Help deciding where to go?
I got accepted at Rice ($), Texas (in-state), Georgetown and Tepper. I have 3 years exp in the consulting industry, and I want to concentrate in finance during my MBA. Is it worth paying the extra money to go to G'town or Tepper because of their proximity to NYC? Or would I be making a foolish move. I know Texas has a lot of name in US News rankings, but it is a very regional school (I did my undergrad there) with not so good career services. I am really confused, any help would be appreciated!
No
if you want to do IB in Houston/Dallas- Texas will get you there and, to a lesser extent, so will Rice. I'm sure you know this as you are from Texas, but the nice thing about investment banking in Texas is that you have the energy capital of the world in Houston close by, and all the premier BBs recruit for the energy banking groups at UT. Also, after a couple of years at a BB in Houston, you may be able to transfer to its NYC office.
If you want to do IB in NYC right away- none of the programs will be a sure bet. Georgetown will get you banking jobs in DC and the mid-atlantic. Tepper is more of an asset management kind of school, not good for investment banking.
I think your best, and least expensive bet, is UT.
GS, JPM, Barclays, BoA ML, Citi, Deutsche, Wells Fargo, Lazard...all recruit from Georgetown (and for NY offices). Grant it, each bank is not making the same number of offers at gtown as it would at Harvard or Wharton, but each one is still making numerous offers. Plus there are less applicants to compete with as the program is not as big
I am currently at gtown and starting FT at one of the above mentioned banks in July. Please dont take advice from people who dont know anything about the program...let alone those who have not been to bschool
I was always under the impression that Georgetown was a primary feeder into Washington DC IB If what you say is true then Gtown is definitely worth considering.
That sounds great and congrats to you! I am assuming you had prior work experience in the field? I visited their campus and the new building is really impressive, the best I have seen so far by a stretch. Can you provide any insight on the off campus housing options there? The cost of living is a major factor for me, considering Houston is so cheap..
Thank you for the input. If it comes down to between just UT and Rice, would I be crazy to pick Rice over UT? I like the B-school facilities at Rice much more than UT. I pay the same amount for tuition in both schools.
Rice wouldn't be crazy. I don't know what the numbers are at UT, but I do know that around 6-8 students a year do investment banking at Rice with a class size of 125. That doesn't seem too terrible to me although I obviously don't know how many of those 125 actually wanted to do ibd.
That is true.. tough decision ahead! Thanks :)
Snooze
Honestly, you have a Texas school under your belt already. All of the schools you have listed are great, but I do think that NYC firms will give preference to northeastern schools. Gtown is only 2 hours from the city so if you want to interview you can do it with ease. Also, suppose you don't get invited for interviews with BB firms. Middle Market places are going to be reluctant to fly you across the country to meet with them. In that case a more local school will win out. Just my .02 cents. All your choices are great by the way. Congrats!
Thank you Anthony for the valuable input! I am waiting on a decision from Yale, if I get in there it will be a no-brainer for me.. but until then I am sitting here weighing pros and cons of each school. I really wish I'd applied to NYU.
Have you visited all of these schools? I am very familiar with Tepper and can comment on the atmosphere and area a lot. I think you will be fine wherever you go to school though !
I am planning on visiting Georgetown and Tepper in the first week of February, so that should help hopefully. How is Tepper? I have heard it is more quant focused than other schools. Also, a lot of people say it is "very far" from NYC, which I don't think is true..
rice is good, but is less well-regarded at the MBA level than is Texas. if you are getting an MBA in texas, do UT.
as for the comments about georgetown- it is true that it is only a few hours from NYC, so you may be able to get a banking gig in NYC, but it is a semi-target at best. you should be able to get IB in the DC area though, which may be interesting as many firms have their ADG (aerospace, defense, government) groups there.
as for carnegie mellon: good for quant asset mgmt stuff, but i have never really heard of BBs recruiting there for the traditional front office IB roles.
have you thought about a school like virginia or cornell? they place pretty well in NY IB.
I missed the deadline fo Darden.. never had Cornell on my list. I don't really care that much about doing IB in NYC, as long as I can do it in one of the major cities. Just thought there might be more opportunities if I am closer to NYC. If Texas can get me into one of the big names in either Houston or Dallas, that's perfectly fine by me. Just that Texas as a state is a not a big financial hub like the east coast. People do say Houston energy IB is big, but honestly I barely ever come across anyone or see any such opportunities in Houston.
It's going to be a tough decision, unless Georgetown or Tepper totally WOWs when I go visit, I think I might end up going to Texas again!
Your opinion has been invaluable, and thank you for all the help. I really appreciate it! :)
Tepper Job Placement : http://www.tepper.cmu.edu/mba/your-career/career-paths/download.aspx?id…
It all comes down to fit. I have spent a lot of time in Pittsburgh and love the city as well as CMU. It has decent IB placement and is a well respected school. Oakland is really nice place to live in and there are a bunch of large financial firms to intern in within the area. It is not NYC by any league, but if you got to CMU you can intern at Mellon, Fidelity, PNC, Citizens, Raptor, etc.
All of your schools have solid alumni and good reputations. Hit me up when you go to Tepper. I can tell you some awesome places to hit up in PGH.
Thank you Anthony, I will let you know for sure :)
Houston IBs recruit on campus only at Rice (Jones) and UT (McCombs). It's actually hard to make it into Houston IBs even from the top north-east schools. I have met few bankers in Houston from Wharton, Chicago, NYU and Columbia (who usually moved from the NY office) although the overwhelming majority are Rice and UT MBAs. Never met anyone from the other two schools you are referring.
