The Midwest MBA Scene

Mod Note: This post was originally a comment in the discussion "Best Midwest MBA for Value"

Kellogg should also be under as serious consideration as Booth, especially if tuition is a factor. Kellogg often gives students credit for courses already taken- it's the only M7 I know of that does this.

They are both excellent schools. Booth is a little bit better, but not so much that if you're frugal and get a 40% tuition break from Kellogg it's no big deal. (Recall that OP is shopping on cost.). If cost is a factor, and I understand how it can be, Kellogg is surprisingly flexible.

I just want to be clear here that people pursue an M7 MBA with the intention of working harder or taking more career risks, and sell their rights to work less hard anytime soon. If you get an M7 MBA and take out loans to do so, you do not have the option of burning out and spending a year in Colorado as a ski bum (or hang gliding bum). This should scare people IMHO.

The calculus for most people who want an MBA tips in favor of "screw the cost, I want prestige", but a $170K MBA closes off a lot of options that most other people have in exchange for creating options that others don't It's one thing to have the opportunity to work in finance- or as a top tier consultant. It's quite another thing to *need* to work in consulting- to not have the option of leaving.

Look, if you have a high paying consulting job, you are also going to need a car and a condo for a high-paid consultant. You will need to go play at golf courses for high paid consultants and spend other money like a high paid consultant. Your expenses go up along with your salary, and now as a member of the ~40% (or higher) tax bracket in NYC or CA, less money than you really think is available to repay those loans.

Cost matters here. $160K is going to take most people at least three years (probably more like four) to pay back. If you can save $80K on tuition, that cuts the amount of time you spend needing to work in a high-paying job in half. That's not to say you should turn down HBS for a free ride at Arizona State, but OP is right to have a keen focus on cost.

I don't plan on burning out anytime soon, but I always try to preserve for myself the ability to go all Thoreau if I have some crazy philosophical epiphany. The only thing worse than wanting money and a great career and not being able to get it, is wanting a low-key lifestyle, and not being able to get it because you *need* a great career to pay your bills.

Let me frame it another way. 10% of HBS's graduating class does not have jobs at graduation. How would it feel to be $170K in debt, owe $1,000/mo in interest (let alone principal repayment), and not have a job? What kind of odds at making $300K your first year ($180K after tax, $70K saved after a typical NYC lifestyle) do you need to make up for that?

In any case, if OP is looking to save money, Kellogg is (I believe) the only M7 to give you credit for prior courses, which can significantly reduce the sticker price. Kellogg isn't HBS, but it's not at the low end of the M7 either, and they are still run by practical Midwesterners. OP may want to go through his ugrad transcript and see if he can match courses he took with available courses at Kellogg.

For the Midwest M7s it would hinge on references first, then test scores or some other measure (ideally very recent) that would help validate those references, and then finally the interview to confirm everything.

My take (and I'm not an MBA so I could be wrong) has always been that UChicago and Northwestern are a little less concerned with pedigree and a little more concerned with what you've done lately and how you've played the cards you've been dealt.

They are also a little more concerned with test scores and quantitative measures- UChicago in particular. People on the coasts make certain assumptions about anything from flyover country, so it's nice for everyone in Chicago (not just schools) to have a set of comparable numbers. For the two MBA programs, test scores are part of that. (For UChicago there is also # of Nobel laureates and their share of full professors at east coast schools taught at U of C, US News Rank, etc.)

If you can pull off a 740 on the GMAT, have outstanding recs, and a series of promotions on your résumé, you are in the running for Kellogg. Booth will require more.

In any case this is where the admissions consultants step in.

If you graduate without a job, most employers' priors are that you're in the bottom of your graduating class.

Talk to most employers and they'd rather take the top 50% at Tuck or Cornell over the bottom 10% at HBS. My take is that a lot of those people will be taking $80K/yr jobs and might not be any better off than they were two years ago career-wise.

Either way it sucks to graduate without a job if you owe $1000/mo in interest, regardless of how picky you are being.

Grades have no impact, but who wants to take one of the last lumpy oranges in any bin- even the bin of expensive imported organic Italian oranges?

The question everyone is wondering in recruiting at top schools is (1) how did your internship go? (2) did you get an offer? (3) why didn't you take it? Or why didn't they make one? Employers get very nervous about hiring candidates whom other employers appear to have passed on.

And the last 10% of the class has been pretty darned picked over.

I spent two years in grad school at a program that effectively competes with M7 MBA programs for students with finance backgrounds who are interested in returning to finance.

Regardless of where I went to school I don't think it is very controversial to claim that graduating without a job is a negative outcome, that graduating without a job conveys some sort of signal to potential employers, and that it's probably harder to get a job if you're an unemployed MBA than if you're an MBA student.