<p>I'm looking to hear from the experienced guys on this forum, ones that have gone to MBA programs, (like VectorWega), what do you think is the lowest school for someone that wants to break into the IBD, or PE jobs, or maybe M/B/B, that's still worth the time and effort?</p>
<p>If you want a “top” job, then I would say top 20 is generally a good cutoff. All of the schools in the top 20 are well respected and should be recruited by by NYC Ibanks, top consulting firms, etc. Of course, there is a large discrepancy between the number of offers given to students from (example) Wharton vs UNC, but they both have some offers.</p>
<p>Even so, there are certainly good schools outside of the top 20 which are definitely worth someone’s money (depending on goals). For instance, if you intend to live in Dallas, then SMU (USNEWS #44) would be a good choice. It would be very difficult (impossible) to get a wall-street I-banking job from SMU though, and top mgt consulting companies (Bain, BCG, and McKinsey) are not listed in their list of hiring companies. However, SMU’s network is strong in Dallas which would allow you to land a job with (example) Goldman Sachs in Dallas.</p>
<p>Thanks VectorWega! I don’t believe Boston College is ranked in the top 25… but the starting TOTAL salary of Carroll MBA grads for 2007 was about 100k. That seems pretty high for school of its rank, but looking at the placement data, there’s very few “top” job firms, mostly industry companies… I was going to apply to a few of the bottom of the top 20, meaning Cornell, Georgetown, my GMAT falls into their median range, perhaps above their median, but MBA admissions is hard to judge based on scores, and I’m just wondering if it’s good or not to have a “backup” school like Boston College… or should I just reapply the next year if I don’t get in ?(I heard that reapplying is not a good idea, because all you do is fill out a supplement, and my chances aren’t tremendously greater than the year before)</p>
<p>[Class</a> Placement - Boston College](<a href=“http://www.bc.edu/schools/csom/mba/careers/classplacement.html]Class”>http://www.bc.edu/schools/csom/mba/careers/classplacement.html)</p>
<p>bump. any advice on the reapplying?</p>
<p>Wait, VW, where’d you get your MBA? Where’d you go afterwards?</p>
<p>I’m curious about your range of experiences.</p>
<p>When I was applying, I only looked at what I considered to be the top eight programs, which I thought were significantly above the rest. I noticed that Denzera referenced the same eight as top programs in a previous thread, although I had a slightly different order.</p>
<p>Stanford
Harvard
Wharton
Kellogg
Tuck
UChicago
MIT
Columbia</p>
<p>You can still get IB associate positions from UMichigan, UVA, Berkeley, Yale, NYU, but maybe with a little less frequency and I’m not so sure about top consulting firms or PE from those schools; maybe someone from one of those schools could comment more precisely.</p>
<p>Getting back to the OP’s question, it really depends on previous experience and expectations in getting the degree; so there is far from a uniform answer to the question.</p>
<p>In the “generally regarded as best” guide to MBA admissions, Richard Montauk shows us the rankings done by Financial Times, Business Week, US News, Economist Intelligence Unit, and Wall Street Journal. Of those, the following schools were ranked in the top 10 by at least three of those 5:</p>
<p>Chicago
Harvard
Ross (Michigan)
Stanford
Wharton
Columbia
Kellogg
Sloan (MIT)
Tuck (Dartmouth)</p>
<p>In addition to those, the following were ranked in the top 15 by at least 3:</p>
<p>Anderson (UCLA)
Fuqua (Duke)
Johnson (Cornell)
Yale
Darden (Virginia)
Haas (UC Berkeley)
Stern (NYU)</p>
<p>Yeah, that seems about right. However, some of those rankings are based on criteria that either I don’t consider that important or I don’t think their results are really measuring what their trying to get at (ie Harvard and Stanford getting worse marks by employers than UMichigan because it is harder to get Harvard and Stanford grads and UMichigan grads may have less options). Generally, the only people I have known to attend UChicago or UMichigan are those who didn’t get into any of the other top seven schools they applied to.</p>
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<p>If one has specific goals in mind, they shouldn’t simply go by rankings. Rankings are often too broad to apply for an individual. For instance, if you want to do IBanking, then NYU is the logical choice over Kellogg (and several other schools you mentioned). 44% of NYU’s class goes in to Ibanking. Not many Kellogg students go into Ibanking, and aside from that NYU’s location is ideal for networking and reaching out to the investment banks on your own.</p>
<p>To some extent I agree, although I don’t think someone at Kellogg who wants to go into IB has a worse chance than someone at NYU. It’s just that less at Kellogg are interested. The real question is how many at Kellogg that want to go into IB are unable to in comparison to how many at NYU that want to go into IB are unable to. The problem is the answer to that question is much more difficult to discern.</p>
<p>If an investment bank is choosing where to recruit from, wouldn’t they generally give NYU the nod over Kellogg simply due to the number of students interested in Ibanking? I’d say so. Aside from that, NYU has a far greater network in financial services than Kellogg does.</p>
