Finance

I have been urged to put together a domain specific listing, so here is the start of one for finance. Please note that this posting is subject to change.

Identifying the top 5 or so schools is quite easy, below the top 5 the matter becomes far more nebulous. To add to the complexity, the term finance can be quite ambiguous as it can include investment banks, commerical lenders, consumer lenders, and even accounting firms.

One of the many difficulties of a ranking system is that one must attempt to collapse many dimensions into a unidimensional system. For instance, some schools have very strong acedemic reputations but less impressive hiring. Some schools have extremely impressive hiring record but rather tepid academic reputations. Small schools might have impressive per capita numbers but unimpressive absolute numbers relative to the larger schools.

Comments on this ranking structure are welcome. If you feel additional schools should be included please indicate so.

Schools Are Not Ordered Within Groups

Group IA
Penn
Columbia
Chicago
Harvard

Group IB
NYU
LBS

Group II
MIT
Rochester
Dartmouth
Stanford
UCLA
UCB
Virginia
Duke
Carnegie Mellon
Northwestern
Yale
Cornell
Michigan

Other strong schools

Rice
Vanderbilt
Indiana
Toronto

WSJ's take on Finance Ranking

http://www.collegejournal.com/bschool04 ... demic.html

hi,
This is great source of info. How do schools that have offer strong Finance programs look at the breakdown of Quant and Verbal from GMAT?

Here is my data:

GMAT Ist attempt: Q: 44(76%) V:38(86%) overall (90%)
GMAT second attempt: Q: 48 (86%) Verbal: 29 (51%)

Education:
B.S. in EE( from a govt. public Indian U, 3.7/4.0)
M.S in EE(Oakland U, MI) 3.76/4.0
M.S in Computer Engg (U of Minnesota, MN) 3.72/4.0

(My high school grades are perfect too)

Work Experience: Software Engineer for 13 years, currently lead/manager for the last 3 mo., Worked for 6 tech companies including IBM.

Sex: Female

I am wondering if my first score with quant 44 is good enough. I would rather not take GMAT again, I am just too busy with my job. I will have to quit my job to take GMAT again. Most people claim that they study 20 hrs. on the forum. I was lucky to have 2 hrs.

I am interested in Chicago, Kellog, Carnegie Mellon, Cornell and MIT.

I don't think there is a clear winner between these two but Maryland seems a bit stronger.

Guys, I scored a 640 on my GMAT today (44 in Math and 34 in Verbal). I intend to do an MBA in Finance. Based on my score and 3 yrs of work ex in Finance and good extra curriculars, what universities can I target for?