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I have several friends who are in that program. There virtually is no admission standards. If you have a pulse, no criminal record, and a job, you're getting in. The program is a cash cow (true for any part-time or Executive MBA program) for the school, so the caliber of students and the program is rather low. Only do it if you're happy with your job, have no desire to make a transition, and they are at least paying for a part of it.
Thanks for the info.. I was hoping the Columbia brand might carry some cachet- Guess it makes sense admission standards are lower. Columbia still requires the GMAT for EMBA which is interesting
Agreed, do they have the same access to recruiting or networks like in regular CBS students?
At CBS, the executive MBA students have access to full-time on-campus recruiting jobs, but not summer internships. For those wanting to break into banking or consulting, that is a huge negative since they mostly hire from their summer intern pool.
Thanks for your reply, this is good to know considering if I decide to pursue banking again then CBS would be a better option. Its still strange that firms on the street still manage to post full-time OCR jobs even if they picked their intern pool already. Are they trying to give others a chance particularly the ones who missed out on interning? o.0
I can only speak for fall 2015 OCR at Columbia. The bulge bracket banks did NOT do full-time OCR my 2nd year because they were able to fill all the slots with their summer interns. The ones who came to campus were middle-market banks and boutiques (BMO, Guggenheim, Houlihan Lokey, Sagent, Greenhill, Evercore, a few others). From talking to my friends who are current 2nd years, this year is a bit different, and a few bulge bracket banks are posting for full-time due to internship conversion issues.
I just re-read my first post on this thread and feel like a huge jackass. I think I was drunk when I wrote that, so I need to make some clarifications.
Yes, Executive MBA is less selective than FT, but I grossly exaggerated the caliber of students. Here's what I think from countless interactions and classes with both programs. The average full-time is more impressive than the average EMBA, and the bottom 10-15% of EMBA is really bad. However, the top 10-15% of EMBA compare very nicely with the top full-timers. The main difference is that the EMBAs are older, most are married, and hence are not interested in the MBA social scene. I've met EMBAs who are MDs at bulge bracket banks, founders of successful startups, heirs to multi-billion dollar family fortunes, etc. And in terms of the caliber of class discussion, the EMBAs brought a lot to the table due to the breadth and depth of their experience. If I had not been interested in a career transition, I think I would've done EMBA at either Columbia, Booth, or Wharton.
i currently attend an M7 program (not CBS) and the exec/part-time students do not get access to OCR and are restricted from many networking events
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