Johnson vs Fuqua($) for Tech

Question

International Candidate
Post-MBA goal: Tech Product Management 
My background is in Software Development, and hence aligned with Tech PM.

I am already deep into the process with Johnson (paid deposit, finalised housing, finalised loan) - hence, quite invested.

Received an acceptance from Fuqua today - with 30k /year scholarship. No scholarship at Johnson. Tried negotiating but no response yet. Now that I paid my deposit, I am not sure how seriously they would consider my request.

Some of my thoughts:
- Schools seem culturally similar. Similar vibe/experiences when talking to students at both schools.
- Really like Johnson's Immersion based curriculum + access to Cornell Tech campus (will get an option to spend 1-2 semesters at Cornell Tech)
- Fuqua places higher percentage of students in Tech, 24% as opposed to Johnson's 17%
- As per my understanding, Fuqua has a wider alumni base
- Better ROI with Fuqua (+ lower program cost as well)
- Similar compensation outcomes for Tech
- Not as important but - Heard from students that I will need to have a car in Durham. I am not very confident in my driving skills. Ithaca is walking friendly.

Please share any thoughts and advice regarding my situation. I am feeling heavily invested in Johnson. Feeling conflicted now given the scholarship + better ROI from Fuqua. I was placed on their Waitlist and had given up after not hearing back from them. Today's call (+ scholarship) was a pleasant surprise.

yashikaaggarwal · Answer

I would say Fuqua is better, just not sure about how paying your deposits and other stuff will matter in decision making. Let's tag experts who know US schools better than me.
 bb   Admissionado   ARINGO  any insights?

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bb · Answer

Congratulations on your admits! Fantastic job!

Fuqua is fairly famous for keeping people on the weightless for a long time all the way through August. It’s fantastic to hear you got some scholarship money and that’s a decent amount.

Theoretically, if you haven’t been invested into Johnson, Fuqua would be a stronger play even without a scholarship. With the scholarships it makes itself a definitive and a pretty clear winner. However, I completely understand how it may be challenging to have to switch gears in joining a program if you’ve already started locating housing and working on your I 20 and all of that good stuff. I do not think anyone could fault you for sticking with your original plan. But since you wanted to know an opinion, here it is. 😬

PS. The fact that you have paid a deposit does not matter for the scholarship consideration. There is a real possibility that you will not be joining and that is some thing Johnson needs to address and respond to. I feel that if they have any money left, they would be motivated to allocate it but it is also late in the season so they may not have any sitting around. I guess The best case scenario would be for you to get some good money from Johnson so that you don’t have to switch gears and make new friends.

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red97 · Answer

Thanks for sharing your input  bb 
Johnson's Admissions team has not at all been responsive on the scholarship front. I keep getting a standard response that they will evaluate my candidacy and let me know. There is no definitive answer.

I have shared my Fuqua offer with them, but I am not sure if anything is going to come out of it.

JasperSin · Answer

Tough choice there. Fuqua with 60k total scholarship is a better option than Johnson but it also depends on how much you value that parent Ivy league tag(if at all). Also as has been advised by others hopefully your negotiation with Johnson is far more fruitful now with this new offer. Johnson would really want to yield protect otherwise it will definitely have an effect on their stats.
Regarding needing a car I think you would be fine. If you plan to stay and work in the US long term you anyways need to learn to get comfortable behind the wheel. 
Congratulations on your offers and I wish you get a ridiculously great counter offer from Johnson.

JohnnyBlaze · Answer

Fuqua

1) Scholarship money
2) Fuqua places much better in tech, most of what Johnson's full time program calls tech placements are tech FP&A / accounting roles. Not true PM roles. If you take this into account, Johnson's tech placement is even worse.
3) Fuqua is just a better program than Johnson. Johnson's resources / focus is on cornell tech and masters programs, not the full time program.

ExpertsGlobal · Answer

Hello  red97 ,

With the scholarship and for tech, Fuqua is the winner.

Obviously, if the scholarship works out from Cornell (and considering you are inclined on it), it would be your best-case scenario.

All the best!

red97 · Answer

bb  Heard back from Johnson and they have offered scholarship. So now my overall cost is the same for both Fuqua and Johnson. I am trying to keep my emotional investment in Johnson aside and trying to approach this decision more logically - but am left feeling conflicted. Culture wise, based on my conversations with students and alumni, both schools are seeming similar. Location and weather - Duke has the edge. 
In terms of career opportunities and the Tech recruiting ecosystem - I am unable to judge this clearly. Access to Cornell Tech and the chance to spend 1 year there and make use of its resources seems like a really good idea on paper. I am unsure how it will translate in reality. What would you suggest? Considering cost of attendance is same for both schools.

bb · Answer

The funny thing is that I have recently heard several admissions directors concerned talking to each other the day expect a larger than usual number of people to be very indecisive this year and potentially withdraw or even paying multiple deposits and waiting until July to make the decision. So don’t feel bad about not being able to make the decision. I think it’s a combination of significant uncertainty that we are seeing every week. Very short term thinking and just pandemic blocking our minds.

I think you’ll be totally fine accepting either offer. We can only predict so much. There’s quite a bit of uncertainty and chance it happens during business school. You may meet your future spouse, you may meet your future business partner or you may absolutely meet your worst enemy 😂 There’s no way to predict what will happen and how things will turn out. We only see a small sliver of the picture Wes what we have seen happening over the past five or 10 years. But it doesn’t mean your story will be just like those.

I’m not sure if this will help you or not, but business school is not so much about learning a trade or a specific skill. It’s more about pushing you way beyond your comfort zone, making you stronger and giving you confidence. It does give you some good basic background so you know some of the latest frameworks and perspectives but it won’t give you the skills you need in your job in the direct sense of it. If you join Microsoft, you’ll have to learn Microsoft cloud and if you join Apple, you’ll have to learn all the methodologies and rules and approaches that Apple uses. Same with Amazon, you’ll have to learn AWS structures and other details. You won’t learn any of these during your business school days. I’m sure some people disagree and hi would say that I have been surprised with my own classes SHS business law and a class I accidentally signed up for which ended up being XL modeling with a lot of visual basic programming. It was only by a miracle that I did not fail and managed to finish it but I’ve learned how to program some really cool things which unfortunately I can no longer do because I have not use them at my work. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that access to the Cornell Tech campus it’s not going to be useful or valuable after your first semester when you kind of establish all of your priorities. And the priorities doing business school are:

1. Find a job
2. Find a better paying job
3. Work on personal development. Maybe that means get your body in shape or maybe that means get better at speaking or maybe figure out what you want to do in life or try a lot of new things and meet people from lots of interesting locations.

Learning intricacies of economics does not usually make it very high on the priority list. It also doesn’t usually come up in conversations at parties or gets you noticed by the representatives of the opposite sex. You will have plenty of learning and plenty of opportunities at both Fuqua and Johnson main campuses. What would be more valuable is access to some career events or on campus recruiting 😇

Good luck with your choice. Think about what you would choose without having any regrets what is the most important to you and then to confidently to make the next step

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Johnson vs Fuqua($) for Tech

Johnson vs Fuqua ($) for Tech PM

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