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It obviously varies by school, but i'm talking about 10% get a C, but a B- is enough to bring one's GPA below a 3.0.
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<p>Yeah, but that's the point. It's almost impossible to actually get an overall GPA that would actually make you flunk out of an MBA program. Basically, if you do the work, you're going to graduate. Contrast that with, say, engineering programs, where you can work extremely hard and STILL flunk out. </p>
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It just seems pretty desperate to me. You are abut to graduate from a top school and are already at the mercy of some large firm (or to say it in simpler terms, you are already that firm's b@#$). Have fun with that (and the rest of your career), but if you bust your a$$ in business school you should have dozens of possible employment options, many of which shouldn't even involve working for someone else (i mention this because if you are scared of not landing a job...why? I don't get it)
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<p>Uh, I think it's quite simple to 'get'. Remember, the goal is not to get 'dozens' of employment options. The goal is to get the specific employment option that YOU want. </p>
<p>Let me give you an example. I know a guy who came to his MBA program with the specific intent of getting a top strategy consulting position. That was his goal from day one. He went through first-year recruiting and got a summer internship offer at McKinsey. Note, McKinsey made him this offer without seeing any of his grades (because they weren't even available at the time). So he spent the summer at McKinsey and came back to school with a full-time offer in hand. </p>
<p>Now, is he really going to spend much effort trying to get more offers? Not really. Why? Because he already has the offer he wants. He wanted a job at a top strategy firm, and he got the very best one. Yeah, sure, if he participated in 2nd year recruiting, he probably could have gotten offers from BCG, Bain, Booz Allen Hamilton, etc. But why? He's not going to take any of them over his McKinsey offer, and he knows that. </p>
<p>So basically, he just spent the 2nd year of his MBA program simply enjoying life. He also participated in some entrepreneurial ventures, figuring that if any of them went really well, then he might defer his McKinsey offer to formally found a startup firm. But he certainly didn't care about grades. Why should he? He already has the offer that he wants.</p>
<p>But note, this story is hardly specific to McKinsey. The same can be said for plenty of other firms that happen to be the top employers at the top B-schools. For example, let's say that instead of McKinsey, he had instead gotten the summer internship and full-time offer at Booz Allen. Now, granted, McKinsey is better than Booz Allen, but not THAT much better. So, sure, I suppose you could spend effort in maintaining high grades to see if you can 'trade up' your Booz Allen offer to a McKinsey offer. But honestly, why? Your default offer is already pretty darn good. The incentives for working hard are therefore pretty low because you're not really going to make yourself significantly better off. </p>
<p>Which gets down to my basic point: it all comes down a matter of incentives. The fact is, there aren't that many strong incentives to get high grades in MBA programs (relative to the incentives at law schools). You said it yourself - most industries that hire MBA's don't care about grades. For example, most entertainment, marketing, nonprofit, technology, operations, manufacturing, retail, and industrial firms don't care about MBA grades. Most startup firms and entrepreneurial ventures also similarly don't care about grades. The top consulting and Ibanking firms do care, but like I said, they tend to fill their ranks from their summer intern pools. </p>
<p>The upshot is that many MBA students - in fact, almost certainly the vast majority - don't really care about grades, and certainly that's a higher chunk than the proportion of law students who don't care about grades.</p>