How are you making your school choice decisions?

After months of stressing about whether I would get in anywhere, I have started to get acceptance notices and am switching gears to decision mode. I would be grateful for everyone's perspectives not only on my situation, but on how you are going about your decision-making process.

I am in at Booth, Yale and Fuqua, and am cautiously optimistic about the upcoming decisions from Wharton and Stern. I am planning to do either consulting or entrepreneurship, which is what I have been doing to date. My wife is currently working in New York with a great job and would like to stay.

I guess I am interested in how all of you are balancing questions of family/school fit with concerns like prestige and school ranking.

13 Comments
 

Congratulations on your acceptances!

As you may know, Booth is incredible for consulting (especially financial/strategy consulting) - wonderful faculty and recruitment. Unless you get into Wharton, I recommend that you choose Booth.

What are your GMAT, GPA, and work exp stats?

 

Congrats man those are great schools.

"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?"
 

Thanks for the insights. How did you make your decision?

By the way, my stats were GMAT 750, GPA 3.5 from top ten liberal arts college. 7 years Entrepreneurship/Consulting experience (mostly in China).

 
Angus Macgyver7 years' experience? How old are you?

I'm thinking of applying with 2 years' experience (3-ish upon matriculation), because I'm a little older than average. Not sure which is a bigger turn-off to adcoms - not enough experience, or too much age. Rock and a hard place, eh...

I am 30. I had seen on this board ans others that being older was a problem for b-schools, and I expect it probably is at HBS. It hasn't seemed to be an issue elsewhere since its been all acceptances so far. I could see how that could be a bigger concern for someone in finance, though.

 
shorttheworldassuming youre doing booth or wharton, what would u pick between yale and duke :P thats my dilemma.. im gonna go to happy hours with a bunch of admitted students and polly it up
If I'm not mistaken, Yale's already on its way up both the official and unofficial (recruiting) rankings. Looks like Ted Snyder's got some skills.
losttravelerAngus... same boat... I graduated 1 year older than my peers (took a year off) and only have 3 years at matriculation. I'll be at Columbia this year.

Ah, good to know. Maybe there's hope for me yet!

 

Angus... same boat... I graduated 1 year older than my peers (took a year off) and only have 3 years at matriculation. I'll be at Columbia this year.

 

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