Best of top 5 for finance?

Any thoughts on how the top B Schools stack up for us finance folks? Pros/cons of Wharton vs. HBS vs Stanford, etc? Major differences in recruiting options/pay coming out and curriculum/programs while in school?

14 Comments
 

Not to be a dick, but this stuff is all over the internet. Read their curriculum and see for yourself. Look at who the teacher are and their backgrounds. These places are full of famous names.

I know for a fact that Harvard and Wharton both put out reports relating to job placement, average salary, recruiting calendars, etc. It is all on their websites.

I'm not there yet, but when it comes to b-school everyone has their preferences. That's why you visit them and read up on them.

 

In terms of finance curriculum, Wharton reigns supreme. Harvard, on the other hand, is hands-down the best place for management.

Both obviously place well into investment banking, private equity, and consulting, but my limited experience seems to indicate that more often than not private equity guys (post-biz school) went to HBS, while guys in IB (post-biz school) went to Wharton.

Big generalization, of course. Take this with a grain of salt.

 

You go to anyone of those schools, you can do whatever you want. Its pretty simple really.

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Westfald is right. From a top 5 school you can go anywhere in the finance world. One is not better than the other. You may prefer one place over the other for any range of reasons, but there's no advantage in terms of placement potential.

If you're interested in seeing what a handful of HBS, Stanford & Kellogg folks think about this question read their comments here: How would you evaluate the top tier business schools against one another? - http://bit.ly/R9UNb

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boutique banking, obv i made this post to elicit insider thoughts from ppl with a Street perspective. good luck finding that on the school websites.

thx for the posts everyone

 
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MarginCallingboutique banking, obv i made this post to elicit insider thoughts from ppl with a Street perspective. good luck finding that on the school websites. thx for the posts everyone

I see what your saying, and yes there are probably some PE/HF's that will have their opinions. But that is such a tiny, minute fraction of the already small finance world that 99.9% of the time you shouldn't/wouldn't have to worry about it. Even then its probably because they have a lot of alum. TPG, Blackstone, KKR all recruit pretty equally from those schools. So if they're not sweating it neither should you.

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patekphilippeHarvard Wharton Chicago Columbia NYU

If you're talking about strictly private equity and venture capital, replace NYU with Stanford.

Harvard's finance program is not particularly special relative to many other top b-schools, although it is obviously still great. This is probably due in part to their emphasis on the case method, which is much more effective for management than finance, in my opinion.

However, HBS does of course place extremely well into private equity, venture capital, and investment banking.

But placement and curriculum are two different things, though related.

To each his own!

 
cdkram
patekphilippeHarvard Wharton Chicago Columbia NYU

If you're talking about strictly private equity and venture capital, replace NYU with Stanford.

Harvard's finance program is not particularly special relative to many other top b-schools, although it is obviously still great. This is probably due in part to their emphasis on the case method, which is much more effective for management than finance, in my opinion.

However, HBS does of course place extremely well into private equity, venture capital, and investment banking.

But placement and curriculum are two different things, though related.

To each his own!

I agree. But, recruiting is more important than academics to most MBAs.

 

in terms of faculty research impact (citations)

I was surprised UCB was 25th (Maryland 24; Indiana and Yale at 27)

Rank Organization 1991-2005 Total 1 New York University (NYU) 2 Pennsylvania, U. of (Wharton)
3 Chicago, U. of 4 Harvard University - Boston 5 California, U. of - Los Angeles (UCLA) 6 Michigan, U. of - Ann Arbor 7 Duke University 8 Northwestern University 9 Ohio State University - Columbus 10 Columbia University - NY 11 Massachusetts Inst. of Tech. (MIT) 12 Stanford University 13 Cornell University 14 Illinois, U. of - Urbana/Champaign London Business School 16 Arizona State University North Carolina, U. of - Chapel Hill Rochester, U. of 19 Southern California, U. of (USC) 20 Texas, U. of - Austin

 

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