Johns Hopkins Carey Business School

I've read a few articles about it that left an overall favorable impression. Mostly I'm chiming in with some anecdotal information- that Carey has been hugely popular with the TW/HK/Chinese applicant crowd. I live in Taiwan, and everyone has been really excited about the opportunity to get into a new U.S. school. They see it as a good opportunity to get a U.S. name on their resume, and are hopeful that the school will be generous with scholarship.

Of the three of my coworkers who applied to Carey this past year, all three got in with very similar profiles: work experience (Big 4, but quite junior), education (local Taiwan universities), GPA (stellar, but take that with a grain of salt coming from here), and GMAT (550-650 range). One is matriculating, one turned it down (going to reapply to other schools next year), and one is still deciding- scared to take out loans since she didn't get any $$. The one who is deciding is also on the waitlist at Notre Dame, but other than that one WL they were all three dinged everywhere else they applied. I did essay review for some of their apps, and they were fine. Not outstanding, but told good stories.

I think there are a huge number of considerations when looking at a new program like this. Obviously you're not going to get the benefits of a large alumni base, name recognition, or have any sort of track record for recruiting/placements to use as a benchmark. On those three things alone, I would skip Carey this early on. Plus there are going to be kinks that need to get worked out re: curriculum.

But then again, if you think the school might be a top 30 program in the next 5 years, it could be a really great opportunity to get to be a part of something new! I'm really curious to hear about your impressions after your visit.

what are your career aspirations/goals? why don't you take UNC's offer- it's a very good program...

So of course, now that I start this post, GMATClub suggests one from 2010 that I hadn't been able to find!
"need info on johns hopkins carey business school" forum #91819

At any rate, the #1 reason I even investigated the program is that I'm in provider-side healthcare and want to stay in that arena. My potential employers/clients are largely hospital CEOs and they will care significantly more about the affiliated med school ranking than MBA ranking. My question about the MBA ranking is largely because I want to assess how rigorous Carey is compared to other schools.

At the Candidate Day, I came away with two big impressions regarding the content and methodology of the program:

1) The faculty, staff, admin, students are hugely committed to the idea that business should make the world a better place. The value of service to humanity is quite palpable - for instance their global immersion is to 3rd world countries rather than London/Paris/etc. like I've seen in other programs.

2) Dean Gupta pushed the curriculum to be in-line with his belief that the business landscape will be radically different in 15, 20, 25 years. So the academic experience forces a lot of ambiguity on the students. The courses are co-taught by professors from different disciplines; the Discovery-to-Market project is with local start-ups; there are many situations that purposefully challenge the students' problem-solving skills by changing the context.

My two biggest concerns are the lack of an alum network, and the lack of straight-edge, finance-types in the student body. The Career Services, however, put the first concern to rest. They have intense, high-level resources to throw at the students, and appear to push students to work on branding and marketing themselves. Anyone coming out of there will have excellent tools to find the job they want.

The energy was palpably exciting, sky's-the-limit, innovative, etc. I admit, I'm intrigued by the idea that such a unique program would attract a specific kind of employer. Risk-takers go here, and I imagine risk-takers would hire from here. Certainly they would be employing specific human capital, however, and not an established network. I've spoken to folks in the School of Public Health and the Med School and they don't know Carey exists...makes it hard to plug into JHU alums in general.

Did you go to the Candidate Day in February? I was in Maryland to interview at UMD/Smith and had read about Carey so I went to the Candidate Day in Feb while I was there.

In the end, I decided not to apply. I think the program has lots of potential and the curriculum is intriguing (there's a required int'l trip/project as well as a series where you market a JH technology) but there were too many growing pains I was picturing to jump in to a new program. Granted, it still has the JH name so they likely aren't going to screw it up but still...

And this may be minor to most people but when I was researching schools, their admissions dept. seemed super unorganized which ended up being a major turnoff. For example, I'd send an e-mail and get a response literally two months later!

Mvanbusk- thank you for sharing your impressions!

I think there could be a really fantastic pairing with JH's SAIS program that could lead to awesome things in the future. Particularly for those interested in going into international business/policy work. However, you're right that there is very little awareness among the other schools about the new MBA program. Neither of my friends at SAIS had heard about it.

Which way are you leaning for the fall?

