Sloan Y1 Q&A for recent admits
Q&A
Given round 2 results are just out (congrats AdMITS!) and inspired by a few of the other people (@Masterz57", @OpsDude", @TheGrind", etc) who have posted Q&Ason their b-school experience, I'm going to write about my experience at MIT's Sloan School.
Background
I went to an ivy undergrad, and did the usual finance IBD route. Wanted an early out of finance, so decided to apply to bschool, namely HSW and Sloan. Got into Sloan and one of the three, but eventually opted for Sloan due to the strong startup culture here that was not present in the competing offer (am aiming to start a company before I graduate). I have an offer in [IBD/consulting] for the summer, which I am taking as a backup in case the startup plan fails – and to fund the initial seed of the company.
Sloan Culture (yes, stealing @"OpsDude"/@” Masterz57” format, but I thought it was good)
Location: Cambridge/Boston is an amazing city to live in. I am actively considering moving here permanently post-graduation given its strong employment prospects, startup scene (perhaps a #3 behind Silicon Valley/Alley?), and (very slightly) lower cost of living compared to SF/NYC. Networking: Sloan is just the right size I feel of ~400 kids. I personally know everyone in my class and we can all more or less fit in a couple WhatsApp groups. Students: definitely the draw here as Sloan’s culture is very “nice”, especially compared to my undergrad days. Sloanies help other Sloanies, and it’s part of the reason why I’m writing this Q&A. Social Life: unfortunately, this is where the extroverts would say we lose out to the other school across the river. Sloan, being part of MIT, has a slightly more academic vibe, so we don’t go out on Sunday evenings. But Wednesdays – Saturdays are all fair game; so one night less compared to comps.
Recruiting - key differentiating point
Sloan does extremely well here. I don’t know anyone who was actively seeking a summer internship who didn’t get a position in their industry of choice (of course not everyone gets into GS, but those who sought IBD positions “at least”* got into the elite boutiques). *Some actively chose EBs over BBs The same for consulting, and tech/startups, which is Sloan’s strong suit. For tech, a couple points: you do not generally need to code to get jobs at AMZN/FB/GOOG/MSFT, as long as you display a passion for their products. Sloan also has a great startup scene, with one of the best (if not the best) startup accelerator program, through a collective resource pool of competitions, such as the $100k challenge, or the MIT Delta V (delta V = acceleration… geddit?) summer accelerator. Many of my peers are doing the exact same thing I do, which is to hold a summer [IBD/consulting/big company job] on the side, while doing a startup, and hoping the startup succeeds, but yet with a good fall back. I feel this is something unique to Sloan and perhaps to a degree, Stanford – but that’s more West Coast.
Academics
I have yet to meet a person who is cut throat academically. People are here to learn. They are passionate about learning, but not about grade grubbing. Sloan is one of the few places where Nobel Prize winning professors teach as well, and it's amazing to walk down the same hallways and not geek out when you meet Robert Merton. Happy to take comments/questions from here on out.
What exactly makes recruiting such a differentiator at Sloan? From my experience, what you've described about IB is applicable across all the M7 programs. Everyone who recruits for IB at an M7 gets it unless something weird happens, and go overwhelmingly to top firms.
This is not applicable to all industries (outside IB) at the other 6 of the M7 (Sloan's the only one I didn't really recruit at so my knowledge there is the least); I think you're pushing it to imply that's the case - you're telling me that everyone who recruits for PE/VC just walks into a role, unlike at everyone other b-school including HBS and Stanford? In addition, at the schools I'm more familiar with there is more demand than supply for consulting and to a lesser degree tech, though placements should still be very good, I find it difficult to believe that Sloan is somehow crushing it where all their peer schools are not (if that was the case, wouldn't they win every cross admit for consulting and tech, since other schools might be ~70% success rate for consulting?).
I'm not at Sloan, you are, but it definitely feels like you're making a sweeping claim based on IB that's not applicable across the board, to claim a "differentiator" for Sloan that doesn't really exist.
Exactly my point. Every M7 school crushes IBD. There is definitely zero "Sloan advantage" for IBD amongst their peerset.
I'm not as familiar with tech but I'm willing to bet the numbers aren't as skewed as you think there either (or at all). All of the M7 have huge big tech and startup programs. If you're going to claim that Sloan is significantly better than Stanford, HBS, CBS, Kellogg, Booth and Wharton for big tech recruiting than back it up. Tech is the largest recruiting club at Booth and probably at most or all other programs as well.
Nor have you given any indication that the campus accelerator is any better than those other programs. I'm with you that it's probably great, but people are choosing schools right now and I don't want prospective students misled into thinking that it's better than anyone else's because one student felt it was so good without looking at other programs. If you "feel" it is, fine, but give us some comparable stats to back it up.
Buddy I don't know why you're so into comparing programs and intent on showing the superiority (or lack thereof?) of Sloan vs its (perceived) comps.
