Harvard - Top 4 Marketing???

If you are set on marketing, I personally dont see the value of HBS over Kellogg and Wharton. Chances are if you get into HBS you will get into one or both of those and probably with some significant money from many of the schools. HBS is an amazing school and no matter what career its brand will open doors in all industries but from talking with people about marketing careers it seems like Kellogg is by far the highest placer at top level companies with Wharton following (probably due to more folks from Wharton going the traditional IB route), and then Duke.

That's a great point. The more research I do, the more I lean towards Kellogg/Wharton. HBS would still be great though becasue of the overall brand recognition.

One slight concern I have is age/we. I'll be 26 with 4yrs WE at matriculation...would that put me at a disadvantage at Kellogg or Wharton? My work experience is 2yrs with a top 5 food cpg company and 2yrs with a smaller food cpg company ($1b).

I think you're at the sweet spot for both schools.

Judging by people who are on the facebook page there are a lot of '04 and '05 for undergrad years. They have a pretty solid distribution, you just dont see the people with no work experience but other than that people do get in.

That's good to hear. I feel I'll be competitive with my stats (720 and 3.8) along with my personality (typical outgoing marketing/sales extrovert) but you never know. I'd like to apply to just Kellogg, HBS, Wharton, Stanford, Duke and Ross. I'd be thrilled to get into the top 4 and extremely happy with Duke and then Ross. However, sometimes it seems like such a crapshoot from reading posts on the internet that I sometimes ask myself if I need to apply to a few lower schools as well. Any opinions?

Not to dissuade you but the H/S/W trifecta is extremely tough and its a lot of work. I know I talked to a few people who had a lot of dings this year and they felt they put too much effort into applying to those schools with nothing but a lottery like chance of getting in. I know one who got WLed at some of the top 5s and felt that had he focused on those more he would have been admitted which is very possible. Stanford is nearly impossible for anyone who doesnt have an amazing background.

Schools like Chicago and Columbia will give you lots of opportunities in marketing too. They may not be known for it but the big CPG companies show up and recruit there. If those fit your personality it may be worth replacing H or S with one of them since your chances will be a great deal better.

Yeah, I've thought about replacing Stanford with Columbia. I recently added Stanford to try and "shoot for the stars" but the more I think about it I feel it may not be be the best decision. I need to do more research on Chicago as well as I tend to think of it as a strictly finance school but I know that's not the case.

I think you should definitely consider Chicago GSB for marketing. During my visit, there were several marketing students who commented on Chicago's strength in that area. They claimed that marketing recruiters loved Chicago's students due to the quantitative nature of their marketing program. I'm not going into marketing, but I just wanted to pass that along.

I've attended a few industry and company presentations at HBS and the logic seems to be the following:

Marketing positions (typically CPG) are very GM like (you interact with / manage different deparments in the organization from sales through supply chain)
HBS is a GM powerhouse.
HBS is therefore good for marketing.

Hope it helps. L.

L.

I think the honest answer is HBS is a powerhouse in everything and is good in everything. If you go there doors will be open everywhere.

I like your logic!