Rice this year placed 4th in Finance in the World according to WSJ (UT was not in the top 10). http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/74b8bd3e-06a4-11df-b426-00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid…
It also ranked higher than UT on the overall FT MBA rankings as well as on the Economist. http://rankings.ft.com/businessschoolrankings/global-mba-rankings
Rice actually has quite a few alumni on Wall St. where there is a one week treck every year, including the current CIO of George Soros Fund and cofounder of Blackrock (Keith Anderson). The CEO of Ernst &Young is also an alum.
In addition, Rice University as a school overall has more wow factor in terms of academics than UT out of state.
Also, outside of NYC, you will find real IBs offices only in Chicago (industrial/commodities), Houston (energy), LA (general), San Francisco/Silicon Valley (tech), and Miami (healthcare and Latin America).
Dallas doesn't really have much IB going on.
I personally had applied to schools in each one of those cities, except Chicago since I hate cold weather. It was the right choice for what I can see.
Outside of the top schools, geographic proximity to employers starts to matter a lot. While you have received plenty of good advice above, I'd say go to the school located in the area that you want to kick off your post-MBA career. It's not just a matter of placement out of the MBA program, but also one of brand recognition throughout your career. If you go to Rice and still end up in NYC, your may find that a lot of people have no idea what Rice is and instantly write you off as less intelligent. It's incredibly snobby but unfortunately common in the IB world.
Obviously if there is a significant gap between the quality of the programs you get into, you want to go with the highest quality program. Don't turn down Stanford for UT because you want to be in Texas.
"less intelligent"?!? Hopefully, less ignorant that somebody who pretends not to know that Rice is one of the best universities in the country.
When screening resumes, Rice (for undergrad) screams "I'm a privileged idiot from some connected family in the South who couldn't get into a top school."
I can't even imagine what to think about the Rice MBA.
Are you the Rice troll from BW forums?
Rice troll? You are the one getting upset because I don't know the Carnegie Mellon business school name...Neither do most peole outside of Pittsburgh. ROTFL
Not knowing Tepper is like not knowing Cox or Mays.
umm ok.. you probably don't know Georgetown either. Anyway thanks for your help!
Go ahead. Shoot higher.
Truth is for Ibanking at Rice on a typical year there are about 5-6 spots for roughly 10-15 people (out of 120 in the class) wanting to go to IB. Those are not bad odds. At UT probably they are much worse since the class size is more than double and the number of spots available are the same (Houston banks primarily).
At Chicago, Wharton, etc... just about everybody in the class of 500 or more people wants to do banking. There is probably 1 spot every 10 people. That's assuming those schools place more than 50 people in banking each year, which I don't think it's the case.
I agree with you that Rice may have less competition than does UT for IB, but I think a higher % of UT students place into IB than Rice students.
I think kids who go to Wharton are better off than the ones going to Rice
Out of the 523 students reporting job offers at Wharton, over 200 were placed in either IB, Investment Management, Real Estate Finance, Private Equity, Venture Capital, or Hedge Funds 140 were placed in management/strategy consulting- (McKinsey, Bain, and Boston Consulting Group)
So 2/3 of the class was able to break into the 2 most coveted career paths there are and have a diploma whose name carries a lot of cachet in the entire business world.
The Rice MBA brand name isn't very strong outside of the Southwest. So, once again, if you are 100% committed to staying in Texas, Rice isn't a bad choice. If you aren't, you may be better off getting MBA elsewhere
Maybe slightly higher number (since class is more than twice the size), definitely not higher percentage.
Did you seriously just assert that Rice is a better business school for IBD than Chicago or Wharton??
Rice is a joke of an MBA. Get 650 on your GMAT, work a few years in some middling job and talk about how much you love Rice = auto-admit. I get it; you have school pride, you have an ego and you are weak minded enough to wholesale drink the Kool aid. Did you get that tingly surge of pride and accomplishment when the Dean stood up and told you guys how successful and lucky you are to be there on your first day? Do alumni frequently mention how Rice is the "Harvard of the South" or how it helped them become successful as "real estate entrepreneurs" in the Texas panhandle?
Troll
My $0.02
If you don't mind going into debt, I'd rank the B schools as follows
Tepper (1st by a mile) > Georgetown > UT Austin > Rice
Tepper really has the best name on the street compared to the others, Georgetown is pretty close, but Tepper just places better into MBB and IBs (not well compared to HSW, but if you top your class you pretty much have access to very good opportunities)
I think you really should go to Georgetown or Tepper, the investment will seem like nothing 5 years down the line and you can obtain loans at ridiculously low interest rates (and you save on taxes too).
Contrary to what energy_fin_guy says, Rice is actually the weakest MBA, I cant believe he turned down berkeley for Rice. He either doesn't know what he is doing or is lying (which is more likely)
If you say so :-)
You've dealt with this very maturely, I was wrong to have been rude. I do still disagree with your points though
Thank you mmonkey. I know I am not going to UT just because I do not want to go back to the same school as my undergrad, and also it's not really that GREAT there.. plus the career services is very mediocre. I will have to take a loan wherever I go, and you are right in the long run the investment will feel like nothing. I still have time till mid March..so the thought process continues :)
Really? I have always heard that UT-Austin has a really great career service dept- at least for undergrad.
care to elaborate?
Not really, or maybe I didn't have a very good experience personally. Most of the people who graduated with me in my class also were not very impressed...we had to find jobs through our own networking more than the help from career services. Also, since it's a huge public school professors don't really care much about the students and it is hard to reach them in office hours. Maybe it is different at MBA level..but you know the bad taste stays..
I definitely want to try a private school for my MBA.. unless of course it is Haas or Ross.
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