I love Brown as a school and will likely attend in the fall, with plans to major in Applied Math/Econ or AppMa/CS and to go to business school for an MBA after undergrad. However, I’ve heard people say that Brown is somewhat looked down upon by other schools, and I’m concerned about my chances at getting into a top MBA program. How well does Brown feed into these elite business schools?
Let me get back to you, my friends with MBAs from Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, NYU and MIT aren’t always so fast to respond to non-work emails.
@ireallylikemaps In terms of top MBA admissions Brown does very well but there are a few other ivies/top schools that are bigger feeders, like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn, Stanford, prob Columbia and Dartmouth as well.
In general for top business recruiting (which is usually required to get into a top MBA program later), Brown is considered a bit less of a target than HYPSM, Penn, Columbia and Dartmouth, probably on the same level as Cornell. Still Brown does very well for top business recruiting (as does Cornell) and you will have great recruiting opportunities if you attend Brown.
Here are the top feeder schools to HSW, which are considered the top 3 business schools in the country. These are a bit dated (class of 2013) but can give you an idea.
Top Feeders to Wharton:
http://poetsandquants.com/2011/08/07/top-feeder-schools-to-whartons-mba-program/
- Penn
- Harvard
- Princeton
- Yale
- Georgetown
- Stanford
- Brown
- MIT
- UC-Berkeley Berkeley
- Cornell
- Columbia
- Dartmouth
Top feeders to GSB
http://poetsandquants.com/2012/05/30/top-feeder-colleges-to-stanford-b-school/2/
- Stanford
- Penn
- Yale
- Harvard
- University of Virginia
- Dartmouth
- UC-Berkeley
- Indian Institute of Tech
- Duke
- Univ. of Texas-Austin
- Princeton
- MIT
- Northwestern University
- UCLA
- Cornell
- Brown
Top feeders to HBS
http://poetsandquants.com/2011/08/15/top-feeder-colleges-to-harvard-business-school/2/
- Harvard
- Stanford
- Penn
- Yale
- Columbia
- Princeton
- Dartmouth
- Duke
- UC-Berkeley
- MIT
- Georgetown
- Indian Institute of Tech
- Cornell University
- Brown University
- New York University
- U.S. Military Academy
Most, if not all, top MBA programs require that you have worked for a few years before attending. Your job, and your job performance and recommendations, will have a large impact on your business school admissions. Brown students don’t go into finance/investment jobs as much as some of the other schools (because so many grads opt for public service/arts/health) – so it’s possible the numbers are slightly lower because of that.
Just to be clear – plenty of Brown students do go into finance/investment/consulting jobs, just not in the same numbers as, say, Harvard grads. Another way to put it is that fewer Brown students have HBS or Wharton as their ultimate goal compared to UPenn grads.
Bottom line, Brown will not be the reason you wouldn’t get into a top business school. And if the “people” who are saying Brown is inferior are high school students, think about the source.