<p>Man, F ivy. I mean, Ivy is good, but there soooo many other school that provide similar education. Maybe less prestigious name, still...</p>
<p>The ones that have the kind of brand-name Sakky mentioned don't includes schools like Brown, Dartmouth...etc. He's referring specificly Yale and Harvard.</p>
<p>Look guys, like it or not, we live in a brand-name world where the vast majority of people just do not know the rankings and don't really care. For example, I once read a survey conducted of regular people about which school they thought offered the best MBA, and Princeton was one of the top responses despite the fact that Princeton doesn't even have a business school. Heck, I even know a bunch of MBA students at the top schools, but who didn't come from the traditional MBA hunting grounds (i.e. not from consulting or banking) who displayed little knowledge of the MBA rankings. For example, there are former engineers and scientists who are now getting their MBA's at MITSloan who don't know much about the other business schools. It's only a miniscule percentage of the country that actually knows the rankings well. </p>
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The ones that have the kind of brand-name Sakky mentioned don't includes schools like Brown, Dartmouth...etc. He's referring specificly Yale and Harvard.
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<p>That's not quite true. I just use Yale and Harvard as schools that obviously have killer brand names. But there is a brand name continuum. Some schools have stronger brands than others. And the fact of the matter is, business success has a lot to do with marketing. That is why companies spend billions of dollars to build a strong and popular brand name. </p>
<p>Look, I'm not saying that it's fair. I'm not saying that I like it. I'm just telling you what the situation is, not what it necessarily ought to be. The fact of the matter is, if you get your MBA from, say, UChicago, you're going to encounter a lot of people who have never heard of your school, or think it's just some rinky-dink low-level public school. The same thing happens with UPenn - a lot of people just think it's a public school and have no idea that it's in the Ivy League. Sad but true. {What I think Penn should have done is basically to have renamed the whole school as 'Wharton' and then pushed that brand name - similar to how in 1896 the College of New Jersey renamed itself to Princeton}.</p>
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What I think Penn should have done is basically to have renamed the whole school as 'Wharton' and then pushed that brand name - similar to how in 1896 the College of New Jersey renamed itself to Princeton
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<p>I think there is a certain measure of truth there with regards to UPenn's name... i.e. it is the only "public sounding" Ivy (University of [Insert State Name]).</p>
<p>If anything, it should have re-branded to honor its founder, Benjamin Franklin, (perhaps when he died in 1790).</p>
<p>Sure Franklin University doesn't roll off the tongue like Princeton or Yale, but then again, let's bear in mind that this name hasn't had a 300 year head start ingratiating itself into the American culture like Harvard or Yale ... who knows what could have been? Maybe people would be saying things like, "wow you go to Franklin?"</p>
<p>A big name isn't nearly as important as the networking possibilities that a school will generate. I'm applying to an ivy league school, but it's only because they offer a specialized program that no school in the state of Texas offers. </p>
<p>I plan to return to Texas upon graduation though. You'd have to to be mentally ill to believe that an Ivy League school would provide more networking opportunities in the state of Texas than UT, A&M, or SMU. If you want to live in a specific location, then the location of the school must be taken into account. I know that these schools have "global networks" blah blah blah, but most grads end up working within 250 miles of the school they graduated from.</p>