If one had to choose between a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University or Harvard Business School, what should she choose?
Both.
If it were possible!
They aren’t mutually exclusive. Why can’t a Rhodes scholar one day attend HBS?
At some point we’ve all got to start working! I can’t be a student forever. I guess my question is directed toward a current situation. If one had to choose between the two, because there are offers on both sides at the same time, what should one choose?
you do the Rhodes FIRST and then do HBS afterwards. duh.
anyone who thinks they need to choose one or the other isnt smart enough to be chosen for either, imho.
Rhodes scholar.
@menloparkmom some people have to choose because job offers flood in, and at some point you have to start working. I’m not so keen on four more years of schooling. I’m already in the process of attaining a J.D. as well.
Rhodes scholar. One can do an MBA throughout their life and Harvard will keep readmitting them over and over if they are a Rhodes scholar.
What is the purpose for this thread? Are you at the throes of the advanced interviews for the Rhodes and are battling back the HBS recruiter trying to force an acceptance letter into your hand? The way you’re posting, you make it sound as if the Rhodes and HBS are foregone conclusions. Please expound if this is so…
Neither seem likely to me as anyone who has seriously considered HBS knows that very very few people are accepted straight from college or university. Please let us know this isn’t akin to some 16 year old HS junior asking for advice on how to choose between Yale, Harvard, Cambridge, Stanford and Amherst.
The OP said he/she is a law student.
This is a really silly question, as far as I am concerned. If the OP is currently a law student with Rhodes-level credentials, I assume the OP is at an impressive law school. In my experience, there’s usually little reason to get a JD/MBA at top levels. If you study the right things at the right law school, you don’t need the MBA to succeed in business. (I have several friends who became CEOs with only their law degrees.) Of if you never want to practice law you can switch to the MBA, and forgo the extra year it would take to get the JD. Doing both is just redundant.
The Rhodes is really a unique honor. The only thing remotely equivalent is a Supreme Court clerkship, and I’m not sure even that is really equivalent. (It’s also a lot harder work than the Rhodes.) It’s fun and super-prestigious, so why would anyone turn it down, unless it was a question of that vs. millions of dollars as a high draft choice in a pro sport?
So my advice (assuming this ridiculous question is even somewhat serious) would be to do the Rhodes and forget about the MBA, or do the Rhodes and the MBA and forget about law school. (Harvard Business School will still be there in two years, and the OP will not be less attractive for having been a Rhodes Scholar.) But the Rhodes still involves academic work, not career training. If the OP really doesn’t want to spend more time in school – come on, when you’re 60, which do you think you will remember more fondly, your Oxford college or accelerating your entry into the world of being a junior investment banker by a couple of years? – then the OP shouldn’t be applying for the Rhodes in the first place.
It honestly surprises me that you people are being aggressive and insulting about this question. If the question is so silly – don’t answer.
My J.D. will only take 2 years (on fast track). Again, I am asking which one I should accept first, because I am in a position to choose between the two. That is all I am asking. Why this is so silly, I really don’t know. Surprise, people have different agendas than you so this question actually means something to me and my life plan.
But, nevertheless, thank you for the answers so far, even if they are so unnecessarily snarky.
The Rhodes is strictly age limited. No graduate program is age limited that way. So you must do the Rhodes immediately if you get it.
^^ that
That’s why I said do the Rhodes first.
If you were in a “position to choose between the two” then you would know that. Someone smart enough to be considered for a Rhodes would .
As you did not, this thread is obviously based on wishful thinking…
@menloparkmom, you can think what you want to think. Jealousy doesn’t suit you.
See how @Hanna said exactly what you said without being insulting or presumptive?
jealous? me? :))
good grief OP. Look at my post count…
I’m way too old to apply for a Rhodes!!!
I conclude from this that the OP is not a U.S. person. No one applying through the U.S. Rhodes Committee would say that he or she is “in a position to choose” a Rhodes before mid-November. A handful of U.S. law schools offer two-year JD programs, but they are not first-tier institutions, and in most cases the programs are aimed at international students who already have an undergraduate law degree from their home countries or at mid-career students. Of course, it’s also possible that the OP is enrolled in a non-U.S. law school.
In any case, that complicates the answer a bit, because I have no idea how to compare the prestige of a Rhodes to that of a Harvard MBA in, say, New Zealand or South Africa.
In U.S. terms, however, it’s not that there’s only one possible choice; it’s more that if you know what you want the choice should be pretty clear:
Prestige? The Rhodes, by a lot more than a mile. Harvard Business School awards 1,000 MBAs per year. Other top business schools are not that much smaller; at least 4,000 people per year in the U.S. get something equivalent to a Harvard MBA… There are 32 U.S. Rhodes Scholars.
Get a lucrative job fast in a business career and spend less time in academia? Go straight to HBS (and ditch law school).
Get a lucrative job fast and spend the least time in academia? Finish law school, forget about HBS or the Rhodes. If it’s a decent law school with good employment prospects. If not, see choices above.
In US Rhodes winners are announced around thanksgiving time. So I am not certain how OP is able to choose at this time whether to take one or the other.
@aforapples Rhodes all they way. Most probably you will not even need to get an MBA, but even if you do, every top business school will go out of their way to recruit a Rhodes Scholar. IMO, there is nothing more prestigious or impressive than a Rhodes scholarship, it takes you to a whole different level and opens doors that no elite MBA or any other degree/program can.