It’s not just a case of choosing the right business school; which MBA program format you choose can impact not only your time studying, but also your future career. Which is right for you?
Harvard Business School
Harvard Business School is synonymous with the MBA degree. It’s hard to beat the cache of the HBS degree which is one reason the school receives more applications to its MBA program than any other in the U.S.
Stanford Graduate School of Business
An all-time high of 16% of the class of 2011 chose to start their own companies at graduation. The school said the percentage of MBA students who shunned traditional MBA jobs in favor of the start-up world reflects a three-fold increase from only 5% in the early 1990s and is a third higher than the 12% peak during the dot-com bubble.
Univ. of Chicago – Booth
The mantra of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business is it’s all about the idea. Students focus on generating, analyzing, comparing, and refining ideas. It suits the more analytical and intellectual nature of the University of Chicago.
U. Penn – Wharton
Wharton is to finance what Harvard is to general management or Northwestern is to marketing. There’s an impressive variety of financial electives here taught by some of the best finance faculty in the world. Even with Wall Street in decline, some 41% of Wharton’s Class of 2012 headed into the financial services industry, up from 38.5% a year earlier.
Northwestern – Kellogg
When you think about the Kellogg School of Management, two distinctive aspects of the MBA experience immediately spring to mind. First off, the school’s environment is the ultimate in collaboration and teamwork. Secondly, there is no other school in the world with a stronger reputation in the field of marketing.
MIT Sloan
MIT Sloan’s two-year MBA program is comprised of a combination of case studies, team projects, lectures, live case discussions, interactions with industry leaders, and hands-on lab classes. The first-semester core serves as a foundation for the rest of the program.
Columbia Business School
As Wall Street goes, so does Columbia Business School. Its fortunes are so closely aligned with the financial sector, that a prolonged downturn inevitably has a big impact on the uptown school. Roughly half of all the students go into finance after graduating with their MBAs. So with the bloom off Wall Street, which continues to lay off large numbers of people, the impact on Columbia has been obvious.
Dartmouth – Tuck
Dartmouth’s Tuck is a super rich concoction of an MBA education, a picture-perfect business school solely dedicated to providing students with the ultimate MBA experience. There are no business undergraduates sharing the halls, nor are there part-time MBAs in evening classes, or executive MBAs who come in on Friday nights.