"Is a Harvard MBA worth it?"
About a week or 2 ago I made a thread regarding WSO users on whether they still would've gotten an MBA if given the chance to go back. http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forums/if-you-coul…
As I was scrolling through Facebook today I saw this article from boston magazine referring to HBS. http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2015/10/2…
They might have a little local bias but I get what they meant. I think the brand name of HBS is undeniable. EVERYONE knows of Harvard and while it may not be the best in every job sector it's name just has an impeccable mystique that every other school envies.
“If I didn’t get into one of the top schools—Harvard being the top of my list—I don’t know if I would have pursued an MBA at that particular time,” Eshete says. “I wasn’t necessarily willing to get an MBA from just anywhere.”
If you would ask random people (either professionals or just people) to name the top 3 schools in the world they would most likely include HBS in that list. And this would be a likely answer for countries outside of North America as well. If you travel/work in Europe most American (or Asian or whatever) schools won't be "well-known" unless you have education/industry knowledge.
I have yet to meet someone who doesn't know this school. So yeah, it is a brand.
Pretty much what the above said. You can argue ROI for business schools all day on whether only MBA business schools ">M7 is worth it, top 25, only Darden / Ross / Duke, etc. but I think almost everybody would agree that a HBS MBA is worth the $$.
At the end of the day, not many positions are going to be interviewing for candidates and think that somebody with a degree from HBS is not qualified for the job.
What's the value add to your thread? Harvard is great...we all know that. You making a thread on here isn't going to convince people either way, and if it did why do you give a flying shit what we think? Your post doesn't make Harvard look good(not that it needs your post to look good) and it makes you look like an insecure, Harvard or bust type candidate, much like a certain legendary poster around here used to be.
True, but that's not the question that determines if it's worth it. The bar is much higher for b-schools in practice: will it get you into jobs that were better enough than the one you left to make it worth the 400 GS in debt and the two years out of your career?
No doubt the answer is going to be yes for most people but lets also be realistic: there's also a number of people who are going to get the exact same entry level consulting/IB job that they would have gotten had they gone to a school in the 10-20 range. I'd tell anyone accepted to go but I also wouldn't tell them that just being from HBS would guarantee success.
But even for top IB and consulting jobs, it's still easier to get coming out of HBS than the schools in the 10-20 range. For one, companies give way more first-round OCR interview slots to HBS than those other programs and end up giving offers to a higher % of interviewees. My best friend is an engagement manager at a MBB, and he recently conducted interviews at HBS, Kellogg, and Yale SOM. At HBS his firm interviews around 200 and extends offers to around 80. At Kellogg, they interview around 140 and extends offers to around 35-40. At Yale, they only interview 30 and offers to just 5. Even when adjusted for class size, it's obvious that there's a huge drop outside of M7+tuck+maybe haas.
Harvard is almost twice the size of Kellogg...I actually thought Harvard would get more spots than that. Your overall point stands though.
It's pretty simple to be honest:
If I want to get a nice post-MBA job in banking, tech, or perhaps PE/VC or jobs in other industries, HBS is great as are a number of other schools. If I want to be an astronaut, not so much. Mystique is for X-men, not adults.
Lol for a user named human capital, you sure have no clue about what it means.
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