Yale SOM ($) vs. Oxford Said -- MBB applicant

Question

Hi guys,

I currently have an MBA offer from  Yale SOM  (+$20k scholarship) and from  Oxford Said . Furthermore, I am on the  MIT Sloan waitlist .

From my point of view I have four options now but I don't really know what to do; thus, I would very much appreciate your advice!
 
  1. Enroll at Yale SOM 
  2. Enroll at Oxford Said 
  3. Try to increase the scholarship at Yale SOM 
  4. Enroll at Yale SOM and put a lot of effort in getting off the MIT Sloan waitlist

Thank you very much in advance!

Some words to myself:
 
   - Background : I have an MSc in physics and work as an MBB consultant in Europe. 
   - Financials : I will get a sponsorship from my employer worth $~140k, for which I will have a 2 year lock-in after the MBA (I will thus return to my home country after the MBA). 
   - Career plans : I very much enjoy consulting and I can see myself staying in consulting for ~3-5 years after the MBA. I have a particular interest in the blockchain space and I thus might found a startup or join a tech company after that. 
   - Additional personal factor : I am in a relationship (and thus 1 year in Europe would be a lot easier than 2 years in the US), however, I would not want the relationship to influence my decision too much since the relationship is rather shaky at the moment.

Some thoughts on both programs:

Yale SOM
  
  Pro: 
 
  - I always wanted to study in the US and this would be a unique experience. 
  - I could do an internship in Silicon Valley what I always wanted to do. 
  - I would enjoy the many electives and the possibility to take courses from the wider Yale university. 
  - The Yale brand is strong in Europe and the program ranking is higher than Oxford Said's.   
  Con:
 
  - It is more expensive both in tuition and opportunity costs because of the two years

Oxford Said
  
  Pro: 
 
  - It will be a great experience studying at Oxford. 
  - The network will be more centered around Europe. 
  - The MBA will be considerably cheaper (I would even gain $~30k and would only lose 1 year in my MBB career)   
  Con:
 
  - Even though I love studying in the UK, I would not get the US experience (I've already studied in the UK for a year) 
  - The ranking is lower than Yale SOM and the business school does not have a good reputation within the broader Oxford University

Nikhil · Answer

Tagging a few who can help

user123456789  Current student at Yale
 sakys  Oxford alumni
 cesarjmz

bb · Answer

Congrats on your admits! Fantastic Job!

I would recommend reading a few of the latest Oxford reviews: https://gmatclub.com/reviews/business_s ... rd-said-25 While the most helpful one is from 4 years ago and not very flattering, it seems things have been improving based on what goodbyeboy and PearTree had to share. I wonder if they would chime in here.

Question 1: - have you explored with your employer about covering the tuition cost? Most MBB's have a BSchool sponsorship option in exchange for a commitment of about 3 or so years. I can see you fitting into that program quite well. There are not many downsides and you can always bow out of it and repay your loans

Question 2: Are you planning on taking advantage of the R2? I hope so - it is a crazy year so may as well give it more shots!

Question 3: Where do you want to work after MBA? Do you want to be in the US and work towards an H1B/Green card or do you want to come back to Europe?

PearTree · Answer

Hi,

I'm an Oxford alum so I can help with some of the points you made and offer some extra info.

Oxford Said established Oxford Foundry and they do a lot of work with university and some external startups. They also offer Blockchain courses for free to students as well as entrepreneurship courses in the evenings. Also, an entrepreneurship project is part of the core MBA curriculum at Oxford so there's a chance to pitch a real project to a group of VCs; it's great experience. (Maybe Yale offers the same?) There's also the chance to get involved with helping startups as an MBA student at Oxford Foundry, which was one of the best parts of the MBA for me. It's not a formal part of the course though so students have to take responsibility for finding an opportunity.

Also, a lot of consulting companies visit Oxford (in case you want to jump ship to another employer). There's a list in my post history of consultants that visited us. Oxford isn't far from London by train so I was able to attend consulting events there as well.

If there's any chance that you won't stay in consulting, know that it's quite difficult to recruit internationally so you'd have to accept that you might finish the MBA with nothing lined up until you can get to your target country (not a big deal honestly).

Oxford had LOADS of great electives and one of my biggest regrets was that I didn't have the opportunity to take all the electives I wanted to because of the 1-year format. I knew going into it that would be the case but I could only commit to a 1-year MBA due to being self-funded. Given your employer sponsorship your priorities will be different and being able to take more courses would be cool. You can audit other electives but the timetabling is likely to clash and the workload is high enough without adding in extra electives for fun.

I hadn't heard that. I don't know if this is something from when the school was new or maybe a student's perception? In any case, a minority of the non-MBA and non-business school students had a bit of an attitude when I interacted with them at college events but most MBA students are older than them and we're paying more than 5x their tuition fees so we get fancy things.

I don't know if any of that has helped or if I've muddied the water further!

goodbyeboy · Answer

Hi,

In this case you should go to Yale.

Since you will be going back to your previous employer, you have no problem with securing a job after your graduation. Also, Yale is throwing you $20K which is a lot of money.

Also, you already stated that you always wanted to study in the U.S - then go for it. This is probably the last chance that you will get to be a student before you get older.

Now, in terms of Said - I am not exactly sure what you are referring to regarding its reputation within the whole university, but I did hear some similar things while I was there. Thing is, Oxford itself is a super conservative university; so when it was first founded about 25 years ago many faculties or even students didn't consider MBA as a legit education or degree. I heard that in 1994 there were protests about Wafic Said sponsoring the school since he is an arms dealer. So that could've been something related to what you may have heard in terms of reputation and school name in the whole university.

However, virtually no one cares about these things and I had no problem socializing or networking within the university while I was there. So hopefully that clears up your worries on that.

Good luck.

ANALysis · Answer

voted for oxford
relationship is important

Regenerate · Answer

A quick Easter Sunday response before everyone shows up ...

... hopefully this isn't too late to help you make a decision ...

1) As a MBB consultant, your value goes up the more international your exposure ... points for Yale.
2) As someone who's interested in staying in consulting, your value goes up the more varied your exposure ... points for Yale.
3) As someone who's interested in blockchain, an internship in Silicon Valley will be easier to achieve from Yale than Oxford ... points for Yale.
4) Sloan is, to me, a material improvement over Yale SOM in terms of quality of program ... HOWEVER ... as someone with a heavy quant background already (BSc Physics), some of the 'soft stuff' at Yale may provide a good rounding out (vs. getting more of your existing strengths at Sloan). Points for Yale in either scenario.
5) There is ZERO reason to not ask Yale for more $$ in every circumstance.

Please let us know what you decided.

Yale SOM ($) vs. Oxford Said -- MBB applicant

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