@rha - I've had the opposite experience with Admissions. I sent one email and had three people call/email me back a bit unawares of the others.

@Sailorette - I'm totally torn. Every day I wake up leaning a different direction. But the UNC deposit/acceptance is due by Monday, so I have to decide!

If they were unaware of the other responses, that would seem to me to reflect on an unorganized (but very helpful) admissions office.

Hi mvanbusk,

JHU alum here, class of '06. If you have any questions about the university as a whole, feel free to send them my way. It's an excellent institution, but the MBA program is extremely different from UNC's.

There are plenty of finance alumni from Hopkins if that's your goal, but their focus will likely be on recruiting undergrads. It's certainly not an easy transition from B-school. I know that UNC has a much stronger network of finance MBAs, and they do a great job with investment management.

There's a big difference between Chapel Hill and Baltimore too.

-LGM

The school is making steady progress towards AACSB accreditation. Best case scenerio, it may get accredited in 2012. Here is some information found on JHU Carey Business Schools online job posting:

"AACSB Accreditation
In May 2009 the Carey School initiated the process to pursue accreditation by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). Despite certain questions that were raised about diversity, faculty and programs submitted for exclusion from the accreditation process, the school’s Eligibility Application was accepted by the AACSB’s Pre-Accreditation Committee (PAC) in June 2009. The school prepared and submitted the required Accreditation Plan in August 2009 and in January 2010 received notification from the AACSB that its plan was accepted. Seven concerns were raised, primarily about the school’s Assurance of Learning program and its faculty resources. The Carey School submitted its first required progress report in March 2010. The school was notified in May 2010 that its Progress Report was accepted, but five areas of concern, mostly about faculty resources, were identified. The school submitted its second progress report January 15, 2011. The Assurance of Learning program and faculty resources remain the only concerns of the Initial Accreditation Committee (IAC). The next progress report will be submitted in January 2012."

[Note: I would post the link, but since i created this account just now the site says that i cannot post links for five days. I found the Dean Job posting online so the information is publically available.]

I don't know much about Carey at all. However, I'd have to say that one of the biggest strengths Carey has is being part of JHU. That's a very powerful brand which I'm sure will help the school rise quickly in the rankings. It would definitely be an experience to get in on the ground floor at a future top 20 program (I can see it rising fast due to the JHU equity and resources).

I'd be careful with this reasoning.
The basic dynamic here is that there are only so many spots in the top tier, and schools that have made it there are not keen to move over and make room for others. As hard as a Big Name University may work to rise in the rankings, you have Top Tier Incumbents working just as hard to stay ahead of them. Established elites enjoy other advantages that a late-mover just can't overcome: recruiter pull, alum network, etc. A lower-ranked school in the Wild West of the Top 50 to 100 can put in the effort to push other peers out of the way and rise 10 spots over the course of a few years if they want to, but there just really isn't all that much movement at the top. This is the nature of incumbency.

I'm not saying that Carey isn't a good option to consider. In general I feel like young programs associated with strong-brand schools are a value buy (see: Yale). They are hungry and ambitious. But you should only go to a school if you like it for what it is now, not based on some gamed-out notion of what it will become in X years due to Y factor and controlling for Z variable.

I see what you're saying. I'd say that JHU is a stronger brand than Georgetown. And although Cornell is an Ivy League School, it's usually a Top 15 program for undergrad as well. Sometimes it breaks into the top 10. I think the highest it's ever ranked is #6 (and that was during my freshman year). So relative to where it is as an undergraduate institution, the b-school ranking is pretty comparable.
You mentioned Yale and that's a perfect case for what I mean. Yale wasn't even on the map 20 years ago, but now it's a high ranked program. It had to have pushed some incumbent school a few spots lower. I'm not saying that there's a guarantee that JHU will help Carey do the same, but I am saying that it's a solid foundation to start from in order to build a future top tier program.

Yes, and in the short term, a new school can only go up, from Nonexistent to Unranked to Top 60 to Top 40 etc. That is where there is movement. The closer you get to the peak, however, there is less and less movement. There seem to be hard boundaries between Top 5, Top 10, Top 20 and Other. A lot of shifting within those categories, but not much moving in or out.

