Based on These Conditions: Which MBA Program Should I Apply To?

Graduate School Business School - MBA
1

Which 5 business schools (MBA) would you apply to with the provided conditions? The ($xx,xxx) indicates how much money I would owe upon graduation due to my particular financial aid awards. I also prefer to be in warm and pleasant weather .

UC Berkeley ($0)
Cornell (0$)
UCLA ($0)
Pepperdine ($0)
Dartmouth ($16,000)
Booth ($25,000)
Stanford ($28,000)
Northwestern ($28,000)
Harvard ($34,000)
LMU ($34,000)
Yale ($38,000)
Wharton ($62,000)
Columbia ($62,000)

Pick your top 5 to apply to and WHY. Thank you for helping me!

2

This forum isn’t particularly suited to grad school questions.

3

Thanks Marvin; I’ll try to ask this question in a better suited forum.

4

UC Berkeley
Cornell
UCLA
Harvard
Wharton (only if you aren’t floundering in debt from undergrad)

The first three because they are stellar schools where you will owe $0 upon graduation. Besides Cornell, they also are in nice weather. Harvard is a top Ivy for business where you won’t owe AS much upon graduation (compared to Yale and Columbia). Wharton is one of the best business schools but only apply there if you can afford owing that 62K and you haven’t drowned yourself out from undergrad debt.

5

Stanford-Top MBA in the country, incredible reputation
Berkeley-Same as above, full ride
UCLA- same as above
Harvard- cant beat the connections and reputation
Booth- good money, quality program in one of the best cities in the world.

6

UC-Berkeley
Stanford
Chicago-Booth
Dartmouth-Tuck
Harvard

For all of them, it’s the same reason - the incredible value. It’s the combination between the high ranking/reputation of the school and the low cost. Berkeley would be free, but even with the other four, the average startng salary of graduates is routinely in the six-figure range. Paying off $34,000 or less will be a drop in the bucket - you could probably do that in a year or two, but the value over the life of your career would be incredible.

Honestly, you probably also couldn’t go wrong with Cornell, UCLA, Northwestern, or Yale, either. I selected the schools I did because of their rankings but also location - I’d rather pay $34,000 to go to Boston for two years than $0 to go to Ithaca, particularly with the salaries being so high, and Harvard is higher-ranked than Cornell. Ditto on UCLA, although the location is less of a factor there. With Yale it was literally just a question of location - that could be a good substitute for any of the schools on this list.

Wharton and Columbia could also be good options if you really wanted to go there - again, $62,000 is a tremendous deal for either of them as far as debt goes, and you could pay it down easily. However, you have so many other excellent options for less money that I would choose one of them instead - unless, like I said, you just really really wanted to go to one of these.

Pepperdine and LMU (Loyola Marymount?) won’t offer you nearly the kind of opportunity that the other top 15ish schools on your list will. I wouldn’t go to Pepperdine for an MBA even for free. The median base salary coming out of Pepperdine is $75,000, with a median signing bonus of $5,000 (and fewer than half of grads even got a signing bonus). Furthermore, only 68% of graduates received a job offer within three months of graduation. LMU’s average starting salary is just under $54,000 a year. On average, even after 10 years, LMU graduates are not making what Chicago, Tuck, and other top b-school graduates make just out of B-school.

Compare that with, for example, Chicago Booth - where the median base salary was $120,000, and the median signing bonus is $25,000 - and 60% of Booth graduates get one. Plus 98% had at least one job offer three months after graduation. Tuck showed a median starting salary of nearly $118,000, with the 35% of the class going into consulting seeing a median of $135,000.

Edited to add:

  1. I deleted your identical other thread.
  2. I didn't notice you said that you wanted to be in warm, pleasant weather. In that case, I might replace Dartmouth with UCLA. But...you'll only be there for 2 years, and the 2 years in the cold can help you secure a future pretty much wherever you want to work. So I'd make the sacrifice.
7

Stanford
Berkeley
UCLA
Dartmouth
Harvard

I would skip Pepperdine. Not worth the effort even if it $0 cost.

8

I would pick Stanford.

9

Also, show Stanford the Berkeley and Cornell offer. Business Schools definitely negotiate - it never hurts to ask.

10

Above all else, scratch both LMU and Pepperdine, they are not remotely in the same categories all of the remaining schools. Depending what field you want to pursue, I will say that Haas (CAL) is fairly under the radar, but has great relationships with the tech field, both from an industry and financial (VCs, PE, IB…etc) perspective and are actively pursued.

11

Is this a hypothetical or what?

Some of those b-schools aren’t known to be terribly generous with fin aid, I’m really curious about where you pulled those expected contribution figures.

12

Total lifetime comp for someone graduating from a highly rated MBA program is a big number. The deltas you have listed are insignificant rounding errors. Pepperdine, please…

13

Thank you for all of your help; I have a lot of thinking to do. Quite frankly, I’m feeling overwhelmed yet confident because of the input you all provided. I’m grateful for this forum.

14

What career are you looking to pursue with your MBA? It might help make the decision as many of them have very different networks and recruiting partners.

Without that information, I would rank them as below taking into account your preferences.

  1. UC Berkeley
  2. Stanford
  3. Harvard
  4. Yale
  5. Wharton / Columbia

Based on the average placement statistics across the top schools, the amount of debt that you would owe even at Wharton/Columbia wouldn’t be that bad. Of course, if you are looking to work for a start up or smaller business where compensation might be lower (with added upside obviously) it could affect your payment schedule.

15

@AoDay, in terms of MBA’s, both Chicago and Northwestern are a tier above Yale, and in this scenario, they’re cheaper as well.

In any case, given this scenario assumingthatIcangetineverywhere, I would go

  1. H or S
  2. Chicago or Northwestern
  3. Wharton or (if I want to save money, Cal/Cornell)
16

The OP is asking for a ranking based on his/her preferences for a warmer climate while taking into account the post-graduation debt amounts. Chicago as a city is *$#@!% cold, which is where both Chicago and Northwestern are.

17

Umm, @AoDay, you know where Yale is located, don’t you?

CT isn’t exactly balmy in the winter. I didn’t find it appreciatively warmer than Chicago when I lived there.

And in this scenario that the OP set up, Yale SOM would cost more than either Kellogg or Booth.

18

New Haven is on the coast where the Gulf Stream current pulls up warmer water from the South. If you’ve been to both locations during the winter, Chicago is significantly colder…

19

@AoDay, I know the theory, but I’ve lived through several winters in both CT (on the coast) and Chicago, and Chicago isn’t significantly colder.

BTW, Chicago has Jan and Feb average temperates of 25 and 29 degrees. New Haven is 30 and 33 for those months. Having lived in both locales, that’s not an appreciable difference.