<p>This review is for high schoolers as well as first and second years who are thinking about applying for McIntire. I will keep it as objective as possible. </p>
<p>A little bit of background information: I’m a third year (rising 4th year) in McIntire, concentrating on Finance. Also doing econ major in CLAS. Lived in a foreign country for more than a decade before coming to the U.S.</p>
<p>The Good:</p>
<li><p>The building. Rouss/Robertson is the brand new mcintire facility. It’s probably way ahead of Huntsman Hall at Penn (Wharton) in term of the both technology and design. UVa pumped a lot of money into it, it’s quite an experience. Every single chair costs around 500-1000 dollars. Microsoft office 2007 is installed on every computer. Free bloomberg terminal and reuters terminal access. Amazing technology installed everywhere. Dual screen computers in all the labs, Flat screen TV in every private group-study room. A trading room with stock ticker updates surrounding you 360 degrees on the wall. Bathroom is nice and clean. Even if you don’t go to comm school, you should still visit the place. You’ll get quite jealous.</p></li>
<li><p>Professors. Most of the professors are extremely knowledgeable about their subjects and are usually very nice. They clearly care about students in a great deal. I was doing a hedging tournament couples of weeks ago and had questions about some of the mathematical strategies I wanted to implement. I went to three separate professors who teach investments and know a lot about option math. I just knocked on their office doors and asked them if they had a minute. Each professor spent at least 30 minutes explaining things to me, and they were all super excited about my ideas. One of them spent at least 2-3 hours with me cumulatively to guide me through the project. I love most of my professors. They’ll even hook you up with jobs/internships. We’ve got professors that used to be J.P. Morgan (Asia) ’s chief operating officer. Many of them are frequently quoted in Wall street journal/Bloomberg articles. Truly awesome faculties.</p></li>
<li><p>Career service: the people there try pretty damn hard to prep us for interviews and recruiting in general. Gave me a bunch of mock interview opportunities. </p></li>
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<p>The Bad:</p>
<p>Vending machines are pretty bad. They don’t take my university ID card. Very frustrating at times. However, yosu can go to Wilson right next door for its 5+ vending machines on the third floor.</p>
<p>The Ugly:</p>
<p>Third year ICE (integrated core experience) curriculum is just ugly. I feel like I wasted a whole year and didn’t learn crap. Let me tell you something about ICE: it’s 12 credits in the fall and 9 credits in the Spring, required for each student. It is consisted of many parts: </p>
<li> Strategy: you learn about corporate strategies, competitive advantages and how to analyze industries. But honestly, somebody who reads business magazines for a year would probably know more than an average student in term of strategies.</li>
<li> Systems: you learn about processes and efficiency improvements. They teach you stuff like business intelligence and how to draw these process diagrams with Microsoft Visio. Pretty useless, if you ask me.</li>
<li> Finance: by far the most useful part of ICE. You learn about discounted cash flow analysis, capital asset pricing theories, and bunch of other stuff. It’s sort of interesting.</li>
<li> Marketing: my professor showed different ads to us every day. That’s all we did. We talked about ads and the purchases we made in the past months. Pretty easy and relaxing, but nothing substantial. You’ll learn all the theories and concepts by taking comm 180, the prerequisite class.</li>
<li> Organizational behavior (OB), you learn about how people work in team, how people get motivated, and human group behavior in general. You have to do a lot of BS for this one, like writing: “I am at my best when I face challenges……I am at my best when I am in a unexpected situations……” you basically analyze the behaviors of yourself and everyone around you. Entertaining professor, but nothing more.</li>
<li> Communication: you learn to write memos and speak well in public. You can’t really learn public speaking though, you are either good at it or you suck at it. Boring.</li>
<li> Quantitative analysis: this one is basically statistics. You learn nothing more than you already learned in stat 212. T tests, z tests, regression analysis, blah blah blah. I feel like going back to high school.</li>
<li> Globalization: WOW. We sit there all day to discuss Aids in Africa and non profit companies. As soon as the students leave class, they forget everything.</li>
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<p>For each ICE block, you are assigned a corporate sponsor. You end up with either Dominion resources, Macy’s, Rolls Royce (the engine company), and Dell. You have to utilize what you learn in ICE to do projects for your sponsor company. My project in the Fall sucked big time. My group had to figure out a way to “reduce electricity consumption in Virginia”. We basically filled all the pages with BS.</p>
<p>All in all, there is so much, I repeat, SO MUCH BS you have to do for comm school. 80% of your assignments are utterly meaningless and take tremendous amount of time. But you have to do them anyway. Nothing I learned in ICE is challenging or intellectually stimulating. I feel that comm school is the best for people who are unmotivated who just want to be guaranteed with a job after graduation. I personally prefer the “will hunting style of learning”. Business can’t be learnt. You learn it by doing it. That’s why reputable schools like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton don’t offer undergraduate business degrees. If you excel at government, philosophy, and physics, you have the potential to be a great businessman. Business is ALL about common sense. You pick up more common sense and street smarts here and there on the way. I know a few people who loved ICE, so you can take my rant with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>In term of recruiting, you only need a McIntire degree if you want to do accounting or work for one of those lame-ass middle market firms who only recruit comm schoolers. Any reputable employer would look at all the majors. They want people who have motivation and raw intelligence. Neither of these can be learnt. Big firms all provide training on the job. I know tons of people in College of Arts and Sciences who get great job placements and tons of comm schoolers who don’t. It’s all about the individuals. I’m having a high profile finance internship on wall st this summer, and I could have got it by majoring in econ or even anthropology.</p>
<p>Sometimes I feel that mcintire is great for preparing you for the real world. Why? Because both mcintire and the real world are filled with BS.</p>
<p>I have to admit that going through mcintire gives you great work ethics. You learn to work well in a team and be tolerable of meaningless assignments. </p>
<p>I’m looking forward to next year, when I can actually take classes I’m interested in. Should be a good year.</p>
<p>Hope the review is helpful.</p>
<p>To people who are going to be 3rd years in comm schoo next year, my condolences.</p>