Ross or Darden

That's right, I did discuss Ross v. Darden in a prior post. Ross enjoys a huge following here at GMATclub, and while I definitely believe it is a great school, I think the activity and reputation here exceeds the level of interest and it's reputation in general. The decision seems to be a landslide, but I just wanted to point out that according to US News, Ross is ranked 11th while Darden and Duke are tied for 12th. Of the three schools, Darden has the highest starting salary and substantially better employments numbers at graduation and 3 months after graduation. Just for reference:

School : '06 Starting Salary : employed at graduation : employed 3 months after graduation
Darden : $112,506 : 83.8% : 93.9%
Ross : $110,834 : 79.6% : 85.1%
Fuqua : $108,556 : 79.8% : 89.0%

Certainly, salary and rate of employment are just a few of the factors to consider when choosing a business school, but since the discussion of this thread seems to be skewing towards employment, these numbers bear some examination. Darden grads are employed at a 4% better rate at graduation; and the higher average salaries likely reflects that more Darden grads are getting the jobs of their choice, or at the very least suggests that Darden's employment rate is not higher simply because it's grads are settling for lesser jobs. If you move on to the rate 3 months after graduation, Darden's gap over Fuqua widens to almost 5%, and the gap over Ross is almost 9%! That's definitely not an insignificant figure. The 85.1% employment rate means that some 60-70 Ross students are unemployed after 3 months; and if they had an employment rate equal to Darden's, over half of those people would have jobs, leaving just 25-35 unemployed.

So, I've never really understood why people automatically assume people will chose Ross and Fuqua ahead of Darden. Even before I learned of my scholarship from Darden, it was easy for me to choose Darden over Fuqua (my Ross application didn't get considered because of a screw up) based on personal considerations; but people were surprised last year that I preferred Darden to Fuqua. I do understand that Darden's admit numbers were weak for a number of years. This was related to an expansion from 240 students to the current 300 students per year. Just to note, the the above employment numbers reflect Darden's worst admissions figures; admissions has moved back in line with other peer schools in the last two years, and employers have been uniformly pleased with the current students, and I believe McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Goldman, Morgan and Lehman brothers (basically the top three in consulting and banking, especially the the problems Citi is having) all made offers this year either equaling or exceeding their historical highs - in other words the most ever.

All that said, I think it is a personal decision about where you'd like to ago, especially among these three schools, which I believe are extremely similar; in terms of reputation I quite certain that recruiters (especially big, frequent recruiters) view students at these schools equally - almost mirror images of one another. Here are some things I consider advantages for the various schools, just going off the top of my head.

Michigan has football, which is a big plus for me. It's also got a great location, and for people starting next year it will have an awesome new facility (if it gets completed on schedule). On the other hand, Michigan can get really really cold, which is a serious pain in the ass. Also, the largest nearby metro area is Detroit, and I really cannot overstate how much Detroit sucks. The thought that people having trouble finding jobs might have to turn local employers in that area scares me. Detroit is probably the worst big city (won't be big much longer given the rate that people are living) in the US; it's really a miserable place.

Fuqua has a nice campus and a really nice building for the business school. The weather is definitely a lot better than in Michigan and the local employment centers are pretty appealing and the area seems to be growing nicely. There are finance opportunities in Charlotte, and plenty of management opportunities in the research triangle - which is especially nice given Fuqua's strength in health care. Duke has basketball, which is good and bad. The downside is that people all over the country hate Duke. You'd be amazed how many people, especially in ACC country, just hate Duke and dookies (people from Duke) with a passion. It's related to the success they have had in basketball, but UNC has been even more successful historically, and people do not hate them. I'll go off on a little tangent here, I think people hate Duke because coach K is just an annoying human being, and over the years Duke has recruited players that just piss people off. We had this discussion in another thread, but Duke probably has a dozen people that are just hated everywhere, and I can't think of another school with more than one or two people in their histories. (Laettner, Hurley, Wojsekowski, Thomas Hill, Danny Ferry, Reddick, McRoberts, etc... people really hate these people and it has nothing to do with whether they won or not - just look at McRoberts). Ok, finished with the tangent. I think Fuqua is a great school with a lot to offer. I could definitely imagine being really happy there (and at Ross as well).

Darden has an impressively beautiful campus with excellent facilities that are about 5 years old. In fact, I'd put the architecture of our private parking garage (do other schools get their own parking garages?) up against the school facilities of most other business schools. Darden has nice weather and a country-club like setting. In fact, there are at least 5 excellent golf courses within 10 miles, some of which offer student semester passes for about $400 and fees of about $15 a round. There really is a sense of community here that isn't found many other places (only Tuck has a higher rate of student giving), and alumni are amazingly responsive to current students. I'll give a personal example. After completing my banking job search, but before accepting my offer, I contacted a Darden alumn working at Intel's venture capital arm. He responded saying they had already finished their hiring for the year but send over my resume just for reference; I took the message as a standard 'don't call us, we'll call you message'. I went ahead and accepted my banking offer (my first choice) and a couple of weeks later, the guy at Intel capital emailed saying that one of his portfolio companies (a start-up they had invested in) was looking for a management intern and that he could probably put me in place. I told him I'd already accepted my banking offer, so he suggested we get together when I'm out in the bay area. I'd been in contact with him a total of one time, and he went out of his way to keep me in mind for other opportunities. I can honestly say that alums respond to requests at least 95% of the time, and they do not blow you off with cursory responses. All schools say they have strong networks, but it really isn't true everywhere to the same extent; the student and alumni community is really very very strong at Darden.

So again, I know that Ross enjoys a strong following here and I think it's a great business school. But from a recruiting standpoint, there is basically no difference between Ross, Fuqua and Darden. Different people will enjoy their experiences at each school to varying extents, and everyone will have their own preferences. I just wanted to point out that away from GMATclub, out in the real world, and in alternate world inhabited by recruiters, these three schools are probably as similar as it gets; and that's reflected in the rankings as well.