H/S vs. Rest of M7s (MBA)
Seems to me that for many folks with good profiles, getting into H/S is a crapshoot, with many ending up in the second bucket of M7s (W/B/CBS etc)
Can those of you, who regularly or have regularly interacted with M7 grads, tell me in broad strokes how have you found the polish/personality of 2nd Tier M7 grads vs. the H/S? If you have very limited or anecdotal experience, please do not respond to this thread. In other words, is the guy / gal from H/S that impressive vs. rest-of-the-M7s grad?
I too have met some idiots from all institutions including Harvard, just like how you meet idiot undergrads from top universities, so please don't revert to posting cliches
thx
No difference, if you’re a M7 graduate you’re from the same cut of clothe to most
Booth is number 1 and far better than HSW because US News said so! In fact I want to return immediately for graduate school
This was a non-sensical comment, which if you cannot read, I requested posters to refrain from. tx
Lmao. Horseshit takes from someone who probably has no idea how MBA works but yes please…look at us news and world report to determine the best schools ok? Dumbo
I have a thought experiment for you. Do you think you’d be able to tell the difference between an undergrad student at Brown/Duke/UChicago and one at Harvard/Stanford in person? Probably not. There were differences in the quality of their applications on average, but they are tremendously small and largely “on paper”. Even then, that small difference doesn’t manifest itself perceptibly in real life.
There would be practically no difference in your experience with students of this caliber and that will be true for M7 schools too, especially if your criteria is who would you be most blown away by in a coffee chat.
It is true; however, that students at the MBA level do separate themselves on paper, likely to a greater extent than at the undergrad level because the most elite roles are accessible to fewer schools. Competition for a seat at certain schools is especially high, leading to better classes on average, on paper. This is due to a supply and demand imbalance that is unfavorable to students (PE/VC/HF/Entrepreneurship/Tech).
The most impressive students on average at the MBA level are at Stanford, Harvard, and Wharton in that order (on paper). The rest of the M7 is largely indistinguishable resume wise. Harvard’s class size makes it hard to compete with Stanford on average; when you have to fill a class of 900-1000 people vs 400-450 with largely the same applicant pool, your barrier to entry needs to be lower. This is even true for people specifically interested in finance, but Harvard’s reduced selectivity is offset by network size and proximity to NYC, which is where most in finance want to work after graduation. So there is no real difference in placement on a per capita basis outside of the absolute best roles.
imo the people you will be most blown away with are not going to MBAs, e.g. unicorn founders before age of 28 are not going to SHW for MBAs.
That's not true.
How about we threw those LBS/iNstead grads into the mix as well ?
Honestly, I'm surprised you put Wharton in the second tier. It's SHW, and I think the difference between HBS and Wharton is very marginal, if any. I did MBB and there is literally no rhyme or reason to who gets into H vs W. Some of the top performers got into W but not H, and vice versa (as you said at the level of SHW there's a lot of randomness and luck involved). Is there really a difference between a school with 14-15% acceptance rate (which is probably somewhat artificially deflated with hailmary apps cuz hahvahd and holistic app reviews) vs a school with 18-20% acceptance rate? Probably not.
Can't really speak to GSB (but I think they seek a slightly different profile than H/W). But honestly most people in M7 are pretty close.
The difference between Wharton/Booth/CBS is very marginal - if any, which there isn't in my view
I am not the OP and don't go by my title. I've been in the work force for 10+ years and attended CBS for my MBA
No I agree, I think 90-95% of all of the M7 people are all the same, with some extreme outliers on both sides. It largely hinges on luck of the draw (which year/round you applied in), and how well received your applications are received by the adcom (many of which are tailored by admissions consultants). E.g. in the 2021 cycle, Wharton had a 17% acceptance rate, Booth/Kellogg had 23-25% acceptance rates. In the last cycle, HBS had ~15% acceptance rate, and Wharton had 22%. If some of the people in 2021 applied last year, they probably would have gotten into a different school.
I think the other comment regarding how applicants are perceived "on paper" vs difference in real life is pretty spot on. From the consulting perspective, HSW does have the most sponsored MBB consultants. Does that mean the T2 sponsored consultants at rest of M7 are vastly different? No.
There are endless debates historically over whether H or S is best.
Nobody debates whether W is better than either of those. It’s decidedly 3rd among those.
That alone means it’s not in the same tier.
