<p>If the bachelor's isn't that marketable, why would business schools be excluded from favoring them or rather why would students not favor going to business schools whlie they do favor going to law and med schools?</p>
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sorry, sakky, your logic on this one excludes you.</p>
<p>If 90+% of applicants to MBA schools are engineers, they will be well represented, no?</p>
<p>And, no, I don't agree that a bias exists for LACs with respect to law school for the exact same reason.
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<p>What we are talking about here is why is it that Michigan can get more or fewer students into HBS than can a school like Williams. I am talking about "bias" not in the sense that B-schools prefer to admit certain students, but rather biases in THE DATA. In other words, if Michigan has more or less students at HBS than Williams College does, then we should talk about what are the reasons for that.</p>
<p>I am asserting that one reason why you should expect HBS (and other B-schools) to have lots Michigan alumni is simply because Michigan has a large and prominent engineering school, and engineers tend to want to go to B-school. On the other hand, Williams College does not even have engineering at all, which is why you would expect to see fewer Williams grads in HBS. That is what I mean by "bias". </p>
<p>Many other data biases have been identified in this thread, namely that people tend to want to stay in the same geographic area, that the LAC's don't have MBA programs for their former undergrads to attend, that people may want to go to their state MBA program to take advantage of in-state tuition, and the simple sheer size of a particular school. All of these are 'biases' of the data the way I have defined the term.</p>
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If the bachelor's isn't that marketable, why would business schools be excluded from favoring them or rather why would students not favor going to business schools whlie they do favor going to law and med schools?
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<p>Nobody says that B-schools exclude them. B-schools don't exclude anybody. </p>
<p>What B-school adcoms tend to key on is strong work experience , and the fact is, engineers tend to get pretty good work experience that is highly suitable for them to submit a good B-school application. After all, engineering students obviously tend to work as engineers, and engineers tend to be put in jobs with strong levels of business responsibility, i.e. dealing with line workers, justifying projects, improving yields, developing products, and so forth. Liberal arts grads, on the other hand, often times do not get jobs with this type of responsibility. In fact, I know quite a few of them working at the mall right now stocking shelves and ringing up purchases. That's not a job that is conducive to getting into B-school later.</p>
<p>Liberal arts students will also often times favor law or med-school, compared to engineering students because, the truth is, the grading tends to be easier in the liberal arts, and law/med-school adcomswant to see high grades. Engineering students have a difficult time presenting the high grades necessary to get into law/med-school. You can PM ariesathena about it, I'm sure she will give you quite an earful about it. B-schools on the other hand, care far less about grades, prioritizing work experience. </p>
<p>Look at the statistics for Harvard Medical School, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Business School. You will notice that HBS has the lowest average incoming GPA. It's not because HBS is easy to get into - far from it, in fact. It has to do with the fact that business schools don't care that much about grades, instead prioritizing work experience. </p>
<p>The upshot is that a lot of engineering students find that they just don't have the grades to get into a top law or med-school, but can get a job that will make them eligible for a top business school. For liberal arts students, it is often times the reverse - they often times have the grades to get into a top law/med-school, but they can't get a job that has a lot of potential to get them into a top business school. Hence, it is only natural for engineers to prefer B-school and for liberal arts grads to prefer law/med school.</p>
<p>Now obviously there are exceptions. For example, some engineers get stellar grades. I know some brilliant engineers at MIT who have maintained straight A's. And of course some liberal arts grads, particularly at the top schools like HYP, get plum jobs in management consulting or investment banking which are basically B-school factories. But these are exceptions. I am talking about where the bulk of the data points lie.</p>
<p>Well, your explanation that engineers tend to get better jobs out of school and that business schools heavily factor this and not GPA is a partial explanation. I believe that liberal arts majors tend to be far more interested in law or medicine for various reasons rather than business. I think this self-selection is another data skewing factor.</p>
<p>sakky: </p>
<p>I understand your thesis, but it is just that, a thesis. And, without data to support it, it is just as valuable as most [data-unsuported] theses. I refer you to AP Stat: check out the Simpson's Paradox.</p>
<p>btw: you will also note that the best predictor for HL is U undergrad, so we can easily hypothesize that the best background for HL is a grade-inflation (GI) school, no? Unfortunately, the Other [massive] GI school is in Palo Alto, and many kids prefer warmer weather and don't apply to east coast grad schools.</p>
<p>Drab, I agree with you. But that's really neither here nor there. I am simply trying to explain why a school like Michigan might have more or less students at HBS than a school like Amherst or Williams. Obviously there are many many factors involved. </p>
<p>Bluebayou, nobody is saying that my analysis is statistically rigorous. But the counterargument (i.e. the 'null hypothesis') is also not statistically rigorous. Hence, while I admit I cannot prove my case rigorously, the other side cannot prove its case rigorously either. Hence, we have to resort to where the preponderance of evidence lies.</p>
<p>Think of it this way. For OJ Simpson to have been criminally convicted of murder, the prosecutors had to show that Simpson was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. However, for him to be found liable in civil court, the plaintiffs merely had to demonstrate a preponderance of evidence. Different standards of proof.</p>
<p>Now, in my case, I am not trying to conclude anything one way or the other. I am merely stating what the evidence says, and the various ways it can be interpreted, and it is up to the readers to make a decision about what it all means. </p>
<p>And for the record, I don't believe Michigan is a bad school. Indeed, I believe it is clearly one of the best public schools in the nation, and the UM undergrad program is probably the best outside of the states of California and Virginia.</p>