Top Feeder Colleges to America's Elite B-Schools

Graduate School Business School - MBA
1

<p>There is always a lot of discussion on CC and other such forums regarding which universities have the best job placement into favorable industries. Individual school employment reports are often incomplete and inaccurate so that often does often does a student who is weighing college options no favors. The blog Poets & Quants has stepped in however to provide a comprehensive series of articles regarding which schools are best represented at the top American business schools which is in a way a proxy for strength of undergraduate recruiting at various schools. It goes to follow that in order to get into a good MBA program, you need strong work experience since that is the most important factor in b-school admissions. How do you get those coveted jobs initially?</p>

<p>Poets & Quants analyzed Facebook and LinkedIn profiles of students in the incoming classes at the most elite business schools to confirm what many here have suspected: the most prestigious private schools have the best recruiting and thus their grads are the most represented at the best MBA programs.</p>

<p>Here are the articles and the cumulative results thus far:</p>

<p>Top Feeder Colleges to Harvard B-School | Poets and Quants
Top Feeder Schools To Wharton’s MBA Program | Poets and Quants
Top Feeder Colleges to Chicago Booth | Poets and Quants
Top Feeder Colleges To The Tuck School | Poets and Quants
Top Feeder Schools To Columbia B-School | Poets and Quants</p>

<p>TOTAL (Harvard+Wharton+Columbia+Chicago Booth+Dartmouth Tuck)</p>

<p>Harvard College: 171
University of Pennsylvania: 158</p>

<p>Princeton: 94
Yale: 90
Stanford: 87
Columbia: 86
Duke: 86
Georgetown: 79
University of California-Berkeley: 74
Dartmouth College: 70</p>

<p>Northwestern: 60
Cornell: 53
University of Michigan-Ann Arbor: 49
Indian Institute of Technology: 48 (not American but worth a mention)
University of Virginia-Charlottesville: 46
MIT: 47
Brown: 43
New York University: 42
UCLA: 34</p>

<p>University of Southern California: 25
University of Texas-Austin: 24
Williams College: 21 (very small school though)
Washington University in St. Louis: 17
University of Chicago: 12
Vanderbilt: 9
Johns Hopkins: 6</p>

<p>Initial Observations</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Stanford's numbers will rise pretty significantly when the undergraduate backgrounds of students attending Stanford GSB and UC Berkeley Haas are analyzed so expect it to form a middle bridge between Harvard/Penn and the other 7 or so top private schools.</p></li>
<li><p>Harvard and Penn (thanks a great deal to Wharton) have the strongest employer connections in the business worlds by a fairly significant margin.</p></li>
<li><p>Contrary to popular belief, Princeton and Yale are not superior in job placement to Columbia, Duke, Dartmouth and Georgetown. All 6 of these schools will put you in a FANTASTIC position to get an investment banking, consulting, engineering or Fortune 500 corporate development job offer.</p></li>
<li><p>Georgetown is severely underrated by CC with regards to the strength of its on-campus recruiting. It's right up there with the Ivies, Stanford, Duke, etc. etc.</p></li>
<li><p>UC Berkeley is clearly the top public brand in higher education and there is a clear difference in opportunities between it and Michigan, UVA and Texas. What's even more surprising is that we haven't seen the numbers for Stanford GSB and Haas yet which would catapult UCB above every school besides maybe HYPS, Columbia and Duke. One caveat is that it has the largest student body by far in comparison to all these private schools so on a per capita basis, its not as good. However the strongest students from Berkeley will be just as successful as their private school counterparts in obtaining good jobs.</p></li>
<li><p>The University of Chicago is not a great place to go if you are professionally minded. It is a phenominal school overall but its job placement isn't on par with its lofty reputation.</p></li>
<li><p>The top flagship publics often have better recruiting opportunities available to their best students over many of the bottom half of the top 20 schools (Wash U, Hopkins, Vandy, USC, etc.). A Wash U degree isn't more marketable than a Michigan degree despite the differences in selectivity. Haas, Ross, Stern and McIntire are all great undergraduate business schools with connections close to what the Ivies provide.</p></li>
<li><p>Just to reiterate, NYU Stern is great for finance and I would recommend it over any school besides the Ivies, Stanford, Duke, Northwestern and Georgetown.</p></li>
<li><p>Northwestern's numbers should jump to Tier 2 level once Kellogg's Class of 2013 is analyzed by Poets & Quants.</p></li>
<li><p>There are apparently a lot of good business candidates coming in from India.</p></li>
</ol>

