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jallenmorris
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A question for bschool students & those accepted 01 Jul 2008, 12:23
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Why do people not want to stay their UG school?
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kryzak
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A question for bschool students & those accepted 01 Jul 2008, 12:41
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jallenmorris
Why do people not want to stay their UG school?
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did you mean "stay at" their UG school? or did you mean something else? if the former, I'm headed back to my UG school because I truly enjoyed my UG experience there (and it's a great b-school in itself, fitting what I want to do). :)

As for the "debate" going on, I have a theory I don't know if it's actual fact or not. Since there are WAY more applicants than seats at the top 15 b-schools, and hypothetically saying that all the "top applicants" (the ones that have demonstrated great leadership, GPA, GMAT, etc...) come from a good spread of schools, if you were the adcom, how would you pick between people of similar GMAT, similar GPA, and similar career progress/leadership/extracurriculars? Would you lean ever so slightly for person A from Harvard/Princeton/Yale (and Berkeley, yay! :-D) or would you pick the person from a respectable non-top-50/100 school?

Granted, the adcoms want to keep diversity in their minds, and will probably pick a non-top-50/100 school applicant (all else being equal) once in a while, but a top-50/100 school is in the top rankings/reputation already did the pre-filtering for the b-school (with their own very stringent admit process), so having a UG degree from those schools itself is a "stamp of approval", similar to why we're all trying to get an MBA from a top 15 school.

I personally believe that is the reason why many of the top 15 b-schools will have mostly top UG students, with a sprinkling of other good schools here and there because those applicants maybe did some spectacular things that were better than most top UG applicants... It's a natural conclusion when you have lots of competition between very similar backgrounds, and one of the few differentiating aspects is your UG degree and GPA. :)

BTW, as a liberal arts major, all the Ivy + Stanford are definitely good schools, but don't forget if you do sciences or engineering, MIT, Berkeley, Cal Tech, and Georgia Tech comes into play as a UE school. Actually Berkeley is highly ranked in all the liberal arts majors too, generally in the top 5. :wink:
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jallenmorris
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A question for bschool students & those accepted 01 Jul 2008, 12:44
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Wow, what I posted is not at all what I meant to say. It's amazing what a little editing will do

I meant to ask:

Why do people not want to say their UG school? Meaning, 'tell us where you went to UG.'
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kidderek
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A question for bschool students & those accepted 01 Jul 2008, 12:47
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jallenmorris
Wow, what I posted is not at all what I meant to say. It's amazing what a little editing will do

I meant to ask:

Why do people not want to say their UG school? Meaning, 'tell us where you went to UG.'
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Cause I'm embarassed of mine :oops:

hahaha

anonymity is another reason. or at least make it more difficult for someone to track me down.
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A question for bschool students & those accepted 01 Jul 2008, 12:51
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kryzak


Would you lean ever so slightly for person A from Harvard/Princeton/Yale (and Berkeley, yay! :-D) or would you pick the person from a respectable non-top-50/100 school?
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A 3.5 @Harvard is much more difficult to attain than a 3.5 @Pepperdine


kryzak

BTW, as a liberal arts major . . . Actually Berkeley is highly ranked in all the liberal arts majors too, generally in the top 5. :wink:
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You liberal arts California hippies need to go get a haircut!!!
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Why would you be embarrased? Is it known for poor academics? That's the only reason I could think of being embarrased by which UG a person chooses. I'm not embarrased by mine because I know I got a good education there and was well prepared for law school. I could have done better, but thank god many schools look at the last 60 hours.
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A question for bschool students & those accepted 01 Jul 2008, 13:07
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kidderek
A 3.5 @Harvard is much more difficult to attain than a 3.5 @Pepperdine
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Exactly my point. :)

kidderek
You liberal arts California hippies need to go get a haircut!!!
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Have you ever seen my Facebook picture? Is that short enough for you? :wink:

jallenmorris, my UG school (if it's not obvious already) has been posted in most of my profiles and many threads. Of course, when I was applying, I kept it a little more private to keep anonymity, like kidderek said.
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A question for bschool students & those accepted 01 Jul 2008, 13:16
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kryzak

kidderek
You liberal arts California hippies need to go get a haircut!!!

