Events & Promotions
|
|
GMAT Club Daily Prep
Thank you for using the timer - this advanced tool can estimate your performance and suggest more practice questions. We have subscribed you to Daily Prep Questions via email.
Customized
for You
Track
Your Progress
Practice
Pays
Not interested in getting valuable practice questions and articles delivered to your email? No problem, unsubscribe here.
Apr 2310:00 AM EDT
-10:30 AM EDT
Admissions committees evaluate the GMAT/GRE in context — your background, your representation in the applicant pool, the strength of everything else in your file. The same score works for one candidate and falls short for another with identical numbers.
Apr 2312:00 PM PDT
-01:00 PM PDT
Inquire for a free profile evaluation and guarantee statement for possible admits and scholarships!
Apr 2408:30 PM IST
-09:30 PM IST
Join us for a Live Coffee chat with Jenifer Turtschanow where we talk about enhancing your MBA profile and fixing gaps in just 4 months.
Apr 2511:00 AM EDT
-01:00 PM EDT
Looking to secure a coveted spot at a top business school? Our team of seasoned MBA admissions consultants, including top B schools alumni and industry leaders, is here to help turn your dreams into reality. Let’s kick-start your journey to success!
Apr 2908:00 PM EDT
-09:00 PM EDT
Join us for a live Ask Me Anything (AMA) session with Juno’s Co-Founder, where we’ll break down everything you need to know about financing your MBA in today’s rapidly changing landscape.
28 Sep 2012, 14:02
Kudos
Bookmarks
Recently I went to visit HBS to take a close look at their MBA.
About me - I'm mid 30's, European, 11 years experience in logistics, currently working as a program manager for a "global mega project" - I sit in the middle of it all, operating half as the Management Information Specialist (MIS) and half as the "back office" support. I like my job, almost all of the time.
Anyway, despite being a few years older than the steadily increasing average of 28.3 years (as I read only today), I decided to burn some airmiles and fly over for a part vacation part fact finding trip to take a look at HBS to get a feel for how one of the persistently high ranking business schools does it. I had no intention of seriously applying because it's a 2 year course - I'm only interested in 1 year courses given the amount of experience I have and my age, plus the loss of earnings would be hard to absorb. However, I figured it would be a good yard stick to measure against those I am serious about - I've also previously taken a look at London Business School which I decided is too corporate finance focused for me.
HBS offers you the chance to sit in a lecture as a guest. You don't get a choice in lectures (which is fair enough). I got lucky and ended up with strategic marketing. I'm not a specialist in marketing - I specialise in project and program management (they're related but not the same thing).
Topic of the lecture - a review of a case study previously issued by the lecturer. The case study discussed 4 (real) prime time TV shows on US Networks, and invited the student to figure out which one should be dropped. As guests we didn't get a copy of the case study (it appeared to run to several dozen pages, plus we'd not paid for it, so fair enough), but over the course of the lecture you got a general feel for the various types of information, leading questions and differing viewpoints that could be attained. It also went into detail about which slots should be picked by advertisers. Without giving anything away whatsoever in deference to HBS, it'll be no surprise to anyone that there's little point advertising mustang cars during x factor USA. Top Gear USA would obviously be a better choice. We went into more sensible and more subtlety than that of course.
The bullet points for me out of a 1hr 20 min class:-
- 107 seat lecture theatre, about 90% occupied. Demographics of the class - average age seemed around 26/27, and about 75% N American (i.e. Canadian or US). All of them were definitely bright.
- The student next to me said that it was a very popular and over subscribed class. Understandable given the topic, but maybe also due to the lecturer.
- The lecturer was world class (and I've seen a fair few over the years) both in breadth of subject knowledge - not being thrown by the student input at any time. She definitely knew her stuff.
- She was also world class in terms of lecture delivery. She mainly used several blackboards and only lightly used PowerPoint. She also took care to interact heavily with her class, taking opinions from all over the place. I suspect she knew her class fairly well (they were 2nd year students), because I got the impression she was deliberately taking conflicting views at times to stir up a debate. Whatever, the majority of the class was fully engaged for the entire duration. I didn't switch off.
- On the minus side, at no point did she provide examples to back up any concepts she provided that came from outside of the USA. Sure the topic was prime time US TV, but US TV programs are exported around the world. I would have expected to have a discussion about the differences between prime time US and say prime time in Australia, Europe and the like, which regularly buy US TV imports. Or a discussion about imports into the US (whether they've been reworked for the US (X Factor for example) or Top Gear UK (which is screened in both the UK and US versions). None of the students discussed internationalisation either.
After we'd finished, I bumped into another wannabe visitor, so we had lunch in the (very good) canteen. He'd had a different lecture, finance based, but had also noticed a lack of international case study discussions. He too thought his lecturer was excellent however, and we both agreed that the campus was a) enormous b) pristine c) very impressive.
------------------------------------
So why isn't it good for me?
1) The class is younger than I'd like given my age.
2) It's a 2 year course, not 1
3) If you want a N American focused MBA, Harvard may well suit, but for me (given research before I left, my impressions whilst there, and more checking since I returned), It's nowhere near international focused enough, which I find really strange. Increasing the diversity of the student population is an increasing trend I've noticed over the past three years from lots of schools but it's not one that many of the top tier US schools are bothering too much with. You only have to scan the international students % for the top 20 European or Asian schools, then compare it against the top ranking N American schools and there's a definite difference, and this is a major selling point for me.
4) I don't think total expenses of $87,400 USD are justifiable. Yes you can point at the median salary of $125,000 for graduates working in consultancy firms such as Bain, McKinsey and the like, but I think there's better value for money elsewhere.
