IB Subject Choices for Business Majors

[sisiamara]

What are good subject combinations to major in business in competitive universities?

currently taking Business HL, English HL, Bio, HL, Psych SL, Math SL, Lang Acq SL, but do i have to I take economics for management or math hl? - and is it better to take ESS or Bio for business?

[IB`NOT`ez]

16 hours ago, sisiamara said:

What are good subject combinations to major in business in competitive universities?

currently taking Business HL, English HL, Bio, HL, Psych SL, Math SL, Lang Acq SL, but do i have to I take economics for management or math hl? - and is it better to take ESS or Bio for business?

Arguably the most rigorous combination for an IB student planning to major in Business in the world's most competitive business schools are as follows:

HLs: Mathematics HL, Economics/Business Management HL (Economics HL is accepted for course credits in the US and typically considered as a condition for conditional offers in the UK), any 3rd HL (taking a science HL demonstrates maximum rigor although imo you should take a subject you enjoy the most for your third one,.

SLs: Language A, Language B, Science/Humanities (Business Management/Psychology are decent choices you can't go wrong with)

To be sure, most subject combinations in the IB is good and you don't have to study Economics/Business Management to get into business school. Along the same lines, Math SL is also fine and I personally don't think highly of ESS but it's the admission committees you need to impress and not me. But because you plan on going for competitive universities, the above mentioned subject combination would show maximum rigor in the IB (barring taking a 7th subject or Further Maths HL) as well as demonstrating a high degree of proficiency in the most important skills for business: quantitative analysis, critical thinking, writing abilities. You can't really have a better IB subject combination for the world's most competitive undergrad business schools: Wharton, Haas, Dyson, Stern, Sloan, Ross, Warwick, LSE etc. all of which have acceptance rates below 10% especially for internationals and extremely competitive students trying to get in with extraordinary test scores and extracurricular work on top of rigorous course loads like the one I described. In a holistic admissions sense, if you're competitive for those schools (and even if you're not), you're very likely to secure admissions into less-competitive but also really good business schools e.g. Marshall, Questrom, HKU, HKUST, USyd, UBC, McGill etc.