Student seeking for advice..

holla9
Fri, 25 May 2007 02:49:38 +0000

First of all I think you need to ask yourself why you want to get to a top MBA. What is it you want to do after business school? Business school is not a destination, is a step along the path that is your career. You shouldn’t trying to figure out the best way to get into Harvard Business School, you should be trying to figure out the best way to get the job you want to end your career.

I think in general the responses you’ve gotten so far have been pretty terrible. Clearly there is no such thing as a stepping stone to HBS. You seem to understand this. Its possible to get into a top business school from any academic background. You’ve (correctly) noted that there are more undergrad social science majors at HBS than business majors. This has a little to do with undergrad business schools making MBA’s redundant but much more to do with the fact that most of the top schools in the country do not have business schools. Kids from top undergrad schools tend to end up in the top MBA programs.

If you really want to study sociology than this is a no brainer. Go study sociology. If you do well in school (and a 3.8 is pretty spectacular) and are aggressive in pursuing opportunities you’ll have no problem getting a good job after college from UCLA or UCB with a degree in sociology. There will be a few less avenues available to you from one of those schools than from Marshall. I’m thinking specifically about real estate and accounting, and there maybe others. Again if your goal is to end up as a partner at a Big 4 firm, or in real estate development, perhaps you should go to Marshall. But good jobs will be available to sociology students who do well. You could go into operations, marketing, finance, sales etc. for a Fortune 500 company, consulting, or any number of other avenues. After you get your first job, your chances of getting into HBS will no longer depend very much on where you did your undergrad or what you studied while you were there (at least not given the choices you are choosing between).

If you are not actually interested in sociology, and just want to do it because you think it will help you get into business school, study something else. Sociology has a reputation of being an easier major. Perhaps the easiest major. For this reason a sociology major is going to have a (slightly) harder time finding a job than econ major (or a psych/philosophy/history major). Both econ and sociology (in my opinion) are very interesting. But econ is much applicable (to business) and somewhat more quantitative.

I don’t think your job prospects (or MBA prospects) would be terribly different coming from Berkley or UCLA. In my opinion, your decision between those two schools should be made on other factors (although perhaps you should consider if you’d rather be in Northern or Southern California after you graduate).

Also it seems apparent that many of the responders on this thread don’t really understand what sociology is. To become a social worker you would study social work (either at the undergraduate or graduate level) not sociology. Sociology is a social science that studies how people interact and are affecting by social institutions. I would suggest an intro sociology course to anyone. Sociology offers a very different perspective on how to look at the world. Also they tend to be pretty easy. Alright I’ll get off my high horse now.