Yale, I think, is a special case, given the resources it has to throw around and its magical name. If Yale opened a Cosmetology School tomorrow it would be top tier before too long. "Harvard/Stanford/Yale" is a thing. Not so for the other elite schools in our example. "Georgetown/Cornell/Johns Hopkins" makes a lot more sense than inserting any one of those names into H/S/Y. I have to imagine that Carey's trajectory will more closely resemble McDonough & Johnson's than Yale SOM's. It will plateau somewhere.

Then again, prediction is very hard, especially about the future.

Hello guys,

Any 2012 JHU - Carey applicants?

I don't know much about Hopkins myself, but like other posters said, Carey has the potential to be a big time business school for the Baltimore and DC areas. I think once it gets AACSB accreditation (it's going to need it to take that next step to being a big player), I would think that it will experience a rapid ascension in the rankings. JHU is already the best university in Maryland, so any school it has will draw attention.

I know it's named already, like many other universities' b schools, but for the interim, I think Carey should emphasize that it is The Johns Hopkins University School of Business more than it has. I don't know what you all think of that.

You touched base upon valid points. I am an admitted prospect to the 2014 class. Although the curriculum sounds intriguing and exciting, I have some worries regarding the career placement rates in finance and as you said the accreditation.

The career services office at Carey did a tremindious job securing good summer jobs for the inaugural class. Clearly, because the school is still too young, gauging how it will fair in the job market in the North East region(and internationally for that matter)is still vague.

If any of you interims out there, please weigh in on the subject.
I would like to know why you have decided to choose JHU's new b-school over GWU, Smith, or McDonough?

Thanks!

I'm not a prospect for Hopkins right now but I am applying to all the other three schools (GW, UMD, Georgetown). At least for the PT market in DC, it looks like Georgetown and Maryland will set the market for everyone else this year. Georgetown will take the best prospects who don't anticipate having to be in travel intensive jobs over the next three or four years. After all Georgetown doesn't have a flexible MBA by any stretch and they will tell you upfront. Maryland has the only weekend only MBA program that has full AACSB accreditation and that weekend program probably will have a lot of great candidates. I also think GW is right there with Maryland overall, but it is a smaller b school than UMD and G-Town.

I think someone who picks Hopkins over the other three wants a unique learning experience and/or maybe the student's career overrides the fact that his or her MBA doesn't have AACSB accreditation which is really a piece of paper. Either way, the Hopkins MBA can't be considered a slouch because JHU is not going to tolerate having a subpar degree at any school with its name, so in the future this degree can be an asset. However prospects that don't have too much of a formal business background should stick to the aforementioned options.

Thank you novanative .

You again hit it spot on. I am a RD2 applicant at 3 other schools (Wharton, BU, and GWU). I am also gonna be applying to McDonough in R3. As a finance major and former money market dealer, Wharton is my ultimate pick. The other schools are great and each one has its pros and to a an extent "cons". So I'll just wait to hear from the other schools, as choosing/comparing among them becomes easier for me

Note: I applied to the full-time MBA program at al the above mentioned schools.

I was accepted to Emory, as my username would suggest, but I am very interested in the JHU program. This talk about rankings is silly. MSU Broad and SMU broke into the top 25 this year so make no mistake about it, there is room for new comers in the top 25. Vanderbilt and Georgetown would agree.

As for JHU v. GTown in the BoWash demo, I wouldn't worry. NYU and Columbia aren't lamenting the competition in NY. To put MD and GW on the same level as JHU and GTown is a stretch. While, yes, their MBA programs are mature, they are not in the same league in terms of prestige. JHU is one of the most prestigious univerisities in the world, period, end of story. World class universities don't tolerate mediocrity and JHU's Carey MBA will be world class.

That being said, I would have to think long and hard about turning down a UNC, GTown or (in my case) Emory admit for the gamble. Plain and simple, the alumni base is scant and all new things have bugs to fix. You will have access to any job opportunities you want from JHU, but not the alumni to hold the door for you as you walk in. What is one of the main advantages of a top 25 MBA? That alumni holding the door for you as you walk in. So, weigh that.

Ultimately, if you are struggling to gain acceptance to a top 25 program (stalwarts, not the "oh, would you look at that, MSU and SMU are top schools this year"), JHU is a phenomenal opportunity you may never have again (at least not until CalTech or Brown develop an MBA). You have the chance to be part of something big, something new, something special that you may not ordinarliy get. Carpe Diem, my friends!