Best Business School for Transition to Entertainment / Hollywood Business

What are the best business schools for someone with a finance background looking to make the transition to working strategy and/or a related business role within the movies/entertainment/Hollywood space?

Guessing USC and UCLA are good given the location. What about NYU? Do top schools like Harvard, Stanford, Wharton place well into this area, or are they overlooked since it's assumed students want to pursue banking, consulting, etc.?

10 Comments
 

Why do you want to work on the strategy/corporate side? The nature of the job, the work environment/culture and the people you work with aren't any different than most Fortune 500 type of companies.

The fun is on the production side: agents, producers, directors, writers, actors, and crew (editors, cinematographers, etc).

Alex Chu www.mbaapply.com
 

Always thought it would be interesting to work in an area where I'm very passionate and interested in the product. Plus, I feel like as you climb the corporate ladder you get to make more decisions about the way the company operates, what projects it invests in, etc., where I think the industry does matter.

For example, someone working at Universal, Warner Bros, etc. makes decisions on which movies are made, how projects are financed, etc., whereas someone at a pharma company decides which areas to invest R&D in, at a manufacturing company which locations to open factories in, etc. Seems like different roles to me.

Let me know if you disagree.

 

Your first guess is the best one, UCLA or USC. This is one industry where location really, really matters. I'm sure from HSW you could get into entertainment (you can get into most anything from there), but the network you'll get in the industry won't be nearly as strong. As for NYU, yes you can do entertainment but it's not on par with the two LA schools. UCLA is the better MBA program but USC as a whole is stronger in the entertainment industry.

 

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