Re: Boston College (Carroll) MBA 2012 - Calling All Applicants
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15 Jul 2012, 21:07
As someone who was in class with this poster (presuming they just graduated in 2012, like I did) let me make some observations for posterity's sake:
1) The "good" items listed here could probably be expanded upon.
The teachers are really top notch in finance and accounting. World class even. Alan Marcus literally wrote the book on derivatives. Pete Wilson was the American CPA professor of the year and was a professor at Harvard, Sloan, and Stanford. Ken Enright, former head value investor at MFS Investments, was Barron's investor of the year in the 90s. Dick Syron, former CEO of Freddie Mac, teaches a class. Really, the kids I knew at other schools, even top 20-ish ones, didn't get these types of professors. Note: this doesn't translate past the finance and accounting departments really.
Small class size might be nice for bonding, but it's really **** for recruiting purposes. I'd call this a huge negative.
It's IS really cheap. And they let the cash flow for scholarships. I paid 1/3 of what I would have paid at a top 20 program (700ish GMAT, "good" work exp, a few top 20 acceptances, really nice scholarship offer at BC).
2) The bad items...
Career Services: it is what you make of it, really. It's a 2-man shop for 200 full-time students and about 600 part-time students. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. If you want a job, you tell them that. They won't come to you. There's a website to which companies post jobs. You must monitor that on your own and apply there AND follow up with career services. Is this the best way to do it? No - on-campus recruiting events are the best way IMO but BC doesn't get a lot of this due to its size. Will you just get a job by attending BC (like you might at Sloan or HBS)? No, not at all. You gotta work for it and accept potential roles you might not otherwise want in July before you start the program. But career services understaffed and they push students to take ANY job, not necessarily the job they want to hold out for. Once you get an offer you will not get help from them. And if you want a job that normally doesn't come to BC (i-banking, consulting, asset management, private equity) they can't help you.
The cheating issue: HUGE problem. "Disgruntled" danced around it but here's the scoop: the international students are the ones who are continually caught cheating and get away with it. In my class, I know of three MAJOR cheating incidents (using gChat during a finance exam, handing in someone else's work as their own, copy/pasting online material as their own) and the only repercussions were lame emails from the Dean to the class. Another similar situation, again with international students, happened in the class of 2013. Same sort of results, too. Core values mean nothing when it comes to potential black eyes (and loss of average boosting high GMAT scores from low-ability internationals in the future) to the school. Side note: BC keeps pushing more and more international students into the class (from about 27% of the class in 2009 to over 36% this past year) to increase GMAT scores. The problem with this is they are seemingly indiscriminate with who they let in. Some of these jokers are horrible (see: cheating and add that most are complete wastes on group projects).
I want to add some good and bad items:
+) Finance jobs are easy to get assuming you don't want the same jobs chased by Tuck/Sloan/HBS guys. This means research/analyst work won't happen unless you know people and would have gotten that sort of job regardless of where you got your MBA. Same goes for i-banking, PE, VC, consulting, etc. The $150k+ jobs will be out of reach for all but MAYBE 1-2 students. Many years 0 students land these roles. Note: when you see a $160k salary published by the school it's a JD/MBA dual student working in BigLaw. Nothing to do with the MBA but they use it to boost the class average salary anyway. That said, if you want corporate finance (financial planning & analysis for a Fortune 500 like Capital One, Staples, Exxon, Cigna or Tyco) you'll likely get it and make $85-90k a year. But there are more than a few students who wanted those "high finance/Wall Street" jobs that ended up settling for these corp finance jobs or are currently still seeking that gold at the end of the rainbow. When you see State Street and Fidelity as two of the premier hiring companies, realize these are for more back office/product & process manager type roles.
+) Marketing jobs can be had at major companies. General Mills, Hasbro, Mattel, JnJ, and others hire BC students regularly. Problem is about 25-30% of the class wants marketing and there tends to be not enough to go around. BC is small and gets few recruiters. The ones who do come (like those listed) take max 1 person, so 7-10 students might get a really solid brand manager role but the other 20 or so will settle for a lesser role at a lesser company.
+) If you only want to work in Boston, want to make $85k or so, and don't care about high finance or consulting BC is the best value play you'll find. Period. Babson and BU don't have the network with large name, core recruiters like BC does. State Street is run by a BC guy. So is Staples. A BC professor is on the Board of John Hancock. Exxon's head controller is from BC. Not all of these are MBAs, mind you, but they still hire here because of the BC name.
-) Small class means no one outside of the standard core hiring firms wants to come. 10% of HBS showing up to an OCR event = about 90 students. 10% of BC = 10 students. Big difference and not many firms will send 2 or 3 recruiters for 10 students, of which 2 or 3 might actually apply.
-) School is run by academics. Dean has no real world experience (career academic). Grades pushed more than jobs in most cases. This permeates every facet of the school. Also, school is treated like a cash cow. The undergrads are treated like the "real" program and the MBAs are mostly part-time and little value add. Don't expect a Rice-like rise in the rankings any time soon.
Feel free to msg me with any questions.
), i have been waitlisted , got a email notification today . I dint expect much ,as i had applied to Boston College and Purdue ,in about 4 days 
, with least efforts in writing application . Gave my Gmat on 14th April , Toefl on 10th April and applied on 16th April,2012 for the final round . 
and TOEFL 112 .
anyways i am taking GMAT again in the first week of July and will try to improve by a minimum of 100 points . 
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