The effects of attending a non-prestigous school...

Graduate School Business School - MBA
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<p>I posted this in the sticky about work experience at the top but It seems as if its not generating any responses probably because most people don't read that thread regularly, so I thought I would repost it as its own thread, here is what I wrote:</p>

<p>Ok, so would I be right to assume that work experience is less important to NON-TOP 30 Business schools? I don't plan on going to Harvard or Wharton, or any Ivy League B-school, so for less known schools, is work experience not as important of a factor? Which leads me to my next question, I've heard a lot of people say that if you can't get a law degree from a top school, then there is no point in going to law school, assuming that is true (which I don't think it is) is getting an MBA from a non-Ivy league, non-top 30 school pointless? I mean, if I get an MBA from a lesser known Business school, will I still get a decent job? I'm not expecting a huge salary right off the bat, I just want to make sure that if I go to a Business school that isn't the cream of the crop, that I will at least have the opportunity to succeed in the business world, even if it takes me longer than say a Harvard or Wharton MBA.</p>

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<p>re: get a decent job?
Absolutely. Just don't expect to be wooed by recruiters. The burden to go after the "decent jobs" rests on you. </p>

<p>re: the opportunity to succeed in the business world
It depends. In quite a few decent companies/careers, having an MBA is simply another check box for promotion consideration. In other firms that recruit top MBA graduates for their corporate leadership programs, their hires are usually on career fast track. </p>

<p>In theory, the nod often go to someone from a more recognizable school if other things equal. In real world, what-you-have-done-for-me-recently counts the most.</p>

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<p>Yeah, I don't expect recruiters to be all over me or anything. I would definitely be proactive and make use of networking. Even if I did go to a top school, I still wouldn't sit back and let them come to me. I do plan on making a lot of effort to get a job after getting an MBA.</p>

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<p>Yeah you'll have to really hit the ground and knock on doors, as well as try to make connections in the industry. More importantly what industry are you looking to get into? If you're trying to land a Wall St. type job (i-banking, hedge funds, PE, trading, VC, etc) the school's brand name matters much more than if you were going into something like marketing for a Fortune 500 company. There is some truth to the argument that an MBA or JD from a school not in the Top ### isn't worth it. I don't know if it's Top 30 or Top 50 or Top 100 but I can tell you that at our firm unless your MBA is from a Top 15 school we wouldn't really pay it much attention. Not that the school may be bad it's just that there's so much competition and you need to have some way of filtering names out. If you are looking to get into PE/hedge funds my advice would be to really do your research and contact a lot of the smaller funds in the field you're interested in. For example if you want to be a global macro trader you can try talking to funds that manage $50-$200MM. These kinds of funds are a bit off the radar but the compensation and opportunities can be just as good as they are at bigger funds, plus they have a lot of room to grow.</p>

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<p>Relevant article on CNNMoney. It only confirms what people have been saying on this site. </p>

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<p>Q. One question I have to ask you: I often get e-mails from readers who are contemplating getting an MBA from a local college - say, a state university near where they live - and they want to know whether it matters where an MBA comes from. That is, will they be able to get a job with a big investment bank or consulting firm with that degree from a relatively obscure school? I always tell them it does matter where their MBA is from, and the top firms hire only from the top schools. Am I wrong about that?</p>

<p>A. No. It's shocking how right you are. The big brand-name investment banks and consulting firms do 90% of their recruiting at a "target list" of brand-name campuses - and it's a tiny number of schools, sometimes as few as six, sometimes as many as 14, but a tiny list.</p>

<p>I try to encourage them to look at the next tier of schools, because there are some very sharp students there, but the top firms won't even look. It isn't the recruiters' fault, by the way. Their lives would actually be easier if they had a broader pool of candidates. No, it's the partners making that decision, and it has to do with the whole culture, and traditions that date back many years.</p>

<p>So yes, if you want to work at a top firm, you have to go to a top school like Harvard, Wharton, Chicago, Stanford, or Columbia - unless you have an uncle in the business.</p>

