USC vs. Emory vs. NYU

qzar
Sat, 21 Mar 2009 13:45:39 +0000

My cousin graduated two years ago with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Florida Atlantic University. I mean I hate to sit here and diss FAU but the school doesn’t even come close to being within 100 places of USC in the rankings. He graduated however and got a job at UPS working in a logistics department (I’m talking a white collar job at UPS). He was making a very good salary and now they are paying for him to get his MBA. He’s actually been admitted to several really good programs (including Wharton).

He told me every other candidate for the program UPS has to get managers is an engineer. My other cousin is working for Motorola as a manager and he too has a degree in Mechanical Engineer. My uncle graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering and is finishing up a 30 year career with Phillips as an executive.

Engineering is a great segue into business. It teaches you some very advanced thinking skills. A lot of companies know that if they hire engineers they will be getting some of the best minds when it comes to problem solving. An MBA has a lot of overlap with a regular Business/Economics degree. It was never really designed for people who studied business for undergrad.

I definitely suggest you very strongly consider USC. The interactions within the schools are amazing and you could graduate with degrees from both the school of engineering and the business school (Marshall has some amazing Management minors that would more than complement an MBA… they aren’t completely business but focus more on the management of people and organizations). You could land some great internships at USC and find that Fortune 500 company that’s willing to take your career somewhere.

I’m not saying you couldn’t do that anywhere else but NYU is pretty notorious for its schools being less than cooperative to double majoring and while I don’t know a lot about Emory, last I heard Viterbi is a top 10 program.