A totally non-PC question for married/committed couples

Perhaps it is already too late, but I would not have put any emotional pressure on her to join you in Chicago. The reality of our times is that we don't forget the choices we had or sacrifices we made: the football game I missed, all the men I could have married etc. Dude, Chicago is seriously awesome school to let go and shouldn't any relation worth keeping for lifetime be strong enough to take a 2 year's long distance? We aren't teenagers anymore, right.

Just to give another perspective, this wasn't my experience at all. I got every single class I ever bid on and precisely the series of courses I wanted. That said, it IS stressful.

To be fair however, I spent a RIDICULOUS amount of time building an excel model to identify the best strategies, downloaded all bid data, learned how to arb the system (which you can no longer do sadly), looked at prior years, etc. It was my experience that those people who waited to the last minute or just sort of guessed what to bid without doing much research are the ones who found themselves frustrated. I'm not saying that's what your husband did (things may have changed), but if he hasn't tried really really sitting down with the data and looking at trends, considering variables etc, he should, because it can absolutely pay off. For instance, a huge driver that people always ignore is the total number of sections being taught by a given professor. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people put in ridiculously high bids because "last year" the class was expensive, ignoring that last year the class was taught one times instead of three, and friday morning instead of say afternoons. People also ignore who ELSE was teaching when the 'high' bids came in in prior years -- for instance, if you had both Meadow and Kaplan teaching in the same quarter, thats going to give a very different end result than if only one is teaching (and the other is some no name prof). The other thing to look at is what other classes people are likely to want to combine with your top choice courses in that given quarter -- for instance, if you see that there's an accounting class in the morning and the afternoon on Tuesdays, and an investment class only on Tuesday afternoon, odds are, the accounting morning class will go for more than the afternoon course (which you wouldn't otherwise generally expect).
.

So as Round 1 comes to a close I'm finding myself frustrated. I was admitted to Chicago (a great fit for me personally) and dinged at Stanford/Wharton. The problem is my wife is refusing to leave her job to move out to Chicago, which she equates to committing "career suicide". S/W would have worked well for her because at S we could have just stayed here in the Silicon Valley, and at W she could've transferred within her company to Philly. She works for a major defense company and they have agreed to pay for her to do a PT MBA, which is an amazing opportunity.

My problem with the whole situation is that we both want kids, and she seems to agree that she would need to stay home to raise them. So I'm having trouble rationalizing why I should slam the brakes on this opportunity at Chicago if in the next three or four years we're likely to be starting a family and her career will be taking a break anyway. So what am I supposed to do? Move out to Chicago and try to do a long distance marriage for 2 yrs? Or do I abandon the opportunity altogether even though it is something I've wanted and worked towards for a long time?

In any case, it sucks that after getting accepted at one of the best business schools in the world my wife's first reaction was "that sucks. i'm not moving there." It also didn't help that she blames me for getting dinged at S/W, as if I somehow didn't "try hard enough."

Anyone else out there facing a similar situation?

I am in a very similar situation--well, slightly different because it is my HUSBAND who wont move(and we have 2 children). Rightfully so, he is a very very specific field and is pretty much only employable in a handful of areas not near any of the place I was interested in going to school. I am frustrated because we had discussed all this before I even applied and he had agreed to move anywhere. I think it is much easier for people to discuss this in theory and say it will be OK than when it actually happens...