How true is this?

Hi cheetarah,

She meant companies give the better job profiles to graduates of top 8 schools (especially the top 25%-30% of the class).

Thanks!

There is truth to this statement although I agree that I'm not sure I would draw the line right at Top 8 unless you are going into I-Banking/Private Equity/VC type roles where prestige is very important. But this is a trick that school outside the Top 15 employ when publishing their employment reports. Just because Goldman Sachs hired somebody from Ohio State doesn't mean he is performing the same role as an MBA from Harvard. Most likely the grads coming from lower tier schools are working in back office roles vs actual investment banking. So to some extent yes your relative is correct that not all jobs are equal just because it is the same employer.

That being said, if you go to Darden or Ross that doesn't mean you can't get a top tier job at a top tier company. There are less spots available certainly but I have a close friend in her second year at Darden who got an offer from one of the Top 3 consulting companies. Really it comes down to how competitive you are and how well you network. My personal cut-off was anything below Top 15 the return on investment didn't make much sense but that will vary based on everybody's individual situation and career goals. Make sure you get in touch with current students and ask them what TYPE of jobs graduates are getting not just who the employers are.

Hmm, I don't know. I'm at Booth and we are recruiting for the same jobs as people at Johnson, Ross, etc. Is your friend saying that people from T8 schools get the best assignments within the same job function? So there will people across the top 20 b-schools in McKinsey's summer associate program but those from the T8 will get staffed on the best projects? While I do agree with mappleby that at a certain point companies don't hire for the same TYPES of jobs at different tier schools (i.e. Top 15 vs. Top 50), but in the case of function recruiting the line is rarely drawn at the T8 (most companies go down to 25, although some of those schools may be targets for a specific region). So I guess I'm still kind of confused as to what your friend was talking about, specifically.

My significant other is a 2nd year at a top-3 school, so I can weigh in a little from that perspective.

She got hired to work in a 4-person rotational program at a 300+ member subsidiary of a major healthcare company. The other MBAs in the program are from 5-20 range schools. They're all getting the same pay/responsibilities. CEO is hiring manager and did not go to the same school as any of the hires.

Another offer was with a well-known and highly competitive program at a major pharma company. They had exclusively top 5/6 MBAs (H/S/W/Booth/Kellogg). There was some sort of affinity/rivalry thing going on with the graduates from these schools within the organization, and some managers expressed a strong bias towards candidates from their program of study. My SO mentioned that an environment like that seemed counter-productive.

Another company was a major consumer healthcare provider. They were hiring from all through the top 25, but it was apparent that my SO was getting a slightly sweeter deal than some of the other candidates.

So from my perspective, the answer is "it depends." From talking to other grads, I've gleaned that some places are like firm #2, where all the graduates are trying to figure out which bschool has the biggest... you know. The others seem to care less, and if you bust your ass, at top-25 program will be a door-opener, not a door-closer.

I agree, it depends on company.

In one of my informational interview, I spoke with a regional school MBA alum who networked into a job at a major Oil and Gas construction firm. He later learned that his role was one that the company recruited for exclusively at Harvard Business School (not the aforementioned regional school if there is any confusion). While recruiting options may be superior at a top 8 school, the glass ceiling for regional schools grads is full of holes.

I think you guys are deviating from the topic, or say widening the scope of the discussion before actually hitting the right spot. ss87 specifically asks for a comparison between top8 and top 13-ish schools. The area is grey and mysterious, with people having mixed opinions, only in this range - top8 vs top13.
The difference is remarkable and pretty significant between top8 vs top 50 regional schools.

And it is not about the "best" projects within the same function (as cheetarah pointed about). Once you get in within the same role, the projects that you get are clearly based upon your performance, and not on your pedigree.

The question is about getting the same roles at same levels within the same company. Similar to the concern ss87 raised, I 've also heard that roles may differ at top13 from what they are at top8. But, they may be isolated cases and I would like to hear more authentic views on the matter.

