As a current student at Kellogg, I'd like to offer some inside (and, inevitably, biased) insights on our supposed weakness in finance, relative to schools like Wharton, Columbia and Chicago GSB.
We're obviously proud of our top reputation in marketing, but we're also a bit tired of the notion that if you want to do finance, you're better off going somewhere else. In fact, many here argue that our strength in finance is a well-kept secret in the MBA world.
On the academic side, Kellogg professors won one of the highest number of prizes (compared to other schools) for their articles in the Journal of Finance, one of the most prestigious finance publications. Robert McDonald's book on Derivatives Markets is considered the industry standard and is used in top business schools around the world. Other faculty includes people who have run PE / VC funds, or have held senior positions at bulge bracket firms. No weakness there.
On the recruiting side, Wall Street is incredibly receptive of Kellogg students, partly because we have a reputation for working well in teams, which, let's face it, is not what the average banker is known for. The feedback we get from Wall Street recruiters is that they'd love more Kellogg students, but since so few are interested in that career field, recruiting them is difficult. The students that do pursue a banking career (not me by the way), and in fact many of my first-year friends, are going to all the right places on Wall Street and in London.
The finance caliber of our students is nothing to be ashamed of -- we do remarkably well in b-school finance competitions. Kellogg placed first in the 2008 Wharton MBA Buyout Case Competition, ahead of Wharton, HBS and Chicago GSB. Months ago we placed second in the Cornell MBA Stock Pitch Competition, ahead of Wharton, Columbia, and Chicago GSB. Last year we placed first in that same competition. In 2007 we won the Evergreen Investments Alpha Challenge, beating LBS, Chicago GSB, Columbia and others. Kellogg and Chicago GSB compete every year in the JPMorgan M&A Challenge, and Kellogg has won six of the past nine years. I cannot find weakness there.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm sure other schools can also drum up lists of impressive accomplishments and credentials, and I'm not trying to prove that we're better in any way. I just think it's hard to justify the claim that our finance program is 'weaker'. I would argue that we're right there at the top, it's just that that's not what we're known for.
Which leads me to the actual recruiting process. Anyone who has gone through recruiting at a top business school knows the mixed blessing of recruiting events. Yes, you get the opportunity to network to try and secure an interview, but so do your classmates. Students always ask recruiters how to maximize their chances of getting an interview, and the answer, invariably, is "be memorable". And that's where Kellogg starts to be a pleasant place. It's easier to be "memorable" among 50 students (which is roughly how many people recruit for banking at Kellogg), than it is among 150-200 students, which is closer to the number at the traditional finance schools. One of our finance professors, David Stowell, puts it like this: would you rather be a small fish in a big pond, or a big fish in a small pond?
This phenomenon is arguably even more profound in the actual interviewing process. Since banks can usually hire less people than they consider 'hireable', you have to outperform your peers if you want to land that job at Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley. At Kellogg you're competing against mostly career switchers with limited finance experience (banks love career switchers by the way), whereas at the more traditional finance schools you'll find more people with prior banking experience or who live and breathe to become a banker. Who would you rather compete with?
Then you have the effect of competition between schools for spots at the big banks. Sure, the traditional finance schools will fill plenty of spots every year, but banks want diversity in their teams and if they can hire one more person, it can be beneficial to be the potential second Kellogg hire as opposed to being the potential tenth hire from Columbia, Wharton, etc.
Again, I'm not arguing that these schools don't deserve their stellar finance reputations, and if you want to work on Wall Street there's no doubt that those schools are very safe choices. But, I do think that Kellogg sometimes gets dismissed way too easily as 'not a finance school'.
Note that, by the same logic, you could argue that if it's good to be the 'underdog banker' at Kellogg, it would be equally beneficial to be the 'underdog marketer' at for example Wharton -- and I would say that's true. I'm sure that Wharton is an excellent place to do marketing, and that your chances of landing a good marketing job are just as good at Wharton as they are at Kellogg. I would argue that there is very little difference between the top schools in this regard. Don't dismiss Wharton if you want to do marketing, and don't dismiss Kellogg if you want to do finance.
Anyway, I just wanted to add my two cents. As you can probably tell I'm very excited about Kellogg, and think it's an excellent school, whatever your career goals are.
Nov 20
26 Feb 2008, 11:51
