<p>Sure:</p>
<p>Williams: 426
Duke: 476
Berkeley: 548</p>
<p>And, for your own personal interest, UMich: 501</p>
<p>Note, that counts only MBA graduates, not exec-ed, PhD, or any other sort of program affiliation.</p>
<p>^On a per capita basis, that is a total demolition of Cal and Michigan by Duke and Williams. Its surprising that Cal and Michigan don’t have a lot more grads in HBS considering how large their engineering programs are and the fact that engineers are disproportionately more likely to get an MBA than Arts & Science graduates who are more likely to get a JD, MD or PhD.</p>
<p>(According to Wikipedia)
Williams undergraduate population: 2,124
Duke undergraduate population: 6,400
Berkeley undergraduate population: 25,530
Michigan undergraduate population: 26,208</p>
<p>Sakky, do you mind providing the figures for Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Penn and MIT when you get a chance?</p>
<p>Why won’t you guys give it up? It doesn’t matter if you come from Berkeley or Duke as long as you get money and have a kickbutt social life/sex life…there are so many more important things in life…so why don’t you people chill?</p>
<p>LDB, if you are going to play the ratios game, Williams is more impressive than Duke. Williams is 3.1 times smaller than Duke and yet, has 0.9 times as many alums that attended HBS. If you adjust for size, Williams has 1,320 HBS alums compared to Duke’s 476. Actually, you could say that Williams “demolishes” Duke just as Duke “demolishes” Cal or Michigan. But such a straight up comparison is pointless for several reasons.</p>
<p>1) Many top Cal students go for regional options such as SGSB, Haas and Anderson. We are talking about students who are tied down with wife and kids and do not really consider the East Coast or Midwest for their graduate students. The same can be said of Michigan, Northwestern and Chicago alums, all three of which have three top 10 MBA programs wihin very close proximity of their home location.</p>
<p>2) Admittedly, on average, students at Cal (and Michigan) are not as talented as students at Duke or Williams. That was never in dispute. The difference in quality is not that significant, but where 20% of students at schools like Duke and Williams may be HBS material, at Cal and Michigan, that number is closer to 10%.</p>
<p>3) The percentage of students at schools like Cal who wish to follow the corporate path is significantly lower than the percentage of such students at Duke or Williams.</p>
<p>I would actually be more concerned with how Williams outperforms Duke than how Duke outperforms Cal.</p>
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<p>Well, to be fair, the same regional and ‘home-MBA’ concerns that you highlighted regarding Cal and Michigan could just as easily apply to Duke. Many former Duke undergrads are surely perfectly happy with a Duke MBA. Many of them also surely live in the mid-Atlantic region and are unenthusiastic about relocating to Boston, even for a couple of years.</p>
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<p>Sure, why not?</p>
<p>Yale - 1485
Princeton - 1325
Stanford - 1256
MIT - 1003
Penn - 917</p>
<p>Not really sakky, not after you consider points 2 and 3 I made.</p>
<p>At any rate, if LDB wants to say that Duke “demolishes” Cal and Michigan based on this metric, he must also admit that Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Williams and Yale all demolish Duke. I would also not be surprised if Amherst, Columbia, Dartmouth and perhaps even Brown also “demolished” Duke.</p>
<p>
Williams is slightly better than Duke at b-school placement and I will definitely admit that much. It is one of five schools including Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford that probably places better than Duke into the elite MBA programs in the country.</p>
<p>However, you are overlooking two very important things and this pertains to why Williams sends so many grads to HBS.</p>
<p>1.) Williams doesn’t have an MBA program. As a result, its grads will flock to other b-schools and there isn’t a contingent that will be locked into their undergrad alma mater’s MBA program like at other schools. This effect will boost Williams’ representation into MBA programs everywhere.</p>
<p>2.) Harvard IN PARTICULAR is the strongest MBA program that is located close to Williams along with MIT. Therefore, Williams grads inevitably disproportionately flock to these two MBA programs in particular since most of their grads intend to live in and work in the Northeast following graduation since a majority of the graduating class is from that area.</p>
<p>Like Sakky has pointed out, the same regional bias exists for Duke grads and I’m surprised that you don’t acknowledge that. Duke grads can get a top MBA from Darden or Fuqua and there are definitely a lot that don’t feel the need to travel to Cambridge or Palo Alto even if they are qualified enough to gain admission, especially if they intend to reside in the NE following graduation.</p>
<p>Yale only recently has had a great MBA program and Princeton doesn’t have one, which partially explains their high placement into HBS in addition to their superb reputations and stellar student bodies. MIT and Stanford have a ton of engineers who, more often than not, flock to MBA programs en masse.</p>
<p>
Fuqua is a fringe top 10 MBA program along with Ross. Booth and Kellogg are admittedly a notch higher but there is no reason for a Duke alum to sacrifice a Fuqua MBA and travel to Chicago unless he/she intends to work in Chicago. Duke has a very strong brand name in New York and a more extensive alumni network there than Michigan, UChicago or Northwestern.</p>