I guess my logic is from law schools. For majority of people YLS is on whole other stratosphere from SLS/HLS (I'd argue the difference there is much greater than H/S vs W), but people still group YSH together (though there are people these days who group YLS/SLS together, and leave out HLS).
So you think there is a bit of a drop off from h/s to rest? I think you went to Booth
Which schools do you consider as booth's peers?
Why is it that good undergrad schools don't have comparably good business schools? I've seen that Dartmouth Tuck and Yale School of Mgmt get dunked on here but they place well in undergrad recruiting. Are the MBA pipelines just not there? Are there a lot fewer associate spots?
Also do I even need to go to b school? I’m in a PE analyst program at a smaller fund $3-400M AUM and $80M per head. My boss went to Booth but he said it was pointless and he learned more at his first jobs. I went to a non-target so I’m tempted to upgrade brand but I don’t want to drop so much cash / forego earnings without a tangible benefit.
3-400 M AUM and 80M / head. Is this a troll post?
That means there are 4/5 of you at most at the PE fund, including executive assistants?
They're all great schools. Next question comes of what can you make of them.
what do you think about the nyu stern mba
Guarantee MS incoming--and I admit that I say this as someone who is going to reapply to GSB--but I have to say that from personal experience, I inherently disagree about GSB graduates being any better than anyone. I reported to GSB'rs at Bain, have trained incoming ones, and have interacted with them in Growth Equity--my honest take is that they tend to be more prideful, know better how to kiss ass, and game systems. The GSB veneer is very strong and I've frankly been unimpressed by the majority of them, on both a technical as well as personal level--there are of course notable exceptions, but they truly are exceptions. Out of my class of Bainies that got into GSB, you could pretty easily tell who it would be and all but one were pretty universally unliked--GSB is the Slytherin of the M7. I'd frankly hire the rest of the M7 before I would a Stanford grad, they'd look out for themselves more than the team.
Your “typical GSB grad” sounds like an HBS grad to me.
I have interacted with people all the way from H/S/W to T-30. There is no observable difference in terms of their intellect, work ethics, success, and abilities.
It’s much more about the individual and the school rank is not a good predictor IMO. One of the GSB alumni I’ve met was one of the most out of touch dumbass I’ve ever met
Looking at them, there’s a fair chance of luck involved even at T-15 level. In one cycle one might get admitted to HSW while in a different cycle they might get rejected from all M7.
Remember, even the gap between HSW and T15 is a couple of decimal points of average GPA and 20-30 points of GMAT purely from the stat perspective. I think if you take a T-30 student and put them in GSB no one would notice.
There is a minimal in-person difference at M7 level, but I disagree that it is true down to the T-30 level on average. That's like saying you met one person that went to UConn that was on par with a few Harvard undergrads you met. Given the number of students there, it's probably true that a few at the top of UConn match up with the low to middle end of Harvard. But let's not take that as evidence that UConn students = Harvard Students.
Use a bit of critical thinking and remember that your anecdotal evidence doesn't prove anything at the population level, unless you have met hundreds of graduates.
We all know that business school isn't about stats. You don't become successful in business solely by being intelligent. Business school admission officers know this and place an emphasis on things other than academic stats. But let's do a comparison. GSB's average GPA / GMAT is 3.8 / 737. Those of the thirtieth ranked school (Mendoza) are 3.3 / 673. That doesn't look like a small difference to me. Also consider that GSB’s student body has the highest concentration of Ivy+ undergrads (30-40% I believe) who went on to work in PE/VC/HF/Tech/MBB/Start solid companies prior to b school at top shops. That's 70-80% of the class. I highly doubt there is a single PE associate at a top firm going to any school outside HSW these days. Coffee shop discussions are probably the same, but you WILL notice the difference if you compared the resume books.
Sure, at most I met half a dozen students from each school. But I disagree with the premise that you can draw a meaningful conclusion from the fact that GSB has more % of students who went to Ivy undergrad other than that they are more likely to come from affluent families than other business school students.
Getting a slightly higher GMAT or GPA isn’t rocket science. Having a 770 GMAT means you are good at taking a GMAT, it doesn’t mean that you’re smarter than someone who got 670.
Even if your assumption that at population level, the average student at GSB is marginally smarter than the average student at Mendoza, to me it’s kind of like saying that Singapore has a couple points higher average IQ than Germany. It doesn’t really mean a lot.
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