Bachelors of Business/Commerce Advice

So, the recent “college or no college thread” got me thinking…

I realize there are a lot of knowledgeable and experienced people on this board and I just wanted to create this thread to throw around some ideas and suggestions to help me out in my future endeavors/choices.

I’m 19, graduated high school in 07, did an electrical apprenticeship for about 2 years and decided that it definitely wasn’t my thing. The current plan is to go back to school to get my BBA or BC(same program,different names). I think that this path will be much more suited to my personality and strengths. My dad is an accountant/Bankruptcy trustee and he seems to enjoy it…

I was thinking about majoring in real estate and I was wondering if there was any other real estate majors out there? If so, what area do you work in? what is a typical week like for you ? what is the pay like in this field? anyone a commercial broker?

If any business students or recent grades are reading this please reply and give me a quick overview about every thing and anything. What do you like about business school? what do you not like? how was it finding a job out of school? what did you major in? regrets? internships? compensation? thoughts on double majoring? ect.

Thanks.

Business college is full of douchers, at least at the one that I go to. I swear, it’s like college for retards. I would say that 80 percent of the students in my business college must be border-line retarded. Most of them are stupid and white. Stupid white male doucher frat punks. All of them are majoring in marketing, management, business strategy, or any of the other waste of time, useless majors.

What I dislike most about business college is having to “network” and be nice to people. Most business majors stress those made up “soft skills” like being nice to people, talking to people, not wanting to kill people, etc… Fortunately for me, my major doesn’t stress these “soft skills” as much as the other ones do, which is great for me. You also have to do a lot of bullshit group projects for your marketing, management, and strategy classes, which are absolute nightmares for me because I HATE COLLEGE KIDS. But if you are good at tolerating stupid college kid idiocy without wanting to shoot yourself, you should have no problems with it.

I would say that 90 percent of the classes I have taken, not related to my major, are complete and total wastes of time, money, and effort. It is beyond annoying. A lot of what you learn in college is fluff and bullshit anyway, but in business school it’s multiplied by 100. Honestly, some of the shit they teach in business school looks like it was just made up yesterday by a bunch of 6th graders.

I don’t know what to say about internships, except you will probably have to join one of the greek organizations like Phi Kappa Psi Beta Gamma whatever… in order to go to their functions and meet recruiters. Firms will come to campus and recruit straight out of these organizations, so I guess joining one will be vital to getting an internship.

About what to major in… I really couldn’t tell you. Marketing is the number one major at my school, I think its because it is by far the easiest. You can tell a lot about how difficult marketing is by the dumbshits that major in it. It is also one of the most lucrative majors, I am told. I wouldn’t know. All I know is that I hated my marketing classes with the intensity of a dying sun. If you are good at bullshitting people and being a pompous ass, you might want to check it out. But you could probably be far more respected if you went the laywer route.

I admit that I am very confused about the job market. From whatever source you listen to the job market is either “GREAT!” or it is “NOT LOOKING GOOD…” And the demand for certain majors varies almost every month. Don’t attach your major to the promise of a job as soon as you get out. You probably won’t find shit when you graduate anyway unless you kissed and licked ass at an internship first. Most of my professors all seem to agree that the “hiring frenzy” isn’t going to start until mid 2011.

I wouldn’t go into business college unless you are absolutely sure on what you want to do. I wanted to major in economics, and that’s what I am minoring in now, but when I took my first accounting class as an elective, I fell in love with it and now that’s what I want to do with my life.

Sorry I can’t be of any real help, this post looks more like a rant, but if you have any more specific questions I will try and answer them.

As far as a Real Estate career goes in the US there are quite a few options available and most don’t require a degree.

If you want to sell property you’ll need to get a license otherwise you can’t legally collect a sales commission.

If you want to be a commercial broker you can either try and get a general finance/accounting/business degree or just look for an entry level position. Some positions will probably require you to get a real estate license and could possibly pay for you to get it. Either way it isn’t prohibitively expensive to obtain one.

You could also be a property manager fairly easily since most states don’t require a certification/license to act as one. However, if you want to make property management your career it would be in your best interest to become bonded and work for a property management company before you set up your own.

As far as RE majors go I’m not really sure if there are any. The closest thing I can think of would be Business Management with a focus on Facilities/Property Management. I’m not really sure if any school is going to have a specific in depth program for what you are looking for.

Now the IMPORTANT QUESTION. Why do you want to get into Real Estate? Do you just think it will be an interesting job or is this a stepping stone so you can eventually run your own RE business? There really isn’t a wrong answer but I’ll just let you know that you’ll make more money with your own RE business than you probably ever could working for a company…assuming your run your company right and don’t go out of business.

www.reiclub.com Is a really good website I’ve posted a bunch of times. It mainly focuses on the US residential market but there are a few people that do commercial. Read the forums because they are pretty quick to cut out any of the Guru bullshit you’ll usually read. Some of the free e-books, audio seminars, and articles are good as well just make sure you don’t drink the Guru Kool-aid. Also, you may try posting there what you just did on T-Nation and see what they say.

Get a degree that is actually worth your time and money (i.e. non-business related). Also, is real estate seriously a major?

I too think business is over rated as a degree, considering it attracts a lot of unintelligent, lazy, and unmotivated people who think it is an easy way to make a lot of money. If its what you want to do, go for it, but do it for the right reasons.

An interesting anecdote; I got an engineering degree from Ohio State. At graduation we were grouped by major and and when the business major was announced a great majority of the engineering section started booing. The whole business section turned w/ and stared at the engineering section a look of anger, shame, and a bit of what the fuck. I was just sitting there minding my own business, but I thought it was pretty funny. But seriously, business kids didn’t have class on Fridays and I think thats what attracted half the students.

Thanks for the input, and yes, UBC,(university of B.C) has a real estate major.