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<p><a href="http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/17/news/economy/annie/fortune_mba_work/index.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/17/news/economy/annie/fortune_mba_work/index.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Its nice to see an article making a realistic point even when it's not incredibly PC. I read articles by so many uninformed writers who will try to downplay the value of a brand name college. Heck you see a lot of these commentators who downplay the whole idea of an MBA in general, using flawed statistical analysis to say that the MBA isn't worth it on an NPV basis, or they'll say the same things for undergrad education - e.g. "Harvard isn't worth it, you're better off at a state-school yada yada yada". The thing they consistently miss, and from what I gather just don't even have the ability to understand, is that when you're looking at the top-tier types of jobs, businesses, etc. they're overwhelmingly populated by people from top schools. On Wall Street and in Big Law this is more pronounced than in most places but than again those are two of the highest paying and most lucrative fields (in terms of both money and opportunities) anyway. A typical Top-5 MBA graduate working on Wall St. is virtually guaranteed to make high-six figures and seven-figures for most of his career. </p>

<p>One of the reasons I think you see so much of that kind of disregard for top-schools amongst these commentators and the public is their benchmarks in life are different. The typical person on this board is aiming high and is trying to be in the very top percentile whereas in the general public they're benchmarking themselves against the average Joe. Why else would they constantly look at things like average starting salaries? Who in their right mind goes to Harvard undergrad because they think it will bring them the best starting salary? That type of thing is important to the uninformed masses while the people who actually go to Harvard are going because they understand it's value over the long run.</p>

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<p>SilverSpy,</p>

<p>I agree 100% with what you said. While it's true that there is a lot of 'old boy's club' type mentality in recruiting, I'd argue that there is also no reason to do business otherwise. When top companies can afford to hire top talent, why would they waste their time going to low ranked schools? Going to the top 5 schools in the field virtually eliminates interviews and resumes that should have never even been considered in the first place. These companies are partly relying on the fact that the schools have been an effective filter and discriminator (which I think is a pretty good assumption). </p>

<p>By sticking to the top schools, they reduce their recruiting costs, and lower the risk of getting a bad hire. Someone from a lower ranked school would probably want the same salary (or eventually reach the same salary), so there's almost no reason to change the system. The only time that things operate any differently is when companies can't afford (or don't necessarily need) to hire the best.</p>

<p>Much of this same argument can be applied to the whole argument that "GPA doesn't matter." Again, at the top of the job market, it certainly does matter. Just yesterday, I received 3 job opening emails (in the engineering field) that were for PhD candidates with a very strong GPA requirement. </p>

<p>At the middle and bottom of the job market, I'm sure the GPA doesn't matter. If you are happy getting an accounting job at your local no-name firm doing taxes for random people, then I'm sure they will take someone with a 3.0 GPA from the local state university. At the top of any job market, be it business, engineering, law, medicine,... whatever, GPA and school does matter.</p>

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<p>You guys always talk about the Top-5. Are "Harvard, Wharton, Chicago, Stanford, or Columbia" the Top-5? I know the rankings, but the industry tends to have it's own rankings, so I was just wondering. Thanks.</p>

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<p>SilverSpy,</p>

<p>As you pointed out, a lot depends, however, on what you want with your life. If you don't have any desire to go work at Big Law or Wall Street, and would rather live in Wichita for the rest of your life, it may actually NOT pay to spend the extra money on the big name program. That's what I think people are talking about with NPV analysis of MBAs. I also don't think that this is necessarily "bad," even if many on this site may think it is. After all, if being with your family and friends brings you more joy than that new 7-Series Beamer, who's to say that you're wrong? Not all accomplishments are financial or job related.</p>

<p>I realize that this site is populated in large numbers with people who see Big Name Company as the only viable job, but there are still many of us who would be just as happy living our little lives out in no-name obscure employment, having another 40 hours a week free to actually enjoy a hobby or two. That, and time to see our children or spouses. That'd be nice, too, I suppose. </p>

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That type of thing is important to the uninformed masses while the people who actually go to Harvard are going because they understand it's value over the long run.

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<p>This...yeah... this is what I don't like about this site. The attitude that the average person is somehow an unwashed disease or something. Yeesh.</p>

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If you are happy getting an accounting job at your local no-name firm doing taxes for random people, then I'm sure they will take someone with a 3.0 GPA from the local state university. At the top of any job market, be it business, engineering, law, medicine,... whatever, GPA and school does matter.