I did however like the campus, the Coop shop (I've finished my christmas present shopping already thanks to them), and Boston in particular was great (I got a recommendation to try the legal seafood restaurant and it was amazing). Other highlights included baseball at Fenway Park, the JFK Presidential library, and the freedom trial. Boston's worth a long weekend for sure, especially when it's not 10F in the winter.
===============================
Feel free to shoot me down in flames, but that was just my 2 cents. I should reiterate I've also visited LBS in London, whilst Cranfield and INSEAD are both due for visits in the next 2 months.
About me - I'm mid 30's, European, 11 years experience in logistics, currently working as a program manager for a "global mega project" - I sit in the middle of it all, operating half as the Management Information Specialist (MIS) and half as the "back office" support. I like my job, almost all of the time.
Anyway, despite being a few years older than the steadily increasing average of 28.3 years (as I read only today), I decided to burn some airmiles and fly over for a part vacation part fact finding trip to take a look at HBS to get a feel for how one of the persistently high ranking business schools does it. I had no intention of seriously applying because it's a 2 year course - I'm only interested in 1 year courses given the amount of experience I have and my age, plus the loss of earnings would be hard to absorb. However, I figured it would be a good yard stick to measure against those I am serious about - I've also previously taken a look at London Business School which I decided is too corporate finance focused for me.
HBS offers you the chance to sit in a lecture as a guest. You don't get a choice in lectures (which is fair enough). I got lucky and ended up with strategic marketing. I'm not a specialist in marketing - I specialise in project and program management (they're related but not the same thing).
Topic of the lecture - a review of a case study previously issued by the lecturer. The case study discussed 4 (real) prime time TV shows on US Networks, and invited the student to figure out which one should be dropped. As guests we didn't get a copy of the case study (it appeared to run to several dozen pages, plus we'd not paid for it, so fair enough), but over the course of the lecture you got a general feel for the various types of information, leading questions and differing viewpoints that could be attained. It also went into detail about which slots should be picked by advertisers. Without giving anything away whatsoever in deference to HBS, it'll be no surprise to anyone that there's little point advertising mustang cars during x factor USA. Top Gear USA would obviously be a better choice. We went into more sensible and more subtlety than that of course.
The bullet points for me out of a 1hr 20 min class:-
- 107 seat lecture theatre, about 90% occupied. Demographics of the class - average age seemed around 26/27, and about 75% N American (i.e. Canadian or US). All of them were definitely bright.
- The student next to me said that it was a very popular and over subscribed class. Understandable given the topic, but maybe also due to the lecturer.
- The lecturer was world class (and I've seen a fair few over the years) both in breadth of subject knowledge - not being thrown by the student input at any time. She definitely knew her stuff.
- She was also world class in terms of lecture delivery. She mainly used several blackboards and only lightly used PowerPoint. She also took care to interact heavily with her class, taking opinions from all over the place. I suspect she knew her class fairly well (they were 2nd year students), because I got the impression she was deliberately taking conflicting views at times to stir up a debate. Whatever, the majority of the class was fully engaged for the entire duration. I didn't switch off.
- On the minus side, at no point did she provide examples to back up any concepts she provided that came from outside of the USA. Sure the topic was prime time US TV, but US TV programs are exported around the world. I would have expected to have a discussion about the differences between prime time US and say prime time in Australia, Europe and the like, which regularly buy US TV imports. Or a discussion about imports into the US (whether they've been reworked for the US (X Factor for example) or Top Gear UK (which is screened in both the UK and US versions). None of the students discussed internationalisation either.
After we'd finished, I bumped into another wannabe visitor, so we had lunch in the (very good) canteen. He'd had a different lecture, finance based, but had also noticed a lack of international case study discussions. He too thought his lecturer was excellent however, and we both agreed that the campus was a) enormous b) pristine c) very impressive.
------------------------------------
So why isn't it good for me?
1) The class is younger than I'd like given my age.
2) It's a 2 year course, not 1
3) If you want a N American focused MBA, Harvard may well suit, but for me (given research before I left, my impressions whilst there, and more checking since I returned), It's nowhere near international focused enough, which I find really strange. Increasing the diversity of the student population is an increasing trend I've noticed over the past three years from lots of schools but it's not one that many of the top tier US schools are bothering too much with. You only have to scan the international students % for the top 20 European or Asian schools, then compare it against the top ranking N American schools and there's a definite difference, and this is a major selling point for me.
4) I don't think total expenses of $87,400 USD are justifiable. Yes you can point at the median salary of $125,000 for graduates working in consultancy firms such as Bain, McKinsey and the like, but I think there's better value for money elsewhere.
I did however like the campus, the Coop shop (I've finished my christmas present shopping already thanks to them), and Boston in particular was great (I got a recommendation to try the legal seafood restaurant and it was amazing). Other highlights included baseball at Fenway Park, the JFK Presidential library, and the freedom trial. Boston's worth a long weekend for sure, especially when it's not 10F in the winter.
===============================
Feel free to shoot me down in flames, but that was just my 2 cents. I should reiterate I've also visited LBS in London, whilst Cranfield and INSEAD are both due for visits in the next 2 months.
28 Sep 2012, 23:06
Kudos
Bookmarks
Some great thoughts and perspectives. You clearly know what you want to get out of an MBA. What other schools are you thinking about?
theK
Joined: 05 Nov 2009
Last visit: 30 Jan 2022
Posts: 126
Own Kudos:
Given Kudos: 67
Concentration: Strategy, Finance
Schools: Duke '15 (M) Darden '15 (A)
WE:Management Consulting (Consulting)
30 Sep 2012, 01:18
Kudos
Bookmarks
Thanks for sharing. Kellogg and Cornell would be your other options for 1-year programs.
