School guides: mbaMission or ClearAdmit?

GPT55,

I stumbled upon this discussion and would be delighted to have you test drive our Tuck guide for free.

We conduct dozens of interviews for each guide -- speaking with students, alums, admissions and communications people (when available) and more. We put together what we feel is a fair, complete and very specific picture of what truly "living" each school will be like, academically and socially. I am certain that you will feel that it is the strongest guide, but I will leave that to you. I respect the guys at Clear Admit and know that they put out a good product, so test drive both and share your thoughts.

I am not exactly sure how you can declare yourself to be you, but let me know that you are GPT55 somehow and I will send you that guide.

Best,
Jeremy Shinewald
Founder/President, mbaMission

Hello Jeremy,

Wow, that's a very generous offer, thank you!

Actually, I already bought your Haas guide (Tuck is not among my target schools), so I guess there's not much of a point of a free ride anymore, but thanks anyway!

I didn't have much time yet to digest the whole thing, but overall I like the concept and info you have. I think it's good value for money, especially for someone like myself, who is not from a traditional undergrad/work experience, and so has difficulty accessing MBA grads, and for someone whose geographic location means school visits are not an option either (again, me ).

Sorry -- I misunderstood and suggested Tuck, because I had read the post after yours. Anyway, glad that the Haas guide worked well for you. If you need another, just let me know. It does not need to be Tuck!

Sincerely,
Jeremy Shinewald
Founder/President
mbaMission

always the bridesmaid, never the bride :-/

I have bought a guide from MBA Mission and from ClearAdmit and compared them with each other.

Short conclusion:
There exists no clear winner. Both provide you with content or details that the other one doesn't reveal.
Your choice depends on your needs:

Pros of Both
- Both guides help you to get a really good understanding of the school and will definitely save you valuable time as both companies have done a really good job in researching the schools
- You find infos and opinions in the guides, that you don't find on the schools' websites. In particular, both present students' opinions.
- Both present basic information, that you necessarily expect from such a guide: Professors, The Grading System, The campus, The study method, Flexibility / Rigidity of the courses, Curriculum, Statistics about the students / their industries etc.

Cons of Both
- 25$, from my point of view, seems overpriced when you compare the approximately 50 page guides from Clear Admit and the 70-90 page guides from mbaMission to the e-book market (We are not talking about hard cover guides, but e-books in the form of pdfs).
I would appreciate packages that reduce the price of a single book, if you choose to purchase several.
(I would be more eager to buy other guides of schools I potentially would want to consider If I only had to pay 10$)

The following Pros and Cons mention facts that are true only for the specific company

Pros of MBA Admission
- Put every school in a MBA context and talk about several key aspects one should have in mind when picking a school... maybe even things you haven't thought about yet
- They do a phenomenal job in describing the curriculum and past events of the school, in particular by putting them in specific industry/field contexts. That means, if you are aiming at the healthcare industry/at being an entrepeneur/at working in the finance industry, they show exactly what the school has to offer in those fields
- They provide a lot of valuable opinions from students that they have interviewed
- Provide a valuable passage of "What the admission officers are saying". Here they, for example, talk about common mistakes.

Cons of MBA Admission
- The first 30 pages put the school in the MBA context. Roughly 50% of this content is not specific about the particular school but rather general things you should bear in mind and how schools in general distinguish. Consequently, if you buy another guide from the company, there is a lot of content that you've already paid for (another reason why I don't think you should be charged 25$ again)
- Links don't always work (Tip for the reader of mbaMission: Don't directly link to external web pages from within your book but rather indirect them through your own server. This way, you can redirect the links easily to a new destination address, while being able to leave the books the same)
- No PDF Table of contents that allows you to jump to the different paragraphs from within your PDF reader

Pros of Clear Admit
- Talk a lot about the campus, its surrounding and the possibilities the city has to offer => not only focused on the school
- Presents information and analysis on the schools' essays
- Describes the finance opportunities in great detail
- Very concise
- You get the code for a 10% coupon with your first order (=> the following books only cost 22.5$)

Cons of Clear Admit
- Not quite as detailed as MBA Mission when it comes to explaining the curriculum
- In general, it is easier to gather the information that ClearAdmit provides you with, yourself - in contrast to the details you get from mbaMission.


Hope this helps,
Kevin

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