Prestige Discussion - Undergrad vs Grad vs Combined

Graduate School Business School - MBA
1

Curious what the CC community thinks about undergrad prestige vs grad prestige vs combined prestige of both the undergrad and grad degrees. Let’s consider the following examples. Let’s rank the following combinations of undergrad and grad pedigree based on perceived level of overall prestige. For the sake of simplicity, let’s use just an MBA degree as the grad degree.

IN RANDOM ORDER BELOW - please rank the following based on OVERALL PRESTIGE if you saw the following combinations of undergrad / grad credentials (and nothing else).

  1. Harvard BA / Stanford GSB MBA

  2. Stanford BA / Duke Fuqua MBA

  3. Duke BA / Stanford GSB MBA

  4. Northwestern BA / Wharton MBA

  5. Penn BA (non Wharton) / Northwestern Kellogg MBA

  6. Columbia BA / Columbia MBA

  7. UChicago BA / Columbia MBA

  8. UVA BA / Harvard MBA

  9. Harvard BA / UVA Darden MBA

  10. UMichigan BA / UChicago Booth MBA

  11. Cornell BA / Yale SOM MBA

  12. Yale BA / Cornell Johnson MBA

  13. Columbia BA / MIT Sloan

  14. MIT BS / UChicago Booth

  15. UChicago BA / MIT Sloan MBA

  16. Dartmouth BA / Columbia MBA

  17. Columbia BA / Northwestern Kellogg MBA

  18. Columbia BA / Wharton MBA

  19. Northwestern BA / UChicago Booth MBA

  20. Princeton BA / HBS MBA

  21. Duke BA / Columbia MBA

  22. Duke BA / UChicago Booth MBA

  23. UChicago BA / Duke Fuqua MBA

  24. Northwestern BA / HBS MBA

  25. Harvard BA / Northwestern Kellogg MBA

  26. Stanford BA / NYU Stern MBA

  27. Harvard BA / Dartmouth Tuck MBA

  28. Northwestern BA / Columbia MBA

  29. UMichigan BA / HBS MBA

  30. Penn BA (non Wharton) / UChicago MBA

2

Why? This kind of exercise means nothing at all.

3

This is the most absurd question I’ve ever seen on CC (or anywhere else, for that matter).

4

these are all, with the exceptions of umich and uva (which are still two of the finest public universities in the nation), top fourteen universities, which means there’s little to no discrepancy between the quality of education or “prestige” tacked onto the degree you receive. not a very good question.

5

You might as well start ranking supermodels (or NFL stars) on their attractiveness. It’s about as meaningful an exercise.

6

What is the purpose of this exercise?

What are you trying to accomplish both with this exercise and this question?

7

This doesn’t show insight into the programs themselves and what their strengths are. If you want prestige alone, then why not just combine the #1 top ranked college and the #1 top ranked business school for a full-time MBA?

8

The only prestige you need to worry about, OP, is your GPA!

9

To the OP, rather than asking us, frankly, I would recommend that you seriously consider running an audit study. Generate a set of fictitious resumes with your aforementioned enumerated undergrad/grad degree combinations and with the remainder of those resumes filled with randomly assigned information, use those resumes to apply to a set of job posting adverts, and then measure the contrasts in response rate regarding an interview request.

Granted, you would obtain information regarding only publicly advertised job postings as well as only the initial interest for interviews generated by the resumes rather than whether such a fictitious candidate would actually obtain the job. But the results would still be a heck of a lot more reliable than what you might garner from just asking the CC community.

10

You are getting way ahead of yourself. Just because you get into a highly ranked university for undergrad, it doesn’t mean you will maintain the GPA or get the right opportunities to get into a highly ranked grad school. Plus, depending on the graduate area of study, a school not even on your list might have the grad opportunities most closely related to your interests.

This is a meaningless exercise.

11

If I had to re-write the original post, I would frame my question differently to make the debate more interesting. How would you rank overall prestige in this context. Let’s limit this question to the following tiers:

Undergrad (UG) Tiers
Tier 1: HYPMS+Wharton Undergrad
Tier 2: Columbia, CalTech, Penn CAS, Chicago, Duke, Northwestern, JHU, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell
Tier 3: Georgetown, Notre Dame, UC Berk, UVA, Wash U, Rice, Vanderbilt, UMichigan, Tufts
Tier 4: US News 25 to 50
Tier 5: US News 50 to 75

MBA Tiers
Tier 1 HBS / Stanford GSB / Wharton MBA
Tier 2: The rest of the M7: Chicago Booth, Columbia, Northwestern Kellogg, MIT Sloan
Tier 3: Yale SOM, NYU Stern, Cal Berk Haas
Tier 4: Michigan Ross, Duke Fuqua, UVA Darden, UCLA Anderson
Tier 5: Rest of Us News 15 to 25

Note: Rationale for less schools in MBA tiers is that attaining an MBA is not usually a requirement - it is a luxury degree to a great extent. And the market for an MBA degree becomes significantly less desirable outside of the T 25 (even outside of the T 10 or 15).

So, with this tiered system, Tier 1 UG with Tier 1 MBA = Top Tier but what happens with other combinations. For instance, how would you rank these match-ups? How much of a ‘prestige’ boost do you get with a top tier MBA compared to a ‘prestige’ reduction by attending a ‘less’ prestigious MBA program coupled with a top tier UG.

WHAT GROUP IS MORE PRESTIGIOUS?

A) Tier 4 UG / Tier 2 MBA – VS – B) Tier 1 UG & / Tier 3 MBA ?

A) Tier 2 UG / Tier 2 MBA – VS – B) Tier 4 UG / Tier 1 MBA ?

A) Tier 2 UG / Tier 1 MBA – VS – B) Tier 1 UG / Tier 2 MBA ?

A) Tier 5 UG / Tier 2 MBA – VS – B) Tier 1 UG / Tier 5 MBA ?

12

It is still not more interesting…

13

Again, StanfordGSB00, why don’t you just run the aforementioned audit study and report the results?