Q&A: MIT Sloan

Hi all, I am currently a 2nd year student at MIT Sloan graduating in the summer and heading for a position in New York afterwards. The forum has surprisingly little discussion around Sloan so I thought I would try to provide some color around the courses, recruiting, culture, student life, etc. Hope this helps future MBA applicants in one way or another.

 
lordbendtner:

Hi,

Thanks for doing this. What was your background, And what backgrounds do your classmates come from (BB IB, MBB, etc)? What were the best/most memorable courses offered at Sloan?

Happy to be of help.

  • Background: undergrad degree in business in my home country in Asia
  • Prior work experience: management consulting in Asia / Middle East
  • Backgrounds of classmates: as with other schools, I think the admission committee puts in a lot of work so that any incoming class is balanced among multiple backgrounds. MIT Sloan is not as engineer / tech heavy as far as backgrounds of the class. I have a fair number of friends from FLDP, BB IBD, MBB, Big Tech (think MSFT, AMZN, etc.)
  • Best course offered: I think all the courses I have taken are excellent. If I had to choose a single 'best course', I have to say Industrial Economics by Professor Robert Pindyck. You spend a semester looking into a number of courses and their economics, and I think the course provides a very useful tool for you to apply in most of the professions people on this forum are interested in, be it consulting, banking, PE or even hedge funds.
 
AllDay_028:

Are you doing IBD? How many people in your class are doing IBD? What is your feeling on how finance in general is viewed at Sloan considering relatively few people from the school come from or go into it?

Yes, going into IBD at a BB in New York. I would say ~5% of my class is doing IBD, and expect 5-10% to end up in PE / HF / AM type of role. A lot of my friends looking into these buy-side jobs are recruiting at the moment so can't tell you the exact figures yet.

I agree that finance is not as a major field that graduates go into as other schools (e.g. Columbia, Wharton), but there are benefits to having a smaller cohort. I think I know every person who wants to end up in finance in my class across all the sub-fields, and this is something that I feel is a huge benefit. Also, the finance courses offered at Sloan are just phenomenal on both corporate finance and markets side.

 
Best Response

You mention you're estimating 5-10% of your class ends up in PE/HF/AM which is actually really high ... do all these people you're referring to have BB IBD or pre-MBA PE/HF/AM experience?

Would you say more people want to get into these industries post-MBA but don't have the experience necessary to do so? Or would you say this number would be higher if more Sloanies were interested in these types of fields?

 
Manks:

How is the Sloan culture? From what I've heard it's a lot more social than the stereotypes that come with MIT undergrad.

I think the Sloan culture has more in common with overall MBA culture than MIT undergrad. We have the usual bar crawls, treks, parties, dinners, etc. that comes with the MBA experience. Sure, Sloan might be less of a party school than other business schools with such reputation, but I think of it as comparing a score of 95 to a 98 on a scale of 0-100.

 
okay24:

What were your stats pre-MBA? GPA, GMAT, extracurriculars, etc.

Did you come in knowing you wanted to do IBD? What was your experience in the recruiting process?

Thanks for doing this

GPA - it's harder to compare given I did my undergrad outside of the US. I would say it wasn't too bad GMAT - mid 700s Extracurriculars - leadership position in student clubs during undergrad and continued involvement as an alum, some volunteering

Yes, I came in knowing I wanted to do IBD. I think the recruiting experience across most business schools are largely similar: on-campus presentations followed by weekly Friday coffee chats, then superdays in January. There was an excellent thread on the investment banking forum by someone who just went through the process. I suggest you look into that for more insights?

 

Hey, thank for doing this. Did you get into other schools and if yes, why did you choose MIT over those schools? Also, did you have any finance background before b-school and did that hinder you from getting any finance positions at MIT? Thank you.

 
keyboardb:

Hey, thank for doing this. Did you get into other schools and if yes, why did you choose MIT over those schools? Also, did you have any finance background before b-school and did that hinder you from getting any finance positions at MIT? Thank you.

No, I applied to a handful of schools and only got into MIT. I did consider deferring the entire MBA experience for a year and re-applying to all the schools the following year, but ultimately decided to matriculate at MIT. And I can't tell you enough how happy I have been with my experience at MIT Sloan.

I did have some finance background as a combination of finance courses during my undergrad, taking CFA level 1 and a college BB internship back in my home country. Having prior knowledge did help, but I was very much humbled by how little I knew about finance through the courses I took here at Sloan.

 
mrharveyspecter:

Thanks for doing this, I have a few questions.
What are your future plans post BB? Or are you planning on becoming a career banker?
How does PE recruiting look like at MIT?
Do a lot of people end up going into Tech?

Don't have future plans post BB yet. I guess I'll see where the road leads me.

As with most other schools, PE recruiting is very unstructured and individual driven. A lot of my classmates recruiting for PE had prior experience in PE (or somewhat relevant experience).

Tech - yes, a lot of people end up going to tech. I haven't been directly involved in tech recruiting at all, and I can still tell you that you will have the opportunity to talk to almost any tech firm big tech, start-up, east coast, west coast, you name it) that you would want to talk to.

 

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