Hi everyone!

First of all thank you for going through the post. I really appreciate the help from everyone in this forum. This week marks the completion of my application cycle. I applied to 6 schools and got in at 5 of those and now looking to choose one of them to attend.

My Options: school (scholarship) - tuition+fees
Cornell (30k/year) - 73440/year
Ross (20k/year) - 71762/year
Tuck (15k/year) - 81,087/year
Haas (None) - 68,444/year
Kellogg (None) - 76,871/year

My Background:
I come from the dreaded category of Indian Male Engineer (and yes IT). I have 2 years of software engineering experience plus 2 years of Product Management experience by the time I join in Aug-21, all 4 years in the same company (cloud computing company based in US).
GMAT - 760

My Goals:
I am keen on switching into consulting (MBB) and keeping Tech-PM as my backup option. Hence, I'm looking to go to a school which gives me the best shot at consulting while keeping the tech options open.

Dilemma:
I have saved every bit possible for the last 4 years in India. That said, I will have about 35K that I plan to use for my living expenses of 2 years (hoping summer internships adds to this!). I would basically have to take out a loan for the entire tuition not covered by a scholarship.

TBH I love all of the above schools (especially loved Tuck, Ross, and Haas). Cornell was my safe bet and Kellogg was my stretch. Looking for the insights and comments from the community.

PS: Also is there any chance that I can negotiate scholarships based on this data?

Tagging: bb, Souvik - you guys are awesome! Would love to get your insights on this.

Congrats on your admits!

Looking at MBB, Consulting, and Tech PM, I think Kellogg would be the optimal choice and then it is a split of Haas/Ross w $$. Kellog being the only M7 school has a strong MBB presence on campus for recruiting and internships. Also tech recruiting is very strong for the product management and product marketing roles (I learned what this is from Souvik; did not have it back in my days).

Tuck is definitely a darling too and it is not apples to apples with other programs since it provides a different experience and some folks have chosen it over higher-ranked M7's but without a sizeable scholarship you had to have been in love with it.

One other consideration is the borrow max amount. Your loan provider will have limites how much they will be letting you borrow and they vary by school. This may come into play for the decision as well if one of the programs has a higher borrow limit (usually the better the ranking, the higher is the percentage up to 100%).

Very very good job of you! You must have worked very hard on the applications and also to save your money. It is hard to be disciplined but it pays off! I salute to you! I managed to save about $2K in my days. Embarrassing... and i had to borrow money for living expenses....
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Hi bb

Thank you for your analysis. Yes, kellogg seems to be the best - a lot of consulting presence but I'll have to take out a loan for 150K vs 100K for Ross vs 140k Haas (no scholarship).

I'm inclined towards Ross (and tuck - because I did like the vibes and the experience, but will have to take out 130k loan). My only concern at Ross is that this year I hear that about 7-10 Indians getting full-rides (which i'm not sure is normal or not). Will this make my recruiting dreadful?

Thank you again for you inputs.

Waiting for others also to chime in

Ah. That explains why all the tuition numbers were the same even with scholarships (that has not figured scholarship into account yet).

I think perhaps souvik101990 can weigh in on the matter?
As to full rides, I don't think anyone knows for sure and even if that is true, you never know who matriculates at the end.... but I don't think you need to fret about recruiting competition from your peers. If they don't go to Ross, they will go to Booth and Kellogg
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Hi ,

I am in a very similar boat . Deciding between Ross with schoalrship and Kellogg with none. I have very similar work experience as yours ( an electronics engineer) but my primary goal is tech prod management. I have spoken to a few people ( ofcourse bb as well ) over the last week regarding this decision ... well obviously opinions varied but one thing that everyone echoed was that 40K isnt going to matter down the line ... well to us indians ofcourse it’s a huge amount but when you start earning in dollars, it really wont be that big a difference.. as far as recruitment is concerned, you can’t go wrong with either... Kellogg is the stronger choice being an M7 but Ross isn’t far behind at all ..
That said, the point I tried to make is do not make a decision based on this 40K .. had it been a full scholarship vs No scholarship scenario , things would have been different ... choose the school you feel going to will give you the best two years ... hope this helps ...

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Good point about $40K. When it is $40K, it makes a difference and is a big amount, but when it is $200K vs. $160K then it is 20% or 25% depending on how you look at it. By the way, here is a nice post Regenerate put together to evaluate scholarship offers: https://gmatclub.com/forum/financial-ai ... 42190.html

I have seen people leave big scholarships on the table and I have seen people make decisions on smaller amounts. It depends on your background tolerance for risk and lots of other factors... but mostly these are forward-looking bets we are making...
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Wow ... this post is awesome ... great work Regenerate ... thanks bb for sharing that link ...