2

<p>East Coast biased.</p>

3

<p>RML, 4 of the top 7 (M7) programs are located on the East Coast however: Harvard, Wharton, Columbia and MIT. Only Stanford on the West Coast and Chicago + Kellogg in the Midwest are also part of this elite group. I agree that including Stanford GSB and Northwestern Kellogg would help out Stanford, Berkeley and Northwestern’s numbers a little bit. Overall, things wouldn’t change too much. What school do you feel were underrepresented?</p>

4

<p>This is ■■■■■■■■.</p>

5

<p>

In order to get a good job, you need to go to a good school. Job placement at the undergraduate level is exactly what Poets & Quants is measuring. These data findings are proof that Columbia’s job placement is better than UVA for instance since Columbia undergrads are more represented at every elite b-school than UVA grads.</p>

<p>This data is extremely useful since it wasn’t clear to me at least which schools have the best job placement as those placement surveys independently released by colleges are misleading.</p>

<p>

Exactly, but this is almost never the case since Harvard graduates don’t work at Accenture (not even kidding) and I’m pretty sure Blackstone doesn’t recruit out of Cornell UG. I would say there are maybe 50x as many Harvard grads at BCG than Cornell alums based on LinkedIn.</p>

<p>I mean we all have far out dreams. Hypothetically I could date Megan Fox but is that realistic?:p</p>

6

<p>

</p>

<p>But there isn’t a clear top 7 anymore. There is however, a top 9. The 7th slot is debatable. 3 schools vie for it. So, it is awkward to say top 7 when there really are 9 schools in it.</p>

7

<p>Wrote my first post before I read your commentary.

  1. There are plenty harvard graduates who work at Accenture. You’re absolutely ignorant if you think otherwise.</p>

<ol>
<li>You’re putting way too much emphasis on this data.
You’re completely ignoring the vast amounts of people who choose not to go to business school.
Schools like Yale have a much higher percentage of people who go to law or medical school. You’re also ignoring size of the undergraduate class and the percentage of people who choose to go to business school.</li>
</ol>

<p>This is about as accurate of a gauge of overall job recruitment quality as the mid-career salary reports put out by payscale.</p>

8

<p>

</p>

<p>That is an analytic leap that is not supported by the presented data. I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Columbia’s job placement is better. However, any number of other factors might contribute to the variation. </p>

<p>For one thing, interest in attending b-school competes with interest in attending law school, med school, graduate arts & science programs, etc. The level of interest in these programs varies from school to school. For example, the number of students applying to law school ranges from < 10% at some selective schools to nearly 30% at others. PhD production ranges from ~5% to ~40% of alumni at various elite undergraduate schools. We can’t assume that the level of interest in MBA programs is consistent across all of them.</p>

<p>Financial resources is another possible factor. The average UVa student graduates with more debt than the average Columbia student. The average Columbia graduate may have more family wealth available to support an expensive MBA program than the average UVa graduate.</p>

9

<p>My two cents.</p>

<ul>
<li>How is Stanford not on this list. Its arguably the best B-school program in the country.</li>
</ul>

<p>1) I know very few Ivy grads at Accenture, probably a handful at best. 2) Most MBAs take out loans to pay for school so I don’t by the “family wealth” argument. </p>

<p>The bottom line is the best schools lead to the best jobs which lead to the best MBA programs. Its a fast slope. To get into HBS, they are going to prefer someone from Bain or McKinsey over Accenture. You can’t get to Bain or McKinsey from WashU, or if you can you are very rare. This list is pretty spot on, I agree that Georgetown does better than I expected.</p>

10

<p>slipper:</p>

<p>Do you know what % of grads of Columbia MBA, HBS, Wharton MBA, or Kellogg get IBD Associate jobs? Do people who don’t have pre-MBA IBD analyst experience still stand strong chance of getting IBD associate jobs out of top 10 MBA?? Thanks in advance.</p>

11

<p>Interesting that all 9 of the Vandy admits went to Booth. None at HBS, CBS, Tuck, or Wharton…or maybe those schools did accept Vandy grads, just less than 5 each?</p>