<p>Actually LDB, Michigan’s alumni network is second only to Harvard. So is Duke’s, but to suggest that Duke’s alumni network is more extensive than Michigan’s is not at all accurate, especially not in Michigan strongholds, such as Silicon Valley, New York, DC and the Midwest. </p>
<p>At any rate, if you are going to say that Williams is merely “slightly” better than Duke at MBA placement, you have to use the same terminology when describing Duke and Cal or Michigan. But statistics do not tell the story. To suggest that any of those schools gives students an edge based purely on brand name is very misleading an untrue.</p>
<p>
Williams is slightly better than Duke at b-school placement and I will definitely admit that much. It is one of five schools including Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford that probably places better than Duke into the elite MBA programs in the country.</p>
<p>However, you are overlooking two very important things and this pertains to why Williams sends so many grads to HBS.</p>
<p>1.) Williams doesn’t have an MBA program. As a result, its grads will flock to other b-schools and there isn’t a contingent that will be locked into their undergrad alma mater’s MBA program like at other schools. This effect will boost Williams’ representation into MBA programs everywhere.</p>
<p>2.) Harvard IN PARTICULAR is the strongest MBA program that is located close to Williams along with MIT. Therefore, Williams grads inevitably disproportionately flock to these two MBA programs in particular since most of their grads intend to live in and work in the Northeast following graduation since a majority of the graduating class is from that area.</p>
<p>Like Sakky has pointed out, the same regional bias exists for Duke grads and I’m surprised that you don’t acknowledge that. Duke grads can get a top MBA from Darden or Fuqua and there are definitely a lot that don’t feel the need to travel to Cambridge or Palo Alto even if they are qualified enough to gain admission, especially if they intend to reside in the NE following graduation.</p>
<p>Yale only recently has had a great MBA program and Princeton doesn’t have one, which partially explains their high placement into HBS in addition to their superb reputations and stellar student bodies. MIT and Stanford have a ton of engineers who, more often than not, flock to MBA programs en masse.</p>
<p>
Fuqua is a fringe top 10 MBA program along with Ross. Booth and Kellogg are admittedly a notch higher but there is no reason for a Duke alum to sacrifice a Fuqua MBA and travel to Chicago unless he/she intends to work in Chicago. Duke has a very strong brand name in New York and a more extensive alumni network there than Michigan, UChicago or Northwestern.</p>
<p>
Williams is slightly better than Duke at b-school placement and I will definitely admit that much. It is one of five schools including Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford that probably places better than Duke into the elite MBA programs in the country.</p>
<p>However, you are overlooking two very important things and this pertains to why Williams sends so many grads to HBS.</p>
<p>1.) Williams doesn’t have an MBA program. As a result, its grads will flock to other b-schools and there isn’t a contingent that will be locked into their undergrad alma mater’s MBA program like at other schools. This effect will boost Williams’ representation into MBA programs everywhere.</p>
<p>2.) Harvard IN PARTICULAR is the strongest MBA program that is located close to Williams along with MIT. Therefore, Williams grads inevitably disproportionately flock to these two MBA programs in particular since most of their grads intend to live in and work in the Northeast following graduation since a majority of the graduating class is from that area.</p>
<p>Like Sakky has pointed out, the same regional bias exists for Duke grads and I’m surprised that you don’t acknowledge that. Duke grads can get a top MBA from Darden or Fuqua and there are definitely a lot that don’t feel the need to travel to Cambridge or Palo Alto even if they are qualified enough to gain admission, especially if they intend to reside in the NE following graduation.</p>
<p>Yale only recently has had a great MBA program and Princeton doesn’t have one, which partially explains their high placement into HBS in addition to their superb reputations and stellar student bodies. MIT and Stanford have a ton of engineers who, more often than not, flock to MBA programs en masse.</p>
<p>
Fuqua is a fringe top 10 MBA program along with Ross. Booth and Kellogg are admittedly a notch higher but there is no reason for a Duke alum to sacrifice a Fuqua MBA and travel to Chicago unless he/she intends to work in Chicago. Duke has a very strong brand name in New York and a more extensive alumni network there than Michigan, UChicago or Northwestern.</p>
<p>
This is absolutely false. I don’t know where you get this notion from. Cal has a large undergraduate business and a large engineering program. Combine this with a renowned economics department and it is basically a future MBA producing factory.</p>
<p>Duke has tons of students who pursue careers in teaching, education, research, federal programs like TFA and the Peace Corps, etc. etc. The only path that Duke students seem to follow more than students at other elite school is the medical school route.</p>
<p>