A recent alum or a second year might be able to provide a better insight on that.

While there is some truth that job prospects at M7 are better than the lower top 15, it isn't that stark. To get a job at M/B/B or GS/JPM/MS/CS/BAML etc you need to be at the top of your class no matter what. It's not like companies fill all their spots from HBS then move onto the next school.

From my experience in an investment banking perspective, the exact same companies recruit at Darden as at Booth or Columbia or at Wharton for the exact same roles. Darden is stronger at some banks than others but every bulge bracket recruits at Darden. They make more offers at Booth or Wharton, but those schools have 3+ times as many people recruiting for investment banking. Companies don't follow the M7 cutoff at all. In fact, there are many schools outside the top 7 that have much stronger presence on Wall Street than say Kellogg, MIT, or even Stanford: Duke, UNC, Darden, Yale, Johnson for example. Roughly 2/3 of people recruiting for banking this year from Darden got offers from bulge bracket firms, which I would guess is on par with other top schools. Most of the others were targeting boutiques.

Yep, I'd agree 100% with C2F (hope Darden is treating you well!). Most companies recruit across the T15/16 for the same jobs. I can't think of many schools that recruit at Wharton for one function and at Johnson for another. What I have seen is that some companies only recruit from the T8 and don't recruit at all below that. Actually what I see more of (at least with marketing/brand management) are companies recruiting from a select set of schools within the T15/16 in no particular rank order (I know General Mills recruits at HBS, Kellogg, Tuck, Darden, and Ross).

It really depends on the companies and the roles. I mean certain buyside firms (megafund PE, hedge funds, long-only mutual funds) will only recruit at the top 5-8 programs. Bulge bracket banks and MBB, however, will recruit at the top 15, maybe even top 20. The difference though is the # of offers they give out. So for example, my best friend is a 2nd year at a top schools and will be working at one of the MBB firms out in NYC. Last September, all the 2nd year MBAs who got full-time offers flew out to california for a retreat. He said that although there were non-m7 students there, they were relatively few in number. What he said was that there are much fewer first-round interview slots at a school like yale or darden than say kellogg or booth. Once you get the interview, everyone is held to the same standard, but getting that first interview is more difficult from a top 15ish program.

Raw numbers aren't an accurate measure. Kellogg has ~500 2Y MBA students per class, Booth has ~600 per class while Darden has ~320 and Yale ~250.

Using nice round numbers, if Kellogg had 50 first-round interview slots and Yale had 25, I'd argue the recruiting opportunities are the same at both schools. In other words, Booth and Kellogg would need to have greater than 2X the interview slots at Darden and Yale for me to consider this a dominant stat. Without hard data it all seems like hearsay.

Kellogg sent around 40 people to each of MBB last year. I think with yale, that number is more like 5-7, so even when you adjust for class size, kellogg performs a lot better with MBB consulting. Given the high opportunity costs of an MBA, I think one should almost always go to the best school he gets into in order to maximize his chances of getting the job he wants.

Out of 784 students across all MBA programs at Kellogg's Class of 2012, McKinsey hired 55, BCG 43, and Bain 35. That's 133 students or 17% of the class, and we know that overall, about 40% of Kellogg students go into some sort of consulting.

Yale doesn't give out exact numbers, but about 15-20% of a class of ~250 goes into consulting each year, so just around 50 people. If you figure half of that goes to MBB, then you have 25 total, or 7-8 per MBB. That's about the same as what @Shawshank said (not that I don't believe you; I just like going through all the numbers )

If you look at the sheer numbers, of course Kellogg (and most any other large school) is going to "beat" the likes of Tuck/Yale/Darden. Keep in mind, that the number of students going to MBB at Kellogg makes up about half of 1 entire class at Yale!!

