GETTING IN Operation B-School: Finding the Right MBA Information overload makes finding the right B-school more difficult than it needs to be. Here's how to find what you need, and toss what you don't
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BEST BUSINESS SCHOOLS 2010 Business School, Explained Is business school on your horizion? If so, get answers to all your questions on admissions, careers, and B-school life from the experts
B-SCHOOL FORUMS
Visit BW Online's interactive forums for wide-ranging discussions about management education. Search through over 1,359,000 posts for topics that interest you. Join in today! Here are a few samples of recent messages:
Getting into B-School — MBA Financial Return
From: BizMasta To: All
Here's a completely hypothetical question on the return of an MBA.
Let's say I'm 26 years old associate, I work at an investment bank doing sales & trading, and my total compensation last year was $350,000. I will definitely make $500,000 by the time I hit 30, and $1,000,0000 when I'm 35. I don't particularly enjoy my job, I'm not learning anything, nor is it challenging.
I decide to apply to business school for the entering class of 2011. I hope to get out of business school and change into real estate private equity. I hope to start my own emerging market RE PE shop a couple years after that and I dream of making multiple millions a year. More importantly, I hope to do something I'm passionate about. I believe that an MBA from a top 3/5/7/10 school will allow me to make the career transition.
Am I an idiot? Am I simply delusional? The opportunity cost is huge. Is there even a chance that I will be able to make this transition. Say I do get a PE job, but never start my own shop. Is it worth it?
This is what I don't get. Why do all these hedge fund/PE/VC kids apply to bschool. Haven't they already hit the jackpot? How will bschool provide any return? Isn't bschool really for kids who aren't in consulting, investment banking, private equity, hedge funds, etc who want to get in?
I really hope this post doesn't sound ridiculous. I just want to know why people for all those "prestigious" jobs go to business school.
From: TechFinanceGuy To: BizMasta
2 year vacation after working for some pretty intense people. It's also hard to be promoted without an MBA at many firms although not always true.
Getting an MBA is not a purely economic decision unless you're an engineer turned banker.
You can also make far more than $1M if you build a business during business school and sell it or take it public although the expected value of that today is probably quite low.
From: rui4zhe2 To: TechFinanceGuy
You can start a business without an MBA, easily. Entrepreneurship is 90% effort & >50% sales, I'd say, and b-school helps only a bit with the latter and not at all with the former.
As for the PE/VC/HF kids going back to bschool, how many are there? I mean, besides the ones at PE/VC/HF firms that shut down or did badly and so didn't pay out bonuses. Maybe HBS or Stanford (for future connections). Otherwise, I can't see how it's a good decision.
BTW to the OP, if you're on the sellside in S&T, you'd probably realize that there's no guarantee that you'll hit $500K at 30 or $1M at 35 because there's no guarantee that your job and/or boss and/or bank will be around then (or that you'd get that far; it's not as if the banks practice social promotion). I can't believe people have forgotten 2008 already.
From: JinShil2 To: BizMasta
The value of MBA doesn't always show up as money.
What is the value of knowing you have a top-notch MBA and you can change careers if necessary?
What is the value of extending your career if you necessary as you get older?
What is the value of spending two great years of your life at a school with peers with similar interests, goals, and age?
What is the value of instant business credibility and respect?
Getting into B-School — Corporate Counsel to MBA — Questions
From: EsqMBA To: All
I am in what seems like a rare spot these days - a young lawyer who is a) employed and b) happily so. I am an associate corporate counsel at a mid-sized software company and I greatly enjoy my work. I attended law school with the intent of becoming a litigator but stumbled into the corporate world and I've loved it. But after a year I am also fast realizing that a J.D. is necessary but not sufficient to be a top-notch inside counsel. I need an MBA to really distinguish myself for the better General Counsel/Chief Legal Officer positions. I am also very interested in management positions where a legal background is very helpful.
My academic history: I attended solid-but-certainly-not-top-20 undergraduate and law schools. My undergraduate degree was in Political Science and my GPA was fairly good - 3.7. Law school grades are based on class ranking, and my grades placed me virtually dead-center for my class - a 3.3.
My preference is to attend a solid, top-20 program. My dream schools are Duke and Cornell. (The silly daydream is, of course, Harvard or Stanford, like everyone.)
With that in mind, I ask the following questions:
1) How much will being a lawyer hurt my chances? Is there a bias against lawyers?
2) How could being a lawyer help?