Have you ever seen my Facebook picture? Is that short enough for you? :wink:
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kryz,
I'm about as Northeast as you are California. And I'm so jealous of your weather (it's always fun to get to work in a pool of sweat from the sun in the summer & my 50lb coat in the winter), so I'm always going to rib all you Californians for your hippy disposition. :P
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A question for bschool students & those accepted 01 Jul 2008, 13:31
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kidderek
kryz,
I'm about as Northeast as you are California. And I'm so jealous of your weather (it's always fun to get to work in a pool of sweat from the sun in the summer & my 50lb coat in the winter), so I'm always going to rib all you Californians for your hippy disposition. :P
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Other than the stereotypical hair, being hippie is cool, man! 8-)

Hope you can join us here next year, if you're applying to any schools in CA. :P
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A question for bschool students & those accepted 01 Jul 2008, 13:33
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Yeah, we definitely need more Cali B-school representation on this board. And don't worry, the hippies are mainly confined to Berkeley :-D
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A question for bschool students & those accepted 01 Jul 2008, 14:00
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kidderek
A 3.5 @Harvard is much more difficult to attain than a 3.5 @Pepperdine
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Unless Pepperdine practices in rampant grade inflation, that may not be true. The Ivies are known to participate in such practice.
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A question for bschool students & those accepted 01 Jul 2008, 14:11
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kidderek


A 3.5 @Harvard is much more difficult to attain than a 3.5 @Pepperdine
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As a SoCal boy, I think I need to represent a little bit.

3.5's at are a dime a dozen at Harvard, but Pepperdine is where you'll find the 9's and 10's.
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Didnt Princeton, Harvard, and Chicago get slammed a few years back for rampant grade inflation?

Edit: Must have skipped Soni's post:)
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sudden
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sonibubu
kidderek
A 3.5 @Harvard is much more difficult to attain than a 3.5 @Pepperdine

Unless Pepperdine practices in rampant grade inflation, that may not be true. The Ivies are known to participate in such practice.
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I support this. I don't think GPAs are very comparable from school to school, even though everyone, myself included, loves to compare them. A lot of private schools have rampant grade inflation, while many public schools have grade DEFLATION. I think we can all agree that the guy who goes to Harvard and gets a 4.0 is probably a genius, but besides that, all bets are off. There is just too much variation between schools, majors, professors, and even time (i.e., GPAs from twenty years ago are not comparable, etc.).
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I think GPA is more a function of major. I dont know a single sociology major who got less than a 3.5 even dumb folks at great schools...yet most of my friends who were engineering majors struggled to get in the 3.3 to 3.5 range...even bright folks at weak schools. Getting into the name brand school is the tough part, after that work load is pretty similar for the same majors. I have a friend who transfered from a small crappy school to a huge name top 20 school and said classes were way easier.

Personally I would say the course work for most science/engineer/math based majors is going to be harder and more intense than most humanities majors.
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A question for bschool students & those accepted 01 Jul 2008, 15:35
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ryguy904
kidderek


A 3.5 @Harvard is much more difficult to attain than a 3.5 @Pepperdine

As a SoCal boy, I think I need to represent a little bit.

3.5's at are a dime a dozen at Harvard, but Pepperdine is where you'll find the 9's and 10's.
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HAHAHA

I might choose Pepperdine over Harvard for that reason.
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A question for bschool students & those accepted 01 Jul 2008, 15:43
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I think in a lot of cases, it's true that those getting into good UG schools are a self selecting group. I'm at a very average state school, and there just aren't a ton of people applying to top 15 B-schools. And of the few that do, many don't really know what they're getting into and don't have much preparation for the application process.
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I think that people from unknown schools tend to not bother pursuing MBAs from top schools. I know there are only a handful of alums from top 20 mba programs...and there are actually more that went to M7s than the rest of the top 20. Getting PT mba's from local universities is fairly common but considering a class is 150-200 people in the recent past and was smaller than that years ago its not surprising that there isnt a heavy representation at top schools. There are more former admirals from my UG than top 20 MBAs haha.
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A question for bschool students & those accepted 01 Jul 2008, 16:33
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riverripper
I think that people from unknown schools tend to not bother pursuing MBAs from top schools. I know there are only a handful of alums from top 20 mba programs...and there are actually more that went to M7s than the rest of the top 20. Getting PT mba's from local universities is fairly common but considering a class is 150-200 people in the recent past and was smaller than that years ago its not surprising that there isnt a heavy representation at top schools. There are more former admirals from my UG than top 20 MBAs haha.
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I definitely agree with this. And it's a self-perpetuating cycle - people that are not surrounded by or get advice from individuals that went to top MBA programs are less likely to "think big." This is just a generality though, of course.
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sonibubu
kidderek
A 3.5 @Harvard is much more difficult to attain than a 3.5 @Pepperdine

Unless Pepperdine practices in rampant grade inflation, that may not be true. The Ivies are known to participate in such practice.
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Not true for all Ivies. I don't think grade inflation is rampant at Cornell.
I think the Arts and sciences school avg GPA when I graduated was around a 3.1?
The engineering school's avg GPA was something like a 2.7.

The only 4.0s I know are international students (mainly from Singapore) who have to maintain a 3.8 or else they'll have their scholarship revoked and be deported
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