Percentage-wise though, the story isn't quite so one-sided:

# of students interested in consulting per year: Kellogg = ~300; Yale = ~50
# of students at MBB per year: Kellogg = ~130; Yale = ~25
% of students at MBB per year: Kellogg = 17%; Yale = 8%

So, Kellogg has 6 times the numbers of students in interested in consulting, and about 5 times the numbers of students going to MBB. That's relatively the same ratio...

At the end of the day, you should choose a school where you're going to fit in best based on your priorities for bschool, whether that's getting your dream job, getting to know each and every one of your classmates, or starting an entirely new venture. When you're looking at this level of bschool, you're going to get good offers no matter where you go. It's up to you what type of environment you want to be in -- do you want to be one of the masses going into consulting at a Kellogg or do you want to be in a smaller pool at a Tuck/Yale? That's a matter of personal choice, but either way, the jobs are there regardless.


Disclaimer: This is just for conversation's sake. Numbers are directional and may not be 100% accurate. As always, YMMV.

Cheetarah is right (things are good here at UVA, btw...hope things are good up in Hyde Park) that for brand management companies have a select pool of schools they recruit at from the top 15 or so. Which schools those may be might be driven by region, history of senior leadership, or a variety of reasons....but from their standpoint if you are a top 15 school you meet the standard they set. For this industry, here is where the job reports and talking to the career center really should drive your decision on where to go to school.

The percentage of the class going into an industry really is much more important to look at than sheer numbers as has been said. Beyond that however, the even more important thing is the percentage of offers relative to the number of students at your school recruiting for that field (since for companies that recruit on campus your competition is fellow classmates).

For example, at Darden, we had about 40 people this year recruit for investment banking. Of the consensus top 7 bulge bracket investment banks, 6 made at least 4 offers. While 4 offers seems low compared to the 15 or so that Wharton may receive, when you view it as 10% of the people recruiting for banking (4/40) vs 5% (15/300 at say Wharton) you can debate which school is easier to get an offer from.

M/B/B is like that too. For companies that recruit on campus, a Darden student would not directly compete with a Booth student for these roles. Some companies do super days but those tend to be for off campus. At a school like Kellogg, which is a consulting powerhouse, all the big firms are going to make a significant number of offers, but you are also competing with 1/3 of your class for those offers, with people who have geared their resumes to be as competitive as possible in that field.

To the person that says for PE you have to be at a Top 8 I would say you probably have to be at a Top 3 and have had PE or IB experience in the past. Those firms basically just recruit the cream of the crop from Harvard, Wharton, and maybe Booth. For VC, you can through Stanford in there too. Buyside firms are a completely different animal, but I agree that there is a big difference between top 15 and top 3 there. For most other industries, the big difference is between top 15. and outside top 15 and whether or not your school is a target school of the companies you want to work at.

I would agree with this completely. The biggest issue I see with MBA programs right now is the difference in cost between top 15 and outside the top 15 is negligible but the difference in employment opportunities certainly aren't negligible. That's why I drew my personal line at Top 15 programs. I just don't understand how a 25-30 ranked school charges about 90% of the cost of attending Harvard and people still sign up left and right.

Information asymmetry.

It's definitely a market failure due to information asymmetry and other factors. This is true for not just mba but also law and undergrad, where a #50 ranked institution can charge the exact same amount as harvard but deliver nowhere near the value. It's utterly disgraceful.

The members who've posted above are quite experienced.

From the article- The Worst Things MBAs Say About Their Own Schools:
"Apple presentation in the Fall at Sloan went like this: We love MIT Sloan. We’re here to hire Operations and Supply Chain folks. When asked if they could get into product design, recruiters replied: NO, just supply chain and operations. Marketing and other jobs at Apple were listed on job boards at other MBA programs.”

There are bound to be a few cases where the same co. offers different profiles at different schools.

The fact that the cost difference between the top-15 schools and those outside the top 15 is negligible (while the difference in employment opportunities certainly isn't) can be attributed to the market phenomenon.. There is a market for everything. The price is what the buyer is willing to pay. There sure must be some value that the buyer is deriving at that price