ReallyNow wrote:
I read through these posts, and I thought prospective students might benefit from a balanced perspective on Hult.
Let's start by establishing my credibility. I'm an alumnus of Hult Boston. I attended the school from 2010-2011, and graduated with an MBA. I got a job with a Fortune 150 well before graduation. My starting salary was just shy of six figures, and is currently quite a bit over six figures (USD).
I had a 680 on the GMAT. I was 27 when I applied for the MBA, with 4 years of work experience. I'm not going to go into the details of my work ex, since that would be sufficient to identify me personally to many people, but let's just say I had an unusual profile; not the standard engineering -> IT one that very many students from India have.
Please note that I'm not implying that there's anything wrong with that profile. I'm just saying that the nature of my profile helped me stand out, and was somewhat helpful when it came to getting employed.
Right, so that's me. Now, how about Hult?
Here's where an old adage comes to mind. You get out of Hult what you put into Hult.
What do I mean by this?
It's quite simple, actually. As others have pointed out, Hult has many flaws. Yes, it was only two floors of a large building when I attended (though I understand it's expanded since). Yes, the career services cell isn't exactly the best on the planet. Yes, the student body did have some elements that clearly shouldn't have been admitted (I'll expand on this momentarily). Yes, the recruiting process seemed very sales'y.
However, the one thing that Hult Boston has that made it all worthwhile for me? The professors. They were truly excellent.
Daniel Deneffe (Cornell PhD, taught Economics at Duke, teaches at Harvard, and is a senior partner at Arthur D Little) taught strategy, and boy, was that a great class. This guy works on billion dollar projects, and when he talks to you about game theory and how T-mobile lost a few billion euros because of a flawed understanding of game theory, you shut up and listen. Deneffe is intimidating as all hell, and doesn't stand fools gladly (or at all, in fact), and if you can go toe-to-toe with him in the classroom, you know you're doing something right.
Rob Anthony (Harvard MBA, worked for many years at IBM as a consultant) taught global management and strategic management of new technology. This guy is an excellent professor in a different mould than Deneffe. He's very friendly and approachable, and takes the Socratic approach to teaching. However, don't be fooled by his buddy-buddy manner; his grading is really tough, and he doesn't hesitate to rip your paper apart with a few well chosen notes (never in public, though).
Julie Yao Cooper (Harvard AB, Harvard MBA, worked with bigass corps) teaches a couple of introductory courses. I wish she taught more courses.. she's scary as hell too, but an excellent professor.
I mean, I could go on dropping names and fancy degrees and all that jazz, but really, these guys are great teachers who know what they are talking about. I learnt a LOT in my one year, and I do not regret going to Hult simply because of the excellent faculty. Everything else pales into insignificance, quite honestly. There was only one professor whom I didn't consider to be top drawer, and hey, there's gotta be one, right? I'm not going to name names here, because I don't want to sound like I'm telling tales, but even he would be considered a great professor by many.. I just didn't get along with him personally.
A one year MBA is VERY hard work. One common thread that I noticed among many of my fellow Indian classmates was an unfounded sense of entitlement. We know how grades are inflated in many schools and colleges in India (98.7% in the 12th boards? really?), so lots of us think that showing up to class and submitting any old paper should be enough to get an A.
US schools don't work like that. Getting good grades isn't easy, and if you feel that you can quote verbatim from Wikipedia and get straight A's, good luck! The plagiarism policy is very strict, and I personally know guys who failed courses because they thought that ripping papers off the internet was the way to go.
Hult will not get you a job. What Hult does is put you in one of the best cities in the US (and this is probably true for SF as well, though I have no personal knowledge there) to get a job. If you know what you're doing, and you know what you're good at, you can get a job. It's not easy, no. Don't expect to get 200k from Goldman Sachs with a 3.0 GPA from a mid-tier (at best) b-school, 3 years of work ex, and random no-name college for undergrad... (don't laugh, I know of at least three people who this profile were convinced that they would get interviews with Goldman. Didn't happen, of course).
