Hi guys, long time lurker here and this is my first post

I am a Vietnamese applying for this 2017-18 MBA season and my desired specialization is marketing, for either B2C or tech.

As my current job involves B2C marketing, initially my primary school list was mostly Midwest ones where most of CPG companies are located (Carlson, Wisconsin, Olin, Fisher...) yet I've heard it is extremely hard for international students to compete for B2C jobs as most companies are not willing to sponsor and just mainly recruit native students.

So as I've read on Poets&Quants, seems like the tech job prospect is much higher than CPG which is why I am changing my school shortlist strategy a bit. I'm just wondering:

1. Are the tech firms more open to hiring international students and do they usually recruit/ offer internship opportunities? As far as I know, almost all of them are located in the Bay Area. Which leaves the school options pretty limited. Considering the top 100 ranking, in the Bay Area, after excluding Stanford and Haas (which I am aware as too much of a stretch ) there is like only UC Davis left, whose reputation seems a bit downhill recently (not many people apply there as far as I've known).

2. So is there any other good, reach option schools (top 20-ish downwards) for tech job opportunities? (I'm also concerned with fellowship/scholarship options as given the employment uncertainty for international students, I don't want to graduate with a lot of debt). Is it wise to include other schools located outside SF like the LA area (USC, UCI) and WA (Washington-Foster) in the list? I've heard some other not-in-the-West names Illinois and Purdue are also known for tech, is that right?

I am mostly interested in the more creative names in the industry like Instagram, Youtube, Netflix, Spotify... as far as I've researched they are not the most common names for MBA recruiting so if anyone have experience with them and can shed a light that would be great!

Thank you very much!

(Sorry if this post appears twice, I remembered to post this on the Business School Discussion thread yesterday but somehow it just disappeared )

Thank you Narenn for the info. Unfortunately, despite my affinity for Carey (for its free tuition :D) it seems pretty competitive and also mainly just focus on Supply Chain while I'm looking to a marketing role...

Any tech guy who can shed more info, please?

Hi Mrzerog!

It's a fallacy that only schools on the west coast are feeders into tech, and tech firms do love international students! I wouldn't go far as to say they have an advantage, but the deck isnt stacked against international students as it is in an industry like finance or consulting which is more biased towards domestic students.

All top 20 schools send students into tech, and not all tech is on the west coast. The firms you have listed all have fairly unstructured recruiting processes and are generally more difficult to secure offers at as a general rule of thumb. Sometimes they take interns and sometimes they don't. If your goal is to secure an offer at a top tech firm, I recommend sticking with a top-15 school. It would be very difficult to obtain an offer outside of these networks unless you are very well connected.

Best,
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