3) How will my rather average law school grades affect my chances?
4) How does being a lawyer factor in to the experience question? Would I still need 5 years of work before I can consider a top-tier school or should I consider applying after, say, three?
Thanks in advance!
From: EsqMBA To: All
I guess I should also mention age - I am presently 29 and will be 30 in September. I would like to get into an MBA program before hitting 33 to improve my odds.
From: JinShil2 To: EsqMBA
1) How much will being a lawyer hurt my chances? Is there a bias against lawyers?
I think so. Check out admissions411.com. Those from the legal field seem not do as well in top MBA admissions.
Why? My guess is that law schools are known to be cut-throat competitive and lawyers even more so. B-schools value team-players and leaders.
4) How does being a lawyer factor in to the experience question?
There are a LOT of unemployed and underemployed lawyers these days. I have a friend with undergrad from Yale and Berkley Law school and he has been out of a job for a while and looking to get an MBA as well.
I attend a top 5 school and there are two attorneys (that I know of) in my class. That isn't a high percentage. We have at least three Medical Doctors, for example. There are more MD in the part-time MBA program.
From: EsqMBA To: JinShil2
Thanks for the tip, Jin.
Can you provide me any information about those two attorneys? What line of work were they in before B-school? Were they big law, in-house or other?
From: JinShil2 To: EsqMBA
I don't know much about their background except they both attended top 15 law schools.
I think your essays should especially focus on your leadership and team-player abilities.
You should show you can thrive in a team-oriented environment where team dynamics, not individual merit, plays a leading role. In B-School, almost every class involves teamwork.
Sharks and loners are not welcome at B-schools, especially the top 30 B-schools.
Here are some of the few things my classmates have in common which somewhat surprised me:
1) Very few of my classmates are overweight and almost no one is obese. My classmates are very fit and I would say a good 1/3 have finished marathons and few even completed triathlons. Americans are overweight and out of shape but you can't tell at leading B-schools.
2) Almost everyone has traveled outside of the US and has a global perspective. They understand that America is far behind in many areas and in need of urgent repair.
3) At least half are at least bilingual. A huge percentage are international or are foreign-born.
4) The quant abilities are off-the-charts. I just finished an intermediate stats and regression course and a few of my classmates actually taught stats and could prove every stats theorem. I was blown away.
5) Top B-School students are highly congenial, funny, and tremendously articulate. They have a wide circle of friends.
So, if you have been one of those "lucky" attorneys who slaved at their jobs for 80hrs+/week and never had time to socialize, build leadership skills, and learn to be team-player, then you already are perceived as less than perfect fit for B-School and you need to overcome that perception.
I hope this helps.
From: EsqMBA To: JinShil2
I have the good fortune of being a transaction-focused attorney, not a litigator. I'm all about working together to make the deal happen. I work primarily with salespeople and customers, but in my position I have to maintain a friendly working relationship with everyone from the engineers to customer support. Not to mention the various C's. I'm definitely a team player and I have to be to survive in my position. Also, I usually only put in only 50 or so hours a week, thank goodness!
I am tri-lingual (Spanish and French) and have spent about 3 years overseas, mostly in Latin America. Although I don't consider my speaking abilities to be finely honed enough to negotiate a contract in those languages, I read and analyze correspondence and complex legal documents in these languages all the time in my position. All of my overseas travel has involved study or work - either as a volunteer or in internships (once with the State Department, once as an intern in an NGO's General Counsel's office. I don't come from money - I'm the son of a single mom who's a teacher - so I've had to pay my way one way or another.
I'm far more process-focused than quantitative. I studied computer programming a lot as a teenager and it's left me with a love of designing processes and finding ways to make things efficient and cut work down to an absolute minimum while reducing errors. Learning about Six Sigma is actually one of my major inspirations to attend B-school. For what it's worth, I don't intend to go into finance, so I'm not really looking into those jobs. The leadership and ethics program at Duke or the Global Management program at Cornell catch my eye far more than the finance jobs do.
I am, however, a fatty, but this can be fixed. (Damn doughnuts.)
Thanks for the advice!
From: JinShil2 To: EsqMBA
Cool, so it appears you have a story tell and that's a good start.
As far as Six Sigma, I am a SS Black Belt but the certification is somewhat overrated mainly because there is no single authoritative body that can grant a SS Black Belt. So the quality and experience of SSBB holders tend to vary greatly.
The meat of the SSBB, indeed what separates SSBB from SS Green Belt, is the knowledge of basic statistics.