You're in the middle of Boston/Cambridge. You can walk to MIT. Harvard is one T-stop (subway) from MIT. You can attend hundreds of mixers, meet 'n greets, entrepreneurship events, and what have you all over Boston, and meet some of the best and brightest minds. You can volunteer for programs at all sorts of places that get you in touch with prospective employers. I personally worked at MIT and got to meet the founder of Reddit, the co-founder of the Android OS, and Vinod Khosla. No, I'm not some kind of super cool dude... just a regular guy who was interested in things and asked questions. People here are very welcoming of being asked questions, and you never know where you might end up.
Hult Career Services will clean up your resume, but they will not go out and meet people for you. Recruiting at mid-tier schools is terrible anyway, and Hult was even worse when I was there. Despite that, many of my classmates got decent jobs. You know when you're in class and you can tell which guys are going to get hired? Yeah, those guys (and girls) got hired. Of course, some didn't. Them's the breaks. In percentage terms, I'd say about 60-70% of the class got good jobs.
Career services did help people get interviews. J&J came to campus. Phillips was there too (I think Philips conducted online/phone interviews.. I wasn't interested, so I don't remember. I do know that two of my classmates got great jobs with Philips. Both were from India, with the standard visa restrictions etc, so it's not like Philips hired only Americans.)
Look, if you can go to Harvard, more power to you. Hult is not in the same league. Heck, it's barely in the same continent. Does that mean Hult is a scam? Nope, it's not. If you go there, work your ass off, go out and meet people, and just try hard, you can make it work. If you think showing up is enough, then you're going to be disappointed.
Here are some of the companies that hired people from my batch. These are only the ones I know personally, friends of mine etc
Ernst and Young (Brazilian dude. Great GPA, 6-8 years of work ex.. smart guy.)
PwC (the guy who got in was Indian, had an excellent resume and GPA, and was a really strong candidate. Senior consultant position, I think)
Bank of Tokyo (Spanish dude got hired as VP of something.. he was older (35?) and had great work ex. Nice guy too)
EMC (Indian guy got hired as a senior something in marketing. This guy had a 3.9 GPA and straight A's (topped pretty much all the courses), so it wasn't surprising)
Swarowski (French girl, 6 odd years of work ex with companies like Cartier. I think she got hired at a senior manager level)
Philips
Citibank
Delloite
Accenture
Well Fargo
Sony
Santander
and a bunch more.. Can't be bothered writing them all.
Point is, if you met any of these people, you wouldn't be surprised that they got the jobs that they did. And of the ones who didn't get hired, you wouldn't be surprised that they didn't. Of course, a few people had bad luck, but they were really just a handful (three that I can recall).
Anyway, go to Hult, or don't go to Hult. I don't really care, I don't get paid for referring people. But make up your own mind, and no, Hult is certainly not a scam.
I hope this helps someone, and feel free to ask me questions.
Finally, a fully honest post about Hult Boston. Thank you.
I have been pretty anti-hult, mainly because they really rubbed me the wrong way throughout the process. I received pretty aggressive sales calls from alumni trying to sell me on the Hult brand... I'm happy you were able to land such a great job, but I'd love your honest feedback.
Now, in hindsight, if you were to do it all over again...
Where would you rank Hult in Boston between the other options in and around the city?
HBS
MIT
BC
BU
Babson
Northeastern
Bentley
Suffolk
UMass - Amherst(ok not in the city)
Umass - Boston
Umass - Dartmouth
Umass - Lowell
Brandeis (I know, crazy, brandeis has an MBA)
Simmons
Endicott
Berklee College of Music (YUP, they have an MBA, in music but still... imagine saying you got your MBA at Berklee... I wonder how many people it would fool...)
IDK if I missed any... My point... there are SOOOO many MBA programs in Boston, where does Hult rank?
If someone were looking for a career in Boston post mba, which schools would be a safer bet then Hult?