First, I feel very fortunate to have been accepted to each MBA program I applied to, which includes Georgetown, Vanderbilt and Georgia Tech. I’ve narrowed my decision to Georgetown and Georgia Tech - the catch is that Tech offered me nearly half-tuition in grants and assistanship.
I lean more towards Georgetown because of the reputation, their relatively new dean (he comes from HBS), and international connection, but the offer from Ga Tech is very enticing.
Any thoughts?
Try to negotiate money from Vanderbilt and Georgetown. In my experience, Vanderbilt is pretty good with money and Georgetown is more frugal (smaller endowment). However, if you get more money from Vanderbilt you may be able to leverage that as a bargaining chip for more money from Georgetown.
Georgetown sticker is expensive (as is DC) so it really depends on your career goals. Run the numbers.
As a current Georgia Tech student, I’d say that we don’t think of our business school as a stellar one - although our ranking at something like 30 via USNews/23 via Bloomberg isn’t awful. That being said, two big foci of the GT MBA program at entrepreneurship (we have the oldest, I believe, startup incubator in the country, which has a 90% success rate) and sustainability. If you’re interested in either of those, GT might be the right place for you. I would also add that our MBA program might be more internationally-focused than you’d think, but I don’t know much about GT MBA students and finding jobs since I’m an undergrad.
Georgetown’s full-time MBA program has an international focus that attracts students. Second year students do a capstone project overseas (my daughter went to Vietnam and worked with a group of students on a recycling project for Pepsi). The international focus and some money from Georgetown convinced my D to go there.