Secondly, your 61 includes only companies that recruit 10 or more Ross graduates and interns (MBA and BBA). My 70-80 includes companies like Apple, Blackstone, Lazard and several boutique PE and VC firms also recruit Ross undergrads, but no more than 5 or 6 when you include both MBA and BBA graduates. However, when you add all of those firms together, they add up to 10 or more full time hires of BBA graduates.
Cisco usually recruits more than 10 Ross students in total, and of those, they recruit at least 1 (sometimes as many as 5 or 6 in a given year, like in 2009, 2011 and 2013). It just so happens that no Ross BBA graduate accepted an offer from Cisco in 2012 and 2014. But if you look at the 2013 report (the link for that one is provided below), you will see that 5 Ross BBAs joined Cisco in 2013. In 2011, 6 joined Cisco.
“As for getting the equivalent, double-majoring in math is an overkill if the motive behind is trying to get the practical quant skill. One would have to deal with bunch of materials with no practical use. MMSS was created exactly because of the disconnect between math and social sciences/econ when they are taught separately by separate departments.”
That is why Michigan offers different types of Mathematics concentrations. If you are indeed only interested in a certain type of Mathematics, rather than Pure Mathematics, you can major in Applied Mathematics or Financial Mathematics, both of which are offered by the Mathematics departments and still pursue a BBA from Ross.
“Regarding the starting MBA salary, I guess you got that $140,000 from US News. Well, either Michigan misreported their number or if not, other schools understated their numbers. Go to their respective EMPLOYMENT reports, Kellogg grads reported higher numbers across the board, bonus included or not. The fact that Michigan’s reported number matches Berkeley/Columbia that are ranked higher and located in higher cost areas should give you an immediate clue that Michigan’s reported number is likely inaccurate.”
You really think that a program is “better” because it ranked higher? #7 (Cal) or #9 (Columbia) are not necessarily better than #11 (Michigan). Those are all considered peers. Kellogg is admittedly a cut above, but that does not mean that its graduates get better jobs. At that level (top 10 or 15 MBA programs), graduates are treated virtually the same, unless we are talking about HBS, SBS and Wharton.
And I am not sure what “EMPLOYMENT” reports you are referring to that would should Kellogg graduates reporting higher numbers across the board. Below are some comparisons of median starting salaries (not including bonuses) by industry according to their respective 2013 reports:
CONSULTING (median)
Columbia $135,000
Haas $135,000
Kellogg $135,000
Ross $135,000
FINANCE (mean/median)
Columbia $110,000
Haas $100,000
Kellogg $111,000
Ross $100,000
TECHNOLOGY AND TELECOM
Columbia $110,000
Haas $120,000
Kellogg $118,000
Ross $112,000
Clearly, while you seem to think there is a night and day difference between #6 or #7 and #11, employers do not think so.
http://www.bus.umich.edu/pdf/employmentdata2013.pdf
http://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/recruiters/sites/recruiters/files/pdfs/CBS_EmploymentReport13.pdf
http://haas.berkeley.edu/groups/careercenter/reports/13_14ReportSummary.pdf
I think the problem here is that you do not respect Michigan adequately. It is on par with Northwestern as an institution (in some ways better and in other ways not as good). That being said, I do not believe that Northwestern has any program that can compete with Ross in the sheer number of employment opportunities it offers. If we were comparing NU Econ to Michigan Econ, I would give the slight edge to Northwestern, primarily because the presence of an elite BBA program, Ross in the case of Michigan, will inevitably cannibalize on opportunities available to LSA students. However, Ross vs NU Econ, the slight edge goes to Ross. I admittedly do not know enough about the Kellogg Certificate Programs to speak to it, but in order for you to prove that it is indeed superior to Ross in terms of placement, you will have to provide actual placement data from the source, and for some very strange reason, NU does not publish such a report.
Another important aspect in this case is the fact that Ross is a virtual guarantee, while the Kellogg Certificate Program is by no means a certainty. If the OP wants an academically rigorous program with the best placement options, I recommend a Ross/Mathematics double major over NU. It is a safer bet.