Note my responses above. All of these schools besides Stanford, which has a larger and more renowned Engineering program, have historically stronger ties to the Northeast and the Boston area than Duke does. Duke’s student body is still over a third Southern and most of them have no intention of relocating to the Northeast.</p>
<p>At any rate, Sakky can provide the numbers for these other schools if he pleases. I would be shocked if Brown and Columbia did better than Duke though but maybe the NE regional effect is greater than I thought.</p>
<p>
Williams has no MBA program and it is located right at the doorstep of Harvard. It is more fair to compare Duke with Cal and Michigan because all three have top 15 MBA programs with undergraduate alumni bases with strong ties to their respective home regions, the South and the Midwest. So, therefore, their placement into HBS actually shows the strength of their name brand and student body…</p>
<p>I agree with the regional bias. Many qualified students will remain close to their home base. This said, I think the Booth/Kellogg/Ross combination offer more seats (1,700 per year as opposed to 700 per year) and more appeal than the Fuqua/Darden combo. </p>
<p>But the regional bias is only one determining factor. There are others that are not easily quantifiable. To suggest that Cal and Michigan are as (or worse, more) pre-professional than Duke is laughable. 20% of Michigan students are artists, musicians, nurses, teachers and physical therapists. Another 20% will become doctors/dentists and pharmacists. Many of the remaining students will either go into their small family-run business, or work for local or federal government. Only a quarter or so of the students at Michigan follow a corporate track. </p>
<p>Your insinuation that the Duke brand is greater than the Cal or Michigan brand in academe or corporateAmerica is misleading. It is not.</p>
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<p>Errrrm . . . Williams smashes Berkeley in terms of Management Consulting at the undergrad level. WTH, can’t people be at least objective</p>
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<p>LOL, you guys are still at it. Anyways I would pick a Duke alum over any of these two.</p>
<p>Look, a few points:</p>
<p>1) International Jobs:</p>
<p>Berkeley is incredible for landing jobs globally in a way that few American schools are. Now, you might argue many of the world’s best jobs are in the US, and this is true, but these companies have global outreach and recruit for overseas offices, which generally have the same compensation. Landing a job at MBB in Europe compensates as well as a US office, and gives flexibility in international transfers within a few years.</p>
<p>Sakky makes a good point that many foreign elite send their kids to the US to get these jobs in America, but from what I’ve personally observed, including foreign-born friends at HBS, is that these kids return to their home countries to get into their home office of their preferred company, since they have much better odds there, and then do an international transfer after a few years. Don’t underestimate foreign job markets.</p>
<p>There are a lot of amazing job markets that a Berkeley degree gives access to.</p>
<p>2) Berkeley v. Williams for HBS:</p>
<p>The argument about ratios is completely ridiculous. The fact is, Berkeley has produced the most graduate students of any university in the US for countless years running. To analyze one tiny part of that entire equation and say Berkeley is demolished is ridiculous. Many Berkeley students go on to receive different degrees than MBAs, at many other universities. Another reason Williams is well represented at HBS is that its a good school with a wealthy student base, which makes it much easier for them to attend HBS, whereas many Berkeley students can’t afford it quite as easily.</p>
<p>More importantly though, the statistic tells me enough about Cal: Berkeley students can get into Harvard, and are well represented there. This is important, my argument was never: the average xyz student this / that.</p>
<p>My argument was simple: a good, cum laude Berkeley graduate gets a shot. And thats a fact. They get the chance to attend HBS, they get the chance to work for top companies. Some companies preferrences skew towards privates, but the fact of the matter is Cal’s been the nation’s top public university for 16 years running, and is well regarded.</p>
<p>Fact is also Berkeley has a lower proportion of students trying to enter the business world, LDB responds:
Cal has one of the finest social science departments in the world. Try and guess how many Peace & Conflict Studies majors or future Anthropologists try to get an MBA. The fact that Williams sends so many to business programs despite being such a tiny school shows its culture skews very heavily to business, whereas Berkeley is much more diverse in terms of the graduates it produces and the industries they matriculate into.</p>
<p>“Anyways I would pick a Duke alum over any of these two.”</p>
<p>Without taking the time to look over their CVs and conducting thorough interviews?</p>
<p>no ILR training, evidently…</p>
<p>It is a good thing major companies have a more thorough and quantitative approach to recruitment.</p>
<p>Not for the Duke alums it’s not.</p>
<p>@BerkeleyMcK</p>
<p>Not only Berkeley gets people international jobs. Infact I used to ignorantly think that you needed a glossy undergrad to crack international office at a top firm. I have seen people from no name LACs get into top firms. Dont know how they do it, but they still do it.</p>