If you are ambitious enough to shoot for a top 20 school, then I recommend you take a introductory stats course. It will help you both in GMAT and Stats in B-School.
Finally, if you a trying to switch careers, I recommend you de-emphasize your legal background as much as possible.
Good luck to you.
Getting into B-School — Underrated B-Schools
From: ChanceMe233 To: All
I feel like Vanderbilt (36) is extremely underrated. There other schools (law and med are easily top15). The business school dominates the region.
McCombs also should be higher. There is no more respected degree in their region. Carnegie Mellon should fall.
From: ffaddict To: ChanceMe233
are you kidding me??? troll....
From: ChanceMe233 To: ffaddict
Not a troll. In full disclosure I'm from Atlanta, so I do have a southern bias. I go to undergrad at Emory and would go to Vanderbilt for MBA before I went to Emory or UGA.
I do appreciate the troll-hunting FFaddict. Let's go hunting some time
From: BosMBAasap To: ChanceMe233
You're an undergrad. You have no full-time work experience and yet you're prognosticating about which schools are better than which? Do tell, what is your rationale other than Vanderbuilt having good medical and law schools as well or that particular schools are the "best" in their region? Would you attend a business school because the university's medical school is good or because it's the best school in its state?
From: indieandy To: ChanceMe233
Vanderbilt seems appropriately placed in the 30s. I don't understand the med & law school train of thought.
Johns Hopkins has a top medical school... Fordham Law is great...
This means nothing relating to business school.
From: BMBBound To: ChanceMe233
I really couldn't disagree with you more. In my opinion schools like Vanderbilt, Georgetown, WUSTL, Emory, and Rice are among the most overrated MBA programs out there. Applicants give them way too much credit. Great universities, only OK b-schools.
On the other hand I think Carnegie Mellon my be the single most underrated b-school out there. Not so much in the rankings (which I think have it about right at 15, or 16), but more in the general level of interest/respect paid by applicants. In my career (management consulting), I run into a good number of guys and gals from Carnegie. Cornell also seems underrated to me (both in the rankings and terms of interest/respect from applicants). I've meet consultants with MBAs from Cornell and Carnegie at all the major firms, but have never met a single Vandy/Georgetown/Rice/WUSTL/Emory consultant at the post-MBA level.
I'll agree with you though, McCombs is not given enough respect. Houston/Dallas offices of my firm are teeming with people from UT. Its every bit as good as Darden, Duke, Yale, Cornell, Carnegie, etc., but is alway ranked down around 20. Maybe because so many grads stay in Texas?
From: charlesriveredit To: ChanceMe233
Actually, I find Carnegie Mellon to be underrated. Their quant finance types are top notch.
From: WJLDENVER To: charlesriveredit
I've taken graduate classes at Carnegie Mellon, Indiana and Texas A&M. Best professors were at Carnegie Mellon!
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Even in the best of times, finding the MBA with the right "fit"—one that will not only help you achieve your career goals but that you can actually get into—is no mean feat. But in a less-than-robust job market it's especially tough. Predicting a school's ability to deliver the hoped-for job offers is next to impossible, and b-schools in general are awash in applications so they can afford to be picky. What's an applicant to do?
Well, for starters, they can read Francesca Di Meglio's story on how to research b-schools. In it she describes detailed ways of wading through all the available information and drawing a bead on the right school for you: from the initial stages of the search to parsing the placement data and GMAT stats to the campus visit.
As a roadmap to b-school, it's pretty hard to beat.
Louis Lavelle Business Schools Editor Bloomberg Businessweek
UCLA Anderson: Admissions Q&A MBA Admissions Director Mae Jennifer Shores explains what UCLA's Anderson school has to offer and what it takes to get in
MBA Insider Check out this feature-rich area for advice and tools that will help you choose the right B-school -- and develop a strategy for getting accepted
Full-Time MBA Rankings & Profiles BusinessWeek's Top 30 U.S. programs and Top 10 international programs. Plus, scan in-depth profiles of more than 300 full-time programs around the world
The Best Undergraduate B-Schools Undergrad business programs are getting MBA-like respect, and competition to get into them is hotter than ever. Here's how the top schools stack up
B-School Calendar BusinessWeek.com's scheduling tool will give you an idea of upcoming events at B-schools in the U.S. and around the world. You'll find information on admissions receptions, application deadlines, networking events, alumni events, conferences, and much more.
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