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You're welcome!

Also, the link to the GMATClub ranking of top full time MBA programs can be found in the Financial Aid Consideration Curve thread, too.
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If I were in your shoes, I would most likely go with Kellogg. I have seen Kellogg alums pretty much everywhere in the consulting space and in tech. It is just unparalleled breadth that Kellogg offers. The scholarship at Ross is a nice touch but echoing what others have said - it is not a whole lot looking at the long term point of view.

Considering consulting is your plan A recruiting wise, Kellogg just places more consulting types into MBB than any other school in the mid west area. That said, Ross does very well in consulting too, but just because of the dense alum presence Kellogg will have an edge.

Talking about your plan B - tech PM roles - I think Ross and Kellogg are somewhat equals but increasingly tech roles are more "elitness" agnostic. If you have a great resume and you do well in interviews (and network enough to get those interviews in the first place) you will be well off in both schools. However, I have seen more Kellogg MBAs in Google and Apple and more Ross grads in Amazon Microsoft. So purely from a product management standpoint, Kellogg is better off (Ross will fare better in other tech roles in addition to PM).

So I guess my advice to you is to hustle hard to get some $ from Kellogg and go there regardless of the outcome.
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Congratulations on your success! Based on your recruiting priorities, I would say go to Kellogg.

As others on the thread mentioned, your financial consideration at this point should not be $0 at Kellogg vs $40k at Ross, but $200k to go to Kellogg vs $160k to go to Ross (excluding your savings, which btw is a fantastic achievement in itself). An MBB offer usually comes with a sign-on bonus of ~$30k, and if going to Kellogg increases your likelihood of breaking into those three companies which it will, it would offset the extra loan amount that you may have to take at this point.

Ross fits your brief pretty well too, and of course, reduces your debt burden by $40k, so if you are leaning towards managing your risk-exposure more, go to Ross.

Regarding scholarship negotiations - it is fair game and you should at least try it once at each school that you're considering.

Is it just Kellogg vs Ross at this point? Is Haas in the running still? I know it doesn't quite compare to Kellogg and Ross in consulting recruiting but will blow most schools out of the water in Tech recruiting. I'm curious to know that given consulting as your plan A, you applied to Haas so you must have thought of something. Also, they have a need-based scholarship (most business schools primarily offer merit-based scholarships) so it might be worth the effort to check if they can give you some money to sweeten the deal.
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Thank you so much everyone for chiming in. Those are some great views, I'm am leaning towards Kellogg (though the full tuition loan seems very scary). I will update this thread once I've reached my decision. Thank you everyone for contributing.. really appreciate it

Thank you! It would be super helpful once you reach your decision. It is often the process that matters the most and sometimes it is just little things... like $150,000 😂

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MbaIndAspirant21 most of the posts here are biased one way or another, so you need to clearly set your priorities, understand what you want our of 2 year MBA, and then make an educated decision. Congratulations on your offers! You have a good headache.

I'm attending Tuck and really enjoying the experience. For several reasons (one of them being the school's location) the culture is unique here. All top MBA programs will likely offer a decent shot at any career path (consulting, banking, tech, general management, and so on), so you may want to consider other factors while picking the program. The scholarships you received are nice but not substantial, so I would not loose sleep over the financial side of things unless you have extraordinary debt circumstances.

While I cannot speak about recruiting at other programs, at least 1/2 of folks in my class (i.e. more than 150 ppl) are recruiting for consulting and many of them got interviews with MBB firms as well as other big names such as EY, Deloitte, LEK, etc. I was impressed with the scale of on-site consulting recruiting at Tuck.

Feel free to DM me if you have further questions.

Merry Xmas and Happy New Year!

So, you're looking at:
$86,880 + R&B at Johnson
$103,524 + R&B at Ross
$132,174 + R&B at Tuck
$136,888 + R&B at Haas
$153,742 + R&B at Kellogg

So, before dealing with the fact that R&B will be different at each school ... if (for the time being) assume they're the same ... and, in comparing these costs to Kellogg (which is the highest rated and most expensive option), we see:

Haas = 11% discount
Tuck = 14% discount
Ross = 33% discount
Johnson = 44% discount

Hopefully this helps.

I'd suspect that the analysis would become even clearer if you added the R&B assumptions from each school to see if there is a bigger / smaller % discount for attending different schools (vs. Kellogg). Good luck ... and congratulations on your tough choices! Not everyone is so fortunate!
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Curious to know what decision did the OP make finally?
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Just curious what you finally decided ...
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