12

<p>Nice set of data…however how this implies the causality link with strength of UG programme is a mystery.</p>

<p>My UG was clearly too low-quality to prepare me for all this data magicking.</p>

13

<p>I’d rather date Meagan Good.</p>

14

<p>I’ve added Stanford now that Poets & Quants has provided us with that information as well added some new college names to form a more comprehensive list.</p>

<p>[Top</a> Feeder Colleges To Stanford B-School | Poets and Quants](<a href=“http://poetsandquants.com/2012/05/30/top-feeder-colleges-to-stanford-b-school/2/]Top”>http://poetsandquants.com/2012/05/30/top-feeder-colleges-to-stanford-b-school/2/)</p>

<p>TOTAL ESTIMATED (Harvard+Wharton+Stanford+Columbia+Chicago Booth+Dartmouth Tuck)</p>

<p>Harvard: 192
University of Pennsylvania: 183</p>

<p>Stanford: 117
Yale: 113</p>

<p>Princeton: 101
Duke: 95
Columbia: 89
Berkeley: 84
Dartmouth: 80
Georgetown: 79</p>

<p>Northwestern: 67
Cornell: 59
UVA: 58
MIT: 54
Michigan: 49
Brown: 47
New York University: 42
UCLA: 41</p>

<p>University of Southern California: 25
University of Texas-Austin: 24
Williams College: 24
Washington University in St. Louis: 17
University of Chicago: 12
Middlebury: 11
Georgia Tech: 10
CMU: 9
Illinois: 9
Vanderbilt: 9
Tufts: 8
Boston University: 7
Maryland: 7
Bowdoin: 6
Johns Hopkins: 6
Notre Dame: 6
Penn State: 6
Purdue: 6
Amherst: 5
Boston College: 5
Colby College: 5
Bates: 4
BYU: 3
Haverford: 3
UNC: 3</p>

15

<p>I’d expect Berkeley to outrank Duke and Columbia when the data from Berkeley-Haas and MIT-Sloan would be tabulated.</p>

16

<p>Why isn’t Kellogg in that list of top B-Schools?</p>

17

<p>Interesting that UNC only has 3.</p>

18

<p>What surprises me was Chicago which only has 12. </p>

<p>Id expect Berkeley to be well represented at Kellogg, Haas and Sloan. So, I would expect it to outrank Columbia and Duke.</p>

19

<p>

P&Q just hasn’t gotten around to tabulating the results for it yet.</p>

<p>

Why would you expect this? I looked at the Kellogg Class of 2013 Facebook group and there were a lot of Columbia and Duke people, much more than UC Berkeley.</p>

<p>Haas is not as elite as these other business schools by the way; if we include Haas, then we must add Fuqua, Stern, Ross, Darden, and perhaps Anderson as well.</p>

20

<p>I realized I made a few calculation errors when composing that original list. Here is the fully updated total including all 6 elite business schools:</p>

<p>harvard 192
UPenn 183</p>

<p>Stanford 117
Yale 113</p>

<p>Princeton 101
Duke 95
Columbia 89
Berkeley 84
Dartmouth 80
Georgetown 79</p>

<p>Northwestern 67
Cornell 59
Indian Institute of Tech 58
Univ of Virginia 58
Brown 54
MIT 54
Michigan: 49
NYU 42
UCLA 41
Univ of Texas-Austin 40</p>

<p>West Point 29
USC 25
Boston 24
Williams 24
BYU 23
Univ of Illinois 22</p>

<p>Washington 17
Michigan 15
Carnegie Mellon 14
Notre Dame 13
National Univ. of Singapore 13
Univ of Chicago 12
Cambridge 12
Middlebury 11
LSE 11
Yonsei Univ 10
Seoul National Univ 10
Univ of Wisconsin 10
GIT 10
Vanderbilt 9
Oxford 9
Tufts 8
Univ of Western Ontario 8
McGill 7
Univ of Maryland 7
Fudan Univ. 6
Bowdoin 6
Johns Hopkins 6
Univ of Georgia 6
Wellesley 6
Amherst 6
Penn State 6
Purdue 6
Colby College 5
Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ. 5
Ohio State 5
Bates 4
New Economic School 4
Peking 4
UNC 4
Haverford 3
Rice 3
Univ. of New South Wales 3</p>

<p>Dartmouth and Williams do especially well given their large size.</p>