I'm hosting this AMA purely for R2 admits who want to know more info and just want to know more, as a public service if you will. All of the M7 schools are great - some more than the others. Some have clear, established comparative advantages (W with Finance, H with Mgmt, S with startups for example). I'm here to let the students find their best fit and ask questions if they want to.
Am I being positively biased? Probably. In fact, almost definitely. But I'm assuming most reading this thread would assume so. I did in fact choose this school over my one other offer, so that's probably a fair claim to make. I also only applied to 4 schools, so can only claim to know about those 4 programs well (or well enough).
I have tried as far as possible to give a fair judgement of the situation, but I am just ONE viewpoint. If you've read the whole thread you can see that even other Sloanies have disagreed with some of my assessments (regarding quant recruiting for example). That's completely fair - short of having a comprehensive survey proving or disproving my points it's hard to say who is right as we all have our anecdotal biases: "a friend of a friend of mine got into Bridgewater this year so therefore quant recruiting works at Sloan (or vice versa)".
Obviously you might say the same for Dimensional at Booth and therefore quant recruiting works at Booth.
I don't have numbers to back my claims up - these are anecdotal. To prove it, you probably need data on the numbers of people who want to apply for a job, and subsequently applied for it, along with offers. You need revealed preferences and I can't think of any dataset which shows this data - even job offers adjusted for school population is not a good enough datapoint because it leaves out the key datapoint of what students really want in the first place.
For example, Sloan might have 5 job offers for all 5 job seekers in this field, vs. Stanford with 6 offers with 10 job seekers in this field. And even with that data, for tech in particular, you need to adjust for how many chose to be entrepreneurs, and didn't seek jobs in the first place. And further adjust for people who wanted the job but thought they weren't qualified enough to apply in the first place. I doubt this dataset is available anywhere but happy to be proven wrong.
I'm not taking issue with your providing information. I'm taking specific issue to your comment that Sloan's recruiting is a key differentiating point and better than comparable schools, which you clearly state in your opening post and which is false.
Despite what you infer I am not turning this into any sort of Booth comparison or pitch, that's not the point of this thread and I'm not interested in a tit for tat over comparable programs. But to claim to admits that Sloan is at all better for IB recruiting than other M7 programs when that is certainly not the case (not a Sloan slam, just an obvious point when everyone who recruits for banking gets offers and 99% at all M7 schools go to top banks), or light years better for tech/startup recruiting when you clearly don't have a solid understanding of the competition you're comparing to, is very misleading.
I think you may have misread my post - this is not a comparison to other schools - M7 or otherwise. I am not claiming Sloan to be better at recruiting in general. I am sure the best school to recruit at is Harvard, in general.
Recruiting however is indeed a key selling point, I still stand by my assessment. The vast majority of my peers all got jobs they wanted, or good jobs. We just came out of recruiting season and I'm feeling very happy for them (and myself), and it is indeed a key selling point for myself and a differentiating point for me - it has personally positively made a difference to my life and I am very thankful for it.
Whether Booth does better or worse frankly is irrelevant to me -- I am sure it could very well be even better. I know literally nothing about their program.
Again, my whole issue is the OP trying to pinpoint recruiting as a key differentiating point. PE/VC and some buy side paths have wide variability between schools. For IBD, consulting, marketing, corp fin, and I'd even say startups the schools all have very robust recruiting. I understand your point "all else being equal" but literally it should be the last differentiator between schools if at all, not the "key differentiating point" highlighted by the OP. Cohort vs Flexible Program, Geography, Star Professors & Courses, Culture, etc are all much more important.
SloanieCapital When you say it is a key differentiating point you are telling your readers it is a differentiating point from other schools. If that's not your intent, don't state it.
It just looks like a misunderstanding over the intent behind the use of "key differentiating point". With the exception of a few "unicorn" jobs (of which 99% will come from one's own background and connections, anyway), there's virtually no difference among the M7 for opportunities. Someone interested in tech or consulting will get it from Kellogg or Columbia or Sloan or lose it at all 3-once at these schools your recruiting experience will vary based on your own background and competence. That's a point I cannot stress enough. I didn't realize how accurate that episode of "House of Lies" was, when Marty's firm hosted all those Harvard recruits and he looked around and said "almost none of these jokers have a shot", until one of my buddies w/ the most PERFECT resume I'd seen flamed out. These schools' % might vary a bit due to factors such as self-selection, class sizes, overall rankings, etc. but recruiters mostly treat them the same and save their preferences for the applicants themselves.
Ultimately there's no need to be so nitpicky-I didn't get the impression (or personally feel) that OP meant to suggest any disadvantages at other M7s relative to Sloan. On the one point about quants, another Sloanie chimed in. No harm no foul.
Side note: really was just going to chime in to confirm the Google thing at my NGD school-they did ask for grades, but I got the impression that it was just a formality, and it was never a topic of interviews.