Business School Students
Since the advent of the internet, it seems like new businesses are starting all the time. In turn, the number of websites that can help you crowdsource or start new companies contributes to this boom. While the success or failure of a business may seem completely random to an outsider, business school can give you a leg up in terms of your success. So then what can give you a leg up when it comes to your odds of acceptance to a top business school? Your undergraduate major? Learn how to select the best undergraduate majors for business school later.
Consider your strengths, but also consider your weaknesses
While the most important factor when selecting a major for any profession is your success, business majors are expected to be risk-takers who are always eager to learn. So as a future business major (and in turn, a business person), ask yourself what you already do well, and what you need to learn more about. Additionally, ask yourself what skills or knowledge can help you to fully formulate your business idea, or help you to run the business you want to run.
If you don’t know what kind of business you want to run yet, that’s okay. Consider what makes you want to be a business person anyway. Do you have a product in mind you want to know how to sell? Do you idolize a certain business person?
In fact, looking at your business idols and their college majors can tell you a lot about popular majors for business school students. While a number of top CEOs have business degrees, some majored in something relating to their product instead. For example, the head of Google majored in computer science. The current head of Disney studied TV and film. As a result, they really know their products.
What do the admissions offices say?
This largely depends on the business school. No one business school has a more popular major than another, but certain trends do emerge. For example, students attending MIT’s business school are more likely to have engineering degrees. Harvard and Stanford, on the other hand, tend to accept more students with humanities or social science degrees.
With that said, traditional business majors tend to be reasonably popular as well. These are some majors that tend to get to the heart of the matter:
- Accounting
- Finance
- Business management
- Marketing
- Sales
Keep in mind, unlike some higher degrees, such as medicine or law, you can choose your specialization within the degree rather than after the fact. You may want to remember this when choosing an undergraduate major, as it may help to have two majors that complement each other. Furthermore, your scores on the GMAT and your real-world work experience will factor into your application just as much, if not more than, your undergraduate major.
