Choosing a business school
Another week is gone. We finished our economics final exam last week. So, that is one course less. I am overloading 1 course. As a result, I will have 4 final exams by March 11th. Given that I have been slacking off in a big way this term, I need to work hard now.
This is also the time of the year when applicants are deciding on their business schools. I have spoken to a few people who are in the process of making their choices and thought it prudent to share some of my thoughts on the blog.
The objective of business school is three fold - to get a job you want, build a good network and learn some stuff (in that order).
A lot of recruiting is very region specific. If you are looking for a high tech VC job in San Francisco, or a media & entertainment job in Southern California, your needs may be best served by attending a school in California. On the contrary, it would be stupid to attend California schools when you know you want to work for an NYC hedge fund. I am not saying it is impossible to land these jobs, but it requires substantial effort. On the contrary, for firms with structured recruiting process (read I banks, consulting firms), it is not hard to study in one part of the US and choose to work in the opposite corner).
Fellow classmates make a huge difference to the recruiting experience. I have helped my friends in other schools through my contacts and realize different schools are home to people with vastly different personalities. Just the other day I was speaking to a friend about his recruiting progress. While he has awesome job offers, he mentioned that the competition was bordering on cutthroat and thus made recruiting hard for people.
Internship recruiting stories also tell you a lot about the cultures at different schools. A friend of mine was among a dozen other applicants in a final round interview at a company's headquarters. As is customary, people went around the circle introducing themselves. Suddenly, two people discovered that they were from the same school!! They had seen each other, but hadn't even recognized each other. In contrast, when my classmates go to a second round interview, they typically travel together, help each other prepare and the teamwork spirit seems to be present even in an individual exercise such as recruiting.
Many applicants use placement statistics bandied by schools to decide where they want to go. Caveat emptor. It is important to read the fine print. 30 people getting jobs in lobster fishing is very different from 30 lobster fishing offers! The latter might mean there are actually just 15 people with lobster fishing offers but 3 lobster companies have made the offers to 10 students each. Applicants also need to look at the placement statistics in light of the demand for the job. Were there 45 people who wanted to do lobster fishing and 30 got jobs? Or was it that everybody who wanted to be a lobster fisherman got a job?
Finally, as far as the learning experience goes, learning takes place both within and outside the classroom. You learn not only from professors but also from classmates and visiting executives/speakers. All schools talk about their star faculty members. It is necessary to do the homework and find out how many of them actually teach MBA students, and how many of their classes you can take! Having a star faculty member on board makes a difference to the B school experience if you are either able to take a class taught by him/her or do a guided study/project with him/her.
There are numerous other criteria that applicants use to choose business schools. And rightly so. One cannot have a formulaic answer and everybody needs to recognize that. Good luck!
posted by Tagad_Tale @ 7:05 AM
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