bb Thanks for the reply!
Given the current economic environment I'm not super confident I'll be able to secure full sponsorship. I thought the tax benefits were capped at a much lower amount? Someone else at my firm is going to one of the schools I was admitted to, I'll connect with them and see if they secured sponsorship. I'm willing to pay a lot out of pocket but I feel need to be confident that I'll significantly increase my salary over the next 5-10 years to make it worthwhile.
As far as goals are concerned, I'm pretty confident I can gain a promotion with the next year or so. I'd apply any salary increase directly to tuition/loans. Long term though, I don't think there's much room to grow beyond another promotion at best and that's if my boss is promoted. My sister lives in Chicago, so I'm definitely willing to move there which is another reason Booth has the edge. There are so many CPG/eCommerce and tech companies based there or have a huge office.
re: diversity, I mainly looked at the class profiles. When I originally looked at Booth, gender split was closer to 80% men to 20% women. Darden/Fuqua had a higher % of women. Also, both Darden & Fuqua had more D&I questions on their application. Not sure if that ends up having an impact on class profile but was surprised that Booth didn't ask similar questions. It's not a huge deal, but all things being equal might have tipped the scales.
I took the EA. I originally planned on taking the GMAT but was scoring poorly on practice exams and couldn't find the time to thoroughly prepare. I bought the 4 month
TTP package and it took a month to just get through 3 chapters. I do think overall the EA is easier, especially with the quant questions more business oriented.