MrBilliards wrote:
Great post.
You're right, Laurier isn't that well known outside of Canada, or outside of Ontario for that matter. DeGroote is more well known because it is associated with McMaster, which is a great school; and Laurier as a school is shadowed by its neighbour, Waterloo University. However, locally, Laurier is sort of known for it's business programs. This is from what I've heard though; I personally do not know anyone who graduated from Laurier's business program. I did speak to some MBA alumni from Laurier, and they said that it was a great school for their purposes, which was the part-time MBA (because you are able to do that from downtown Toronto).
I also think that we have to be careful about placement stats of any school. Just because a school can boast a near-perfect placement (which DeGroote does in their brochure), does not mean that everyone got the placement they wanted. I mean, I want to go into consulting, but if the co-op program places me in marketing, that will count as a successful placement too. We also have to consider how they made those statistics, and I don't think DeGroote is very clear on it (correct me if I'm wrong). Rotman says that their placements are done by industry, not by job description (for example, I could become a consultant in the health sector, but for their statistics it counts as a placement in the health industry, not consulting). So just because DeGroote might say that place 30% of their class into consulting, does not mean that all of that 30% is actually doing a consulting position. They could be doing a sales function at a consulting firm, for instance.
I agree with you that DeGroote and Rotman aren't comparable. Essentially I was debating between going to a top Canadian school that specializes in consulting and finance, and going to a co-op school that boasts a high placement; it's just that Rotman happened to fit the former and DeGroote the latter. So I wasn't comparing schools, but what I wanted from the schools and the two schools just happened to be the top choices.
I also don't think that the invitation to interview was a mistake. I emailed them about it, and they said that the rest of my application was excellent. I think they overlooked the missing references and gave me the interview. I am still wondering though, whether or not a hypothetical offer of admission would be conditional upon the submission of my references.
Ya I also know that DeGroote is not clear abt its placement stats in detail. But I saw laurier's website and could find only its avg and highest salary figures and the companies that hire, which could be about all of the university programs and not just of the co op MBA. So Laurier is in no way in the line. Rest btw Rotman and DeGroote, I think it depends on your career goals, you want co op or full time, your profile that matches with the school's class profile. But if you get through both of them, I would suggest Rotman.
Regarding the reference letters- even if that was not by mistake, it is not a big deal really. your score of 740 is very good compare to the school's average and so your profile could be exceptional. And I know how reference letters are made. 70-80% students write their own reference letters on behalf of their referees. The schools too know this fact. If your profile is good, there is a very less chance of finding osama bin laden in your reference letters and so the admission process can move forward and the letters could sometimes be made conditional.