Ivey Business School vs McGill(Desautels) [SOLVED: Ivey]

Question

I've received admit from Both Ivey Business School and McGill(Desautels) with scholarships. Wants to know the opinion about both the colleges. Their reputation, Alumni experience and MBA experience. Anything that can put one at advantage over the other. 
I'm confident that there will be a few more like me facing or faced the same dilemma. 
So here please post your thoughts and ideas.

Nikhil · Answer

Businessconquerer May I request your comment on this?

Nikhil · Answer

saury2k

Please also add more details on what you are looking for in an MBA, goals, etc. It will help to provide a better suggestion.

Businessconquerer · Answer

Assuming that you have more than 5 years of work ex, you will still benefit from Ivey.
Cultures, location and everything else are different for both schools.

At McGill, you are going to a state that speaks french and even though the school will be English you'd be living in French speaking colony.
At Ivey, it is English speaking

Culture wise, Ivey, is strong with a fast paced curriculum so you need to see if you can get the job in 1 year, McGill will still have 44% of Alumni in Toronto so you will see the same kinds of travel in both.

Location wise, Ivey is better in my opinion with a quiet isolated place but close enough to Toronto to help you network and almost 80%+ of alumni are in Toronto already and are in big positions. So you will see that benefit,

Education wise Ivey is my personal choice given the case methodology, that actually plays a significant role in personal development in parallel to healthy debates that can get ugly sometimes so if you don't like being hated by your class for temporary reasons, you must see a benefit in McGill. But I think that Ivey has a better teaching methodology as I see Case methodology as one nearly perfect way to learn.

My vote is Ivey but as mentioned above- those are my reasons for it. If you don't think they apply to you then McGill is your choice.
Also, money matters so calculate the overall costs too into it.

saury2k · Answer

Thanks  Businessconquerer  
I also have the same preferences. and with 6+ years of work experience, I feel Ivey is a much better prospect for me and as you mentioned English plays a very big part and an important consideration for us. I also am more inclined towards Ivey.

thomasedzhang · Answer

They are really very two different choices. Hard to say which one is better, and in fact, they are all very good in Canada.

Ivey is shorter program, it might be good for someone who has very clear target and don't think about make huge change after MBA. And I think a lot of them come from consulting industry already. But as MBA, I don't like their location, it is not that close to Toronto though. When it is back to before pandemic, networking takes time since you need transportation to go to Toronto. But with everything goes to virtual, maybe it is not an issue any more, you could network from your home. The city is quiet, but not exciting though.

McGill as a whole has much stronger reputation across Canada and Eastern US. It is much smaller program compared with others. The city is definitely more fun than London ON. Even though it is French speaking province, but Montreal is very bilingual because there are a lot of immigrants and international companies here. If you want to make career change, you have more flexibility since you can do internship during the program. And there are definitely more networking opportunities close by than you would have in London ON. And they organize Toronto trip every November so you get both big cities network.

At the end, they are really two different schools and different curriculums. But they are all very good in different ways and they all have some side effects.

Nikhil · Answer

I hear that  rkjg94  had a similar choice and chose McGill

saury2k  Did you make a decision?

saury2k · Answer

Yes Nikhil. I choose Ivey because of its Case method pedagogy and strength in Consulting recruitment. They have one of the best and active alumni network and their career center is considered the best in Canada.

Nikhil · Answer

Sounds great saury2k All the best. Marking this topic as Resolved

rkjg94 · Answer

Awesome! Sorry for the delayed response but I am glad you came to a decision quick. I was stuck in this dilemma for quite a while haha. If Ivey fits you better then it's definitely a great choice. McGill's and Ivey's alumni network are both really really good from my experiences. Ivey's career center is very good but also keep in mind that their career services are involved heavily in selection process and from my experience, they pre-screen candidates based on their employability post MBA (which I think is great considering it's a 1 year program), which automatically translates into great placement stats, so if you are judging the career center based on stats alone, you may want to look deeper. Also to keep in mind is that many of Ivey students go back to work in the same industry/firm at a higher position so that can skew the placement stats too. So, if you are coming from consulting and want to stay in consulting, Ivey is definitely a great choice. If you are not coming from consulting, Ivey is still a good choice since  they have accepted you based on your goals of entering the consulting industry , so that should give you some confidence.

I chose McGill because of the 2 year program and the opportunity to get a 3 year work permit post graduation compared to 1 year work permit from Ivey. Coming from an engineering background, I preferred the internship option. I had two interviews with McGill, one with admissions and one with career services, and through my interaction with their career services, I was very impressed. McGill's cohort size and quality was also a big factor. I personally prefer smaller class sizes and McGill pretty much has the smallest class size of the bunch. Through my interactions with the alumni and current students, I could tell the sense of comradery that McGill folks have and that should translate into building a quality network. McGill's brand name as someone mentioned is also a pretty big factor if you want to work anywhere other than Canada. I have worked in the US and I can tell from personal experience that people respect the McGill brand here.

The opportunity to get a PR post MBA was also a big factor for me. So if you are in the same position and thinking about the PR post MBA, you may want to see if Ivey would get that job done for you. For me personally, both were getting it done but McGill was giving me a much needed flexibility in terms of time post MBA and the option to use CEC or FSW. If you are planning to go the CEC route, you pretty much need to get a job immediately after graduation and use all of your 365 days of work permit to claim the required 1 year minimum Canadian experience. For FSW program, calculate your points post MBA and see if you qualify, though keep in mind that FSW draws are much rarer nowadays and I don't know how it will be in the future.

Case methodology was not a huge factor in my decision making as most MBA programs have case studies as part of the curriculum though not fully case based as in the case with Ivey.

Either way, both choices are great and I really don't see anyone going truly wrong by choosing Rotman, Ivey, McGill or UBC. Heard good things about Schulich and Queens as well but haven't done enough research on them.

bb · Answer

Thank you  saury2k  and  rkjg94 !
Congrats and good luck!

Ivey Business School vs McGill(Desautels) [SOLVED: Ivey]

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