Chicago Booth vs. Dartmouth Tuck vs. London Business School?
First time visitor and user of this site, but have heard some good things. Anyway, I’m looking to shift into finance (ideally S&T or IM) after spending 5 years in consulting. My finance experience is limited, apart from a college internship at Lehman in a middle/back office role, and an Equity Research role for ~6 months at a hedgefund / mutual fund immediately after graduation. As a result, I applied to some MBA programs in order to make the transition to finance, and am currently deciding between Chicago Booth, Dartmouth Tuck, and London Business School. At the same time, I’ve had some folks tell me that the MBA isn’t the best route, and that a CFA or a Master’s in Finance would be a better approach. Looking for any advice here on:
a. Whether an MBA is even the right route
b. If so, which school would be the best
My current evaluation has me leaning toward Booth, given its quantitative focus and the specified nature of some of the classes. They also gave me a scholarship for 50% tuition. On the other hand, my favorite school in terms of fit and all was Tuck (~25% scholarship), and I’ve heard great things about the network, which I think will be especially important for facilitating such a career shift. LBS is lower on my priority given what a mess Europe is right now, but it’s reputation for finance was what drew me to it.
Chicago and Tuck both place very well and have similar amounts of spots per student. An MBA seems to make a lot of sense for you. You will probably have more fun at Tuck, especially if you enjoy outdoor activities over city life. Whether that is worth the $30k tuition difference is up to you. Also, although Chicago is known as a finance school, Tuck has some great finance profs, including Ken French, insofar as you care about intellectual finance.
MBA and Booth. Best of the group IMO, particularly when it comes to quant work. Plus, you got the scholarship.
Chicago > Hanover, NH.
Only choose LSE if you want to live in London/Europe.
Do American firms not typically accept or recruit out of LSE? edit: my bad I just realized how old this thread was
LSE doesn't offer MBA programs bro, they only have the trium track with NYU Stern and HEC
I will also chime in for Booth. I could talk about why Booth all day, but for your particular case I will focus on one thing I think is particularly important: The flexibility of the curriculum.
As I'm sure you know, Booth allows its students to essentially design their own MBA over two years, which I think is invaluable to career changers. Coming without a ton of finance background, this means that you can load up on finance in the first three quarters of your MBA, so that come summer time, you can hopefully be a step above the rest of the competition.
Now, it's true that interviews for IM and S&T will be held in January, meaning you will only have one quarter + 2-3 weeks of another quarter under your belt, but being able to front-load your Investments and Stats classes will be extremely valuable.
If you are still having trouble deciding, best advice I can give you is to reach out to a few people at each school who are pursuing the career paths you're looking at. They can give you the best perspective on recruiting, experience, classes, etc.
Thanks - good stuff all around. I actually just got back from Booth's admit weekend and it definitely seemed like a solid place. The ability to front load classes, and the specified nature of those classes is a huge draw. At the end of the day, I think it makes the most sense (as much as I'd love skiing and rock climbing every weekend in New Hampshire). The two people from the S&T club were great too, and had secured some pretty solid internships.
PS - meabric, the other half of Fama French model is a professor at Booth (Fama).
Booth. Tuck really only places into long only shops in Boston while booth is known to have a much varied recruiting field
Booth.
Booth easily. This one is a no-brainer. Tuck is a general management school; it does do well with private equity and long-only mutual funds in Boston, but weak in trading, hedge funds, and non-boston IM. They also offer very few finance electives that will be relevant to your areas of interest while Booth offers a plethora of challenging dynamic courses. And with the flexible curriculum you can take the classes that will help you with internship interviews right away. In contrast, Tuck's first-year curriculum is fairly rigid, sort of similar to HBS in that regard.
As for LBS, one of the most overrated b-schools in the world. The caliber of the student body there is quite low, and London finance job market is getting slaughtered.
So you guys are saying I should go to LBS, right?
Was just cracking jokes. It's looking like Booth in a landslide, which is pretty much where I was at before the post. Thanks for the insight though. Am probably going to try to avoid Europe given the market conditions there, but thanks again.
^flew right over his head.
Can you share with us your other metrics, such as GMAT / Undergrad / GPA? And whether you used MBA consultants and what not? :) This will help prospective monkeys a lot!
760 / Small East Coast Lib Arts College / 3.7
I used someone to review my essays, but not the ones for these 3 schools. It also wasn't what you'd call a full blown MBA consultant.
Feel free to shoot me a PM if you'd like to talk more about the process. Though I'm sure there is already an abundance out there on the MBA admissions process.
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