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<p>I don't know how much this is true. It matters to an extent, but not all markets work the same. A good "GPA" in a PhD program won't necessarily get you a tenure-track position if your dissertation is uninspired. </p>

<p>A good GPA doesn't mean squat in the military (I'm talking about doing something like officer training after school). It also won't matter much for public sector jobs, where everything comes down to seniority. Yes, GPA matters, but I've applied for many many positions, and many were at top companies and employers-- only a few asked for my GPA. I think that there are definite DMRs on GPA after a certain point. After you meet the requirement, it's more what and who you know than what you got in your Shakespeare class.</p>

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<p>I'd like to get into management consulting. I am not going to be attending a top 10 school. I hope no one is implying that there isn't a single management consultant in the world who got his MBA from a lesser known school that wasn't top tier. I find that really hard to believe. There has to be lesser known consulting firms that don't get all their employees from the top-tier schools. Like UCLA said, I'd be much happier NOT working on Wall Street and getting to spend more time with family. I'd be happy making half of what someone does on Wall Street as long as I had a life outside of the office. Making high 6 or 7 figures isn't all that great when your whole life is work and you practically live in the office. People who actually enjoy working 90 hours weeks should get their heads checked out.</p>

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<p>UCLAri you are right and I do apologize for the insulting nature of my message. My focus was on the people who do not want to work in mainstream type professions but instead are looking at fast-track careers (e.g. wall st, law). And like you said, if someone wants to work in Wichita and live a more laid-back life then perhaps a Harvard MBA is overkill. But to be honest you mentioned that one of the things you don't like about this site is the emphasis on top schools, etc. I don't post here much but one of the things I like about this board is that emphasis. </p>

<p>I post on various types of boards and blogs and with the exception of one or two "wall st" type blogs this type of emphasis is not the norm on the internet. On most boards it is guys like us who get the criticism, I can't tell you the number of times I've mentioned something related to the value of a name-brand school and was attacked by tons of users as being an elitist, an idiot, etc. People will bring up things like what I've mentioned, saying that state-schools are better values, which isn't true if you're competing for the top of the market jobs, but they'll criticize you for "drinking the kool-aid and being fooled", when the fact of the matter is I know exactly what I'm talking about in terms of the type of career I'm talking about. They'll assume (which I think you have as well) that "we" have some kind of Big Company mentality when I disagree. I think a lot of people here do want to be entrepreneurs but in a different way than the mass media focuses on. What you'll typically find when talk of entrepreneurs comes up is it focuses on fields that have few barriers to entry (e.g. real estate flipping, various small businesses, etc.) and relatively low chances of success. Amongst the i-bankers it's things like starting their own hedge funds (pretty large barriers to entry but much better chance of success). And to be that type of entrepreneur having the big name school and some hefty experience is a major help. </p>

<p>So I guess my point is that while you are right about the emphasis on this board being a bit narrow, it is one of the few places where people who share these thoughts can chat. I know there is criticism hurled at the "average joe" around here but I feel elsewhere on the internet it's more common for the criticism to be reversed.</p>

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<p>SilverSpy,</p>

<p>I agree with you, and I think that you've got a few really good points. I don't mean to sound critical of the Big Law/Wall Street/i-banking types. I'm not. I think they usually have a perfectly good reason (or a few, even) for pursuing their careers, and I applaud them for that.</p>

<p>I just think that this site tends to be an extreme in the OTHER direction, where people who say that they just want to live a quiet life get criticized as being "lazy" or whatnot. I think that many of us are just happy being normal, somewhat-above-average-earnings peons for wherever we end up. I do think that the cream of the crop, must succeed or else types are pretty awesome, but I prefer having my time off to read or play video games. It all comes down to what you get the most out of, I guess...</p>

<p>:)</p>

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<p>Not everyone needs to roll into a 6 figure job out of graduation. There has to be nearly 400 MBA programs in the country and there are a lot more gradautes leading sucessful lives outside the "top 10."</p>