Yankee121 wrote:
Hey everyone,
Congrats to all the admits and Good luck to all waitlisters!
First, I did not get to go to GBR (sounded like a blast though!)
I have a question to throw out there for the fuqua vs ross prospectives
I had lunch with a former colleague (a graduate from Columbia Business who works at one of the prestige MBA employers) who recently tried to emphasize that Fuqua is a far better business school than Ross, and it is getting a better rep and will be a better investment long term. I was under the impression that both schools are, for the most part equals. He told me that Ross is way easier to get into (which I don't believe is true) and it is not as respected as a B school. I think he was just a pompous jerk--(also made some other arrogant type comments). I know rankings wise, both are very similar. However, do you all think that Ross and Fuqua will both always be "more or less" equals or Fuqua's momentum will advance Ross in the near future. Interested in hearing your comments on this matter-
I will try to answer this question as objective as possible. I think with these forums everyone is fixated on the 5% difference of schools rather than the 95% commonalities. Having kept in touch with many of the GMATClub Admit class of 2009 and 2010, my opinion is that most schools in the same range offer the same opportunities upon graduation. This is not to say certain schools won't have some ultra-elite recruiter that recruits there such as a PE firm that only hires out of H or a VC firm that only hires out of S. But honestly, if you didn't have an IB, IVY (H,P,Y undergrad) + S undergrad, you're not going. So I will keep my 95% the same.
One of the post says where you graduate 3-5 years from now doesn't matter, I would say: WHERE YOU GRADUATE FROM DOES NOT MATTER ONCE YOU GET A FULL TIME OFFER. PERIOD. Basically if you're a Wharton - BCG, you're BCG. If you're Kellogg, Accenture, you're accenture. If you're Booth - Apple, you're Apple. Your MBA only matters for that first job (in prestige). I am not saying that it will not help with recruiting if there's an alum from the program, but the network is random. 50% of the BBA class at Ross goes into IB, with the rest going into consulting or Fortune 500. If you went by luck of interviewing with alum, then you should eliminate Stanford (240 MBA/Yr), Haas(200), Anderson (300), and any new programs like Yale.
The things you should consider rather is what area you want to be in both Location and Career. I've talked to GC people at Duke, there is definitely less consulting companies that recruit at Duke. On the same time, Ross has fewer finance company. Same with location, the biggest locations for Ross graduates would be Chicago, New York/New Jersey, SF/SJ/Oakland, Seattle, Minnesota, Detroit. Duke is mostly in the northeast/east coast.
(NOTE: This is less objective, more subjective) You should also consider the type of environment. Ross is known has being friendly and less competitive, a couple parts that I believe is the reason for this is, we essentially have no grades (since we have no GPA's), the class is fairly diverse in goals, 25% go into marketing, consulting, GM and we have a high group of non-profit/dual degree in sustainability. It makes recruiting a lot less competitive (in relative business school sense) when not everyone single person is going for the same 3 jobs.
I disagree with the momentum thing, since it works both ways and it is completely too 1 dimensional in thinking. If you go off the momentum theory, Duke may some day be better than Wharton. But we both know this is unlikely. Typically what happens is schools oscillate, if you look at Anderson, Columbia and Haas, they have had interesting last 20-30 years. Columbia at one point wasn't even an elite school in the 80's because of scandals, Haas and Anderson move up and down depending if each and west coast is in or not. This is basically how USNews and BW sell papers, if schools never move, then there's no point in publishing the "MBA Edition" every year for $12.99. Take undergrad for example, Harvard moves up and down and up and down every 3 years, I don't think the school changes at all in that time, but hey that's how you sell papers.
Another example from undergrad rankings (which is more pertinent to you) is again what area of focus you are in. In UG rankings, MIT and Cal-Tech is under H,P,Y. But if you're doing science and engineer, there's no way someone who pick P,Y and probably not H over MIT. Harvard barely is a strong school in engineering (ranked 20's). It's the problem of having a linear scale. It is very much the same in MBA, Ross does not have a strong IB program, we don't send that many into IB, and we don't have that many people interested in IB to start with. At the same time, Duke has fewer consulting/marketing companies than Ross. But again this is talking about that final 5%. I know Ross people in IB, and Duke people at consulting/marketing.
16 Apr 2012, 18:31
, AA, and career opportunities offered.
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