testace wrote:
Hi,
I was wondering if someone could help me with this question. If I have no interest in consulting because the constant travel sounds awful and most likely would not be doing private equity after my MBA, would getting a top 15 MBA be worth the cost or would a scholarship at a lower ranked school be the better option in the long run?
Thanks!
I was wondering if someone could help me with this question. If I have no interest in consulting because the constant travel sounds awful and most likely would not be doing private equity after my MBA, would getting a top 15 MBA be worth the cost or would a scholarship at a lower ranked school be the better option in the long run?
Thanks!
Long-run: it doesn't matter where you went to b-school (and frankly doesn't matter if you even have an MBA). Think about it: if you're in your 40s and doing business with people in their 40s and 50s, do you think anyone cares where you went to school 20 years ago, at least from a career/business standpoint? When it comes to value, most of it is short-term (first 5 years coming out of b-school).
With the top 16 schools, it is a combination of recruiting and the overall experience. From a recruiting standpoint, if you're not interested in consulting or IB/PE (industries that recruit mostly from top 16 programs), then it may not be worth it. But again it depends on the industry you're looking at. Going to a top 16 will give you more options, as there are some pockets of firms out there who will focus mostly on top 16 (certain positions within F500, tech firms, etc.) but you're right that outside of consulting or IB/PE, recruiters for the most part are open to folks from a wider range of schools. As for the overall experience, you'll find that while you can find high caliber folks at any b-school, within the top 16 you'll find less variance in the caliber of students, and when you you go back full-time, a big part of the learning experience comes from your interactions and relationships you build with your classmates -- obviously whether that's worth it to you or not is subjective.