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So, earlier this week, the folks from GMATClub asked me (and many others, I assume) to create a post about my b-school choice from just over year ago.
The truth is, every person's decision is going to based on a number of variables. Some of those variables (e.g. brand, reputation) may be the same or similar for many of us. Others (financial outlook, size & culture fit, access to certain industries, family history, location, personal affinity) are somewhat individualized. I honestly do not believe in making your decision based on someone else's decisions as their reasons really have nothing to do with yours. With that being said, here were my reasons for the choice that I made.
Before applying I decided that I was going to attend the highest-ranked school on my list of preferred programs that I could get into, no matter what. In time, that outlook changed a bit as I developed a greater sense of my fit for each school (though I still ended up arriving at that result). At that time, my preferred list was:
Stanford, Sloan, Berkeley, Marshall, Anderson
outside of an MIT admit, I was going to stay on the West Coast. Then, months later after a bunch of research and talking to people, that list changed to:
Stanford,Wharton,HBS,Sloan,Booth//Haas,Tuck based on culture, teaching methods, and Silicon Valley footprint (except Tuck, which I just liked for some reason...and Booth which I felt had great startups such as BrainTree and GrubHub despite its location)
If I had gotten into any of the first 4, I had decided I'd be done. Then if I only got into Booth or didn't get into ANY of the top 5 on my list, I'd apply to the others during round 2. When the dust cleared, my options were Wharton,Sloan & Booth. Wharton vs. Booth to me was a matter of 1) Brand 2) Students (I visited both admit weekends and saw a clear overall difference in student quality, though I really liked the people at Booth a lot) 3) East + West coast cred and footprint (Wharton's prox to NY and Wharton West in SanFran as well as the semester in San Fran program). That decision had been made within about a day of being in Chicago
Wharton vs Sloan was much harder for me. Both Penn and MIT get tons of VC funding and have produced many well-known entrepreneurs. I didn't go to MIT's welcome weekend (it was more than a month after everyone else's) but I instantly fell in love with Wharton's culture and was very impressed with my classmates, so that was a +1 for Wharton. Again, the bi-coastal footprint made a difference for me. MIT get's plenty of respect regardless of where you are, but I wanted the opportunity to spend significant time in the Valley (which I'll be doing for 7 months this year) via Penn's semester in San Fran. I also learned that Wharton (and HBS; they tend to trade places each year) sends the most interns to Google, which is where I wanted to intern if I got to the summer and didn't have a startup with enough momentum to justify not saving money over the summer. Then, I happen to be black, and Boston is....well...yeah. I also did not want to go to school in a city where my institution---while fantastic, was even remotely in the shadow of another school in town. I felt that I'd be paying too much money for that. Speaking of which, I wanted to go to a strong finance school so that I could begin building a network of future financiers that might benefit me 10-15 years from now. So, these ended up being my reasons---some strategic, some surface---for choosing Wharton in the end. Most other great attributes about Sloan (and to a lesser degree, Chicago) were pretty much the same.
If you are making a similar decision, the important thing is not to look at why I (or anyone else) chose for my reasons, but to connect with your own reasons and choose based on those.
P.S. I apologize for any typos. I am crazy busy wrapping up semester 2 at b-school and really have 0 time to proof read this.
_________________
=============== 2015 Wharton MBA Candidate http://www.mbaover30.com - Affordable MBA Admissions Consulting
Last edited by mbaover30 on 08 May 2014, 13:13, edited 1 time in total.
Just adding to this - I similarly chose between Wharton and Booth (did not apply to MIT), and attended both welcome weekends.
Here were my impressions:
Student quality: Wharton seemed to accept a ton of consultants, and lots of people with international experience. Booth seemed to have a lot more people with 'corporate' jobs. I think the Booth pool was more concentrated around the 'middle' in terms of experience, aptitude, etc, while Wharton was more of a barbell (i.e. very high quality people with cookie-cutter backgrounds (consultants, private equity, traders, etc), and then people with very nontraditional backgrounds). Overall, the Wharton admits were noticeably more polished and professional. Wharton also had some impressive military careers represented (special forces, air force pilots, etc), to a greater degree than Booth. Winner: Wharton.
Campus: Booth has all of its classes in one building, and while it is a nice/new building and despite being totally encased in glass - there are no windows in the classrooms. And all of the classrooms we went into were in the basement. And the classes are 3 hours long. To me, that much time without natural light is a huge negative. There are also no undergrads in the Booth building (pro or a con, depending on your perspective. It definitely makes it less lively.). University of Chicago's campus is classic gothic, but as an MBA student you will live far from it. Penn has a bright, airy campus, right near center city, with natural light in every classroom, and Huntsman hall is buzzing with undergrads and grads. Winner: Wharton.