<p>Also, being in NYC already gives NYU students a major advantage. It is far more difficult for Kellogg students to network and conduct office visits with NYC Ibanks than it is for NYU students.</p>
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<p>This isn’t a huge problem. All the big banks do on campus recruiting at Kellogg and prospective recruits are usually invited to interview on site after a few preliminary screenings on campus. It’s fairly systematic.</p>
<p>i think Wash U’s MBA is the lowest ranked program that could arguably be “worth it”, maybe even UT Austin.</p>
<p>"If an investment bank is choosing where to recruit from, wouldn’t they generally give NYU the nod over Kellogg simply due to the number of students interested in Ibanking? I’d say so. Aside from that, NYU has a far greater network in financial services than Kellogg does.</p>
<p>Also, being in NYC already gives NYU students a major advantage. It is far more difficult for Kellogg students to network and conduct office visits with NYC Ibanks than it is for NYU students."</p>
<p>There’s a difference between more interested and more aptitude. Banks aren’t recruiting where people are more interested but where they think they can get the best candidates. To take your example further, why don’t banks recruit at Fordham and Baruch rather than Kellogg because they are already in NYC and more interested in IB? Since banks are already interviewing on at both NYU and Kellogg, it’s not like candidates are standing out or learning more with ‘office visits’ by attending NYU, which can’t otherwise be accomplished with emails or phone calls; that are also much less intrusive.</p>
<p>Top 8 (HSW, Columbia, Tuck, Chicago, Kellogg) for things like venture capital, private equity, hedge funds, strategic planning (strategy person at a company like Time Warner), business development, super elite banking (M&A, Sales and Trading, BB IB, etc) and the super elite strategy consulting. Top 12-15 will do well in these areas also but not as well as those above. </p>
<p>Top 20 for banking, strategy consulting. After this its more operational consulting (places like accenture and PWC) and not necessarily “high finance.” </p>
<p>Note: There are clearly exceptions and a percentage of the class at the top 50 will manage to get strategy consulting and high finance. Also location has a HUGE impact. Tuck does incredibly well in the Boston area. Similarly UCLA might as well be Harvard in LA.</p>
<p>my concern is that my before-mba work experience is sort of the PWC/accenture variety, and one of the reasons for going to MBA is to get out of it, and get into higher level work, major concern being if I cannot get into a top 15 program, I will very likely be looking for the same line of work after MBA. (especially since my pre-mba experiences are not MBB consulting)</p>
<p>That’s most likely true unfortunately. You could transition to marketing, however, pretty easily. But strategy consulting would be really hard to get into. The other problem with MBA programs is there isn’t much class rank. So its hard to distinguish yourself when you’re in school. So student A could be top of his/her class at U of Maryland business and student X could practically fail at Tuck or Columbia and Student X would have the significant edge.</p>
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<p>My point about more interested was simply that there is a larger candidate pool. If NYU has 190 grads go into Ibanking (based on 44% of class of 433 going into Ibanking), and Kellogg has 57 grads go into ibanking/brokerage/securities (based on 11% of class of 514 students), why wouldn’t the top banks recruit from NYU over Kellogg if they had to choose?</p>
<p>I’d bet the top 57(out of 190) at NYU are on avg stronger than the 57 at Kellogg going into Ibanking (or top 10 vs top 10, top 20 vs top 20 etc). Furthermore, you have to consider why companies recruit where they do. Two of the main reasons are: 1) Past success with grads from certain schools and 2) Executives are alumni of the school. Both of these favor NYU over Kellogg.</p>
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<p>Most, if not all of the top 20 programs are recruited by MBB consulting. However, there is a large discrepancy between the number of hires from the various schools. For example, around 17% of Wharton’s entire class will go to McKinsey/Bain/BCG. By contrast, a school ranked 15 to 20 may expect only 2 to 4 % of their class to be hired by McKinsey/Bain/BCG.</p>
<p>BTW, I’m not aware of Accenture/PWC being major recruiters for top 20 schools. Outside of the top 3, the consulting companies I think of that recruit top 20 schools are companies like Oliver Wyman, Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte Consulting, and A.T. Kearney.</p>
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I’d happily take the opposing side of that bet – especially top 10 vs. top 10, etc.<br>
You briefly touched upon yield as a huge reason for recruiting at a school but neglected to mention the other half – that the <em>relative</em> lack of interest in banking at a school like Kellogg “hurts” them on the back end too. Not only are there less students interviewing for banking jobs… but the ones that do get offers are much more likely to accept other (non-banking) offers.</p>