<p>As for numbers, lets be honest lots of kids at Duke do other things apart from banking and MC, not everyone wants to go that path. I personally think its dishonest to always generalize for one school and then reject generalization when applied to your undergrad.</p>
<p>Duke has a huge rep for premed and prelaw, and yes a lot of people will be doing stuff like teaching, non-profits, TFA because they like it, not because they are wannabe IB-robots.</p>
<p>See apply some objectivity.</p>
<p>But yeah Berkeley is more well known than Duke internationally, but I doubt that would hinder an International student who plans to go back home to look for a job. Most times such international students are so wealthy that they really dont need an undergrad degree lol.</p>
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<p>Yet it seems that it is precisely those jobs in MBB, whether international or domestic, that would cater the most heavily to the top (US) private schools. </p>
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<p>Really? Actually, what I’ve seen is precisely the opposite: it is the foreign students who tend to prefer jobs in the US or other locations with large business centers (i.e. the UK, Hong Kong, Switzerland, etc.) for which they would still be ‘foreigners’. By doing so, they would accredited themselves as being ‘fully foreign trained’ (that is, having been both schooled and worked in a foreign land) before finally returning home. For example, if you’re Russian, you’re probably not hankering to return to Russia immediately after school. You might want to stay in the US, or perhaps in Western Europe, but not back to Mother Russia just yet. </p>
<p>The exception seems to be China, and perhaps to some extent India, for which I would agree that many students do return right after graduation. But they’re not that many Chinese and Indian nationals - that is, not Chinese-Americans or Indian-Americans, but those coming directly from China or India - at the top schools. </p>
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<p>They darn well better, given the sheer size. I would be gravely disappointed if that wasn’t true. </p>
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<p>Well, I don’t know about that. That might be true of other business schools, but HBS has some of the most generous financial aid of any business school in the world. Almost half of all HBS students receive a fellowship worth about $25k. With such financial aid, a Harvard MBA doesn’t cost substantially more than does a Haas or UCLA MBA even for in-state students. {Heck, even without the fellowship, the Harvard MBA still doesn’t really cost that much more than does an instate Haas or UCLA MBA.} </p>
<p>[HBS</a> Fellowship Program - MBA - Harvard Business School](<a href=“http://www.hbs.edu/mba/admissions/hbsfellowship.html]HBS”>Financial Aid - MBA - Harvard Business School)</p>
<p>[Haas</a> School - MBA Finances - FT MBA Costs](<a href=“http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/MBA/finaid/FTCosts.htm]Haas”>http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/MBA/finaid/FTCosts.htm)</p>
<p>[Student</a> Budget | UCLA Anderson School of Management](<a href=“http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/x27477.xml]Student”>http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/x27477.xml)</p>
<p>But far more importantly, this is not some scrub business school we’re talking about. This is HBS, which has indisputably the best business school brand in the world. {You can argue about the quality of the education, but what is inarguable is the strength of the brand name.} There are some things worth paying for, and a Harvard MBA is probably one of them. </p>
<p>Put another way, if a rich Williams kid doesn’t get a Harvard MBA, oh well, he’s still rich. But to a poor Berkeley kid, that Harvard MBA is the ticket to a better life. I frankly wish that all Berkeley students had the opportunity to receive a Harvard MBA. </p>
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<p>I’m still not sure I buy the argument that Williams skews more heavily towards business than Berkeley does. Sure, I agree that Berkeley has a strong social sciences program. But so does Williams. Why should we automatically believe that a Berkeley anthro major is less likely to be interested in a business career than would a Williams anthro major? Berkeley has a highly regarded undergraduate business program. Williams does not. Berkeley offers a slew of strong engineering programs, and engineering has always been a natural pathway towards an MBA. Williams doesn’t even offer engineering at all. </p>
<p>Personally, I find it impressive that Williams can take a melange of students from a wide range of non-pre-professional majors that have little to do with business - except perhaps for economics (whose applicability to business is highly overrated IMO) - and nevertheless provide them with such strong opportunities in business. Frankly, I wish Berkeley would do the same.</p>
<p>Yet again this has turned into a Duke vs Berkeley thread. Thank you lesdiablesbles and Alexandre. </p>
<p>Brown and Cornell? Pfft they don’t matter. Not even in a thread solely dedicated to them.</p>
<p>The thread wasn’t really dedicated to them, title notwithstanding. The article just chose that unfortunate title, when what it really presented was that a few particular schools were favored, not that these two were particularly disfavored vs. the many others who were also not those few.</p>