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