<p>How much does the prestige and recognition of the undergrad school matter in applying to business schools? Let's say someone was studying EE at MIT or BME @ JHU or Physics @ CalTech and wanted to go to Business School, how much would the "Wow" factor, help if any?</p>
<p>I think it's a much bigger "Wow" factor to do incredibly well and have amazing ECs than to go to a top school. (I went to Penn State and then to Michigan for my MBA. Yes, I had very good grades, very good ECs, and relevant work experience.) If you have both, then more power to you, but I think if you can show amazing achievement and leadership qualities, then that is even more important.</p>
<p>I know that when I have interviewed MBA students, the most important thing to me (other than how they handle the interview questions) is what kind of work experience and ECs they have had, and what they have done with those opportunities. I would think that any top business school would be looking for the same from an undergrad.</p>
<p>Actually, like I've been saying, MBA programs don't really care very much about what you did in undergrad. They care about your work and leadership experience, as usually evidenced by what you did AFTER undergrad. </p>
<p>Now it is true that if you go to a strong undergrad program, you are more likely to get a better job that will give you that work and leadership experience that will get you into a top B-school. But it's more of an indirect approach. It's not great undergrad -> good B-school. It's more like great undergrad -> good job -> good B-school. </p>
<p>Incidentally, this is why people who have no work experience tend to have great difficulty in getting into top B-schools, no matter how well their academic record is. For example, I knew a girl who is "MIT-cubed" in engineering, which means that she got her bachelor's, master's, and PhD in engineering at MIT. She got all 3 of her MIT degrees with strong grades. After completing her PhD, she decided she wanted to stay at MIT and get her MBA from Sloan. She was rejected. Why? Simple. No real-world work experience. I'm sure that Sloan did not dispute that she is a genius. But she is a genius with no real-world work experience, and that's not what the top B-schools want.</p>
<p>After reading the post above, I should qualify my response be saying that I was admitted to B-school straight out of college. However, this was 20 years ago, when (if I recall correctly) about 20% of my classmates at Michigan had also come right from college. Top business schools now admit a much lower percentage of students with no full-time (as opposed to summer) work experience. I'm sure you can actually find out the percentages with a little resesarch.</p>
<p>Yeah, back in the old days, many if not most HBS students came in straight from undergrad. I think the same can be said for most other B-schools. Things have changed in the last few decades.</p>
<p>"Few decades"? How old do you think I am...lol!!</p>