<p>Does going to a tier 20 school greatly help your chances of going to a "prestigious" business school? For B school is it better to have a high GPA (undergrad) at a less competitive school rather than having a low GPA(undergrad) at a "prestigious" school.</p>
<p>Same thing for your GPA question, in that case they’d use the GMAT to standardize the GPA. Top/prestigious school helps, but not nearly as important as top performing or high quality work experience. Don’t worry about that small piece of the application. Every school lists the huge variety of undergraduate schools for a reason. It’s not a major criteria.</p>
<p>I think there’s a high correlation between someone who went to a prestigious undergrad and somebody who gets a great job after college as well as someone who scores very well on standardized tests. So I don’t think your undergraduate institution is a main reason why a top 5 MBA program would admit you.</p>
<p>Now if you start to get out of the top 10 business schools, then undergrad can play a pretty sizable role (so long as you had a decent grades and test scores). Many MBA programs look at how employable you are in the future. If you went to Harvard for undergrad and then applied to UVA for an MBA, I would imagine so long as your grades were good and your GMAT was slightly above the class average you would likely be admitted with some financial subsidization of your education.</p>
<p>My understanding about job prestige out of undergrad for top MBA admission:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>It helps you to the extent it convinces the admissions committee that you can be placed in another prestige job when you are done with your MBA. That is important to them.</p></li>
<li><p>If your employer is really prestigious and/or a big donor to the school, that can obviously help. Even if your boss isn’t writing checks if his goodwill might result in other grads from that MBA class being placed at this prestige institution, it might help you a little(like, get you off the wait list ahead of someone else they like equally otherwise).</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Where it might not help you is if its hard in the job to get promotions and demonstrate good leadership within the timeframe you plan to work there. If you want to get 3 years of experience and then apply to top B-schoools, but it takes EVERYONE four years to get promoted…you might have a problem.</p>