Social: Wharton is a huge party school. They don't even try to hide that fact. In my opinion, they actually take it too far. After 4 years of fraternity life in college, 5 years of working and blowing off steam on the weekends, I personally don't get excited about the prospect of drinking face 4 days a week in Philadelphia. The Wharton programming also spent a decent amount of time disparaging other schools in a way that was neither flattering nor gracious. Booth is a sociable school with a collegial vibe and places priority on the program itself, not the extracurriculars. Winner: Booth.
Career: Booth put on a pretty good show, and to be honest I think if you are a standout student you could be aided by the slightly weaker class profile and would be likely to attract a lot of attention and institutional resources in your placement efforts. That said, the placement diversity felt more narrow. Lots of finance, decent amount of consulting and tech. Every firm in Chicago comes here. But no question to me Wharton had a more fully-baked and commercial program in terms of career placement. Every industry at Wharton was well-represented; the way they structure their career services department, by industry, felt sophisticated, and the department talent was impressive. If you want to follow a more nontraditional path - entrepreneurship, media, not-for-profit, Wharton has highly-developed institutional knowledge and legacy to support those plans. Feels like you would be competing against a more competitive set, however. Winner: Wharton.
Overall, Wharton felt more commercial and professional, and those institutional qualities filtered down to the students. No doubt Booth would be a very comfortable place to be, however. The welcoming sense of the Booth community, the lip service paid to the actual academic programming, and the generally more approachable student body almost outweighed my perceptions of Wharton as an efficient, highly polished, marketable brand.
Just adding to this - I similarly chose between Wharton and Booth (did not apply to MIT), and attended both welcome weekends.
Here were my impressions:
Student quality: Wharton seemed to accept a ton of consultants, and lots of people with international experience. Booth seemed to have a lot more people with 'corporate' jobs. I think the Booth pool was more concentrated around the 'middle' in terms of experience, aptitude, etc, while Wharton was more of a barbell (i.e. very high quality people with cookie-cutter backgrounds (consultants, private equity, traders, etc), and then people with very nontraditional backgrounds). Overall, the Wharton admits were noticeably more polished and professional. Wharton also had some impressive military careers represented (special forces, air force pilots, etc), to a greater degree than Booth. Winner: Wharton.
Campus: Booth has all of its classes in one building, and while it is a nice/new building and despite being totally encased in glass - there are no windows in the classrooms. And all of the classrooms we went into were in the basement. And the classes are 3 hours long. To me, that much time without natural light is a huge negative. There are also no undergrads in the Booth building (pro or a con, depending on your perspective. It definitely makes it less lively.). University of Chicago's campus is classic gothic, but as an MBA student you will live far from it. Penn has a bright, airy campus, right near center city, with natural light in every classroom, and Huntsman hall is buzzing with undergrads and grads. Winner: Wharton.
Social: Wharton is a huge party school. They don't even try to hide that fact. In my opinion, they actually take it too far. After 4 years of fraternity life in college, 5 years of working and blowing off steam on the weekends, I personally don't get excited about the prospect of drinking face 4 days a week in Philadelphia. The Wharton programming also spent a decent amount of time disparaging other schools in a way that was neither flattering nor gracious. Booth is a sociable school with a collegial vibe and places priority on the program itself, not the extracurriculars. Winner: Booth.
Career: Booth put on a pretty good show, and to be honest I think if you are a standout student you could be aided by the slightly weaker class profile and would be likely to attract a lot of attention and institutional resources in your placement efforts. That said, the placement diversity felt more narrow. Lots of finance, decent amount of consulting and tech. Every firm in Chicago comes here. But no question to me Wharton had a more fully-baked and commercial program in terms of career placement. Every industry at Wharton was well-represented; the way they structure their career services department, by industry, felt sophisticated, and the department talent was impressive. If you want to follow a more nontraditional path - entrepreneurship, media, not-for-profit, Wharton has highly-developed institutional knowledge and legacy to support those plans. Feels like you would be competing against a more competitive set, however. Winner: Wharton.
Overall, Wharton felt more commercial and professional, and those institutional qualities filtered down to the students. No doubt Booth would be a very comfortable place to be, however. The welcoming sense of the Booth community, the lip service paid to the actual academic programming, and the generally more approachable student body almost outweighed my perceptions of Wharton as an efficient, highly polished, marketable brand.
For what it's worth.
I went to Wharton undergrad and I had a fair share of interactions in the MBAs. Your analysis is spot on for all the points, except for the Party Culture. Sure, you can goof around at Wharton, but if you do your classmates won't take you seriously and you will have a hard time recruiting.
_________________
My MBA application blog: http://omegakappamba.wordpress.com/
