UG vs M7 Prestige
I went to a non HSW M7 (Booth/Kellogg/Sloan/CBS) and am a first year associate at an NY BB. Before that, I went to a non target and worked in a finance-adjacent field. I was talking to someone a couple of days ago who said that undergrad is more prestigious than MBA at M7 / top 10 MBA schools.
I don't understand why this is when:
- MBA admissions require you to have strong work experience, which is much more difficult to attain than high school grades and extracurriculars.
- You're competing against people who work in some of the most competitive fields (IB, PE, HF, etc) for MBA admissions and in undergrad admissions everyone is far more even.
- MBA admissions are judged when everyone has their sh*t together and is older, leading to much stronger and more cohesive applications.
On average most MBA students I've met from top programs are genuinely just behind the curve tremendously, hence why they're doing the MBA in the first place. Obviously there are strong candidates that exceed expectations but they are much more far and few between.
Just flat out wrong.
Objectively not, the primary purpose for an MBA is career transition. Objectively, that puts you behind the curve. Obviously, like stated, there are few that are there for internal promotion/growth, but its much less common.
The undergrad students even at your non HSW M7 would run circles around you lol. Let me put it into perspective:
The acceptance rate of Booth, Sloan, Kellogg, and Columbia Business School ranges from 20-30%.
The acceptance rate of MIT, Columbia, UChicago, and Northwestern in regular decision rounds ranges from 2-4%.
This trend is similar at other business schools (HBS, GSB, Wharton, Tuck, Yale SOM). Undergrad is also much more competitive because of the minimum test scores, class rank, and gpa to even be considered, and the applicant pool is far more talented.
I have to disagree. My point about MBA students needing strong real world work experience hasn't been disproven. The acceptance rates part is due to there being so many kids in high school who apply to these top schools without having a real shot. But in MBA admissions people only apply to the programs that they'll realistically get into. I don't understand the undergrad prestige elitists when an MBA is much more indicative of your ability to succeed in the workplace.
Dawg an MBA student at any M7 excluding some students at H/S would not have been able to get into their M7’s undergraduate program. That’s the reason they’re even doing the MBA lmao
have seen two MBA associate classes at a upper-middle tier BB group (think citi m&a, baml fsg type group). None of the associates demonstrated any ability to succeed in the workplace that the undergrads didn’t. If anything, it just took them longer to learn stuff, and they wasted more time worrying about things that don’t matter.
Anyways, simple answer is it’s less prestigious because nearly every single kid who is successful or talented applies to and competes for undergrad across all disciplines, but for MBA it’s a small range of disciplines, and the best kids aren’t competing for a spot (quants at citadel, gs—> kkr—>sm hedge fund kid, ib kid promised early promotes by the group head). Understand the cope and ego stroking, and your spot is still prestigious, so be confident in the opportunity and success that you have. you’re wasting time worrying about things that don’t matter by choosing this hill to die on.
The highest-caliber potential applicants to business school don't go to/apply to business school, because they don't need to.
you know how analysts hate MBA associates for having no skills and an inflated opinion of themselves? Please don't be that associate because you come across that way immediately on your post. Be humble, realize people are smarter than you day 1, and don't use your MBA/UG prestige to cope. Nobody cares. Get your work done, work hard, take on analyst-responsibility when you need to, and both learn/be a sounding board for the analysts on your team.
Your own story kind of disproves your point: non-target undergrad and finance-adjacent work experience, and yet you got into an M7 MBA.
MBA/Master’s are less impressive because the ’best’ people don’t need them - a post-MBA associate at a bank is just several years older and less directly qualified/experienced than an A2A counterpart.
I like to think of it in a different way.
For context: I am a graduate of Columbia/Booth/Kellogg. I did my MBA because I wanted to boost the social cache of my education. I went to a top 25 Liberal Arts Colleges in the US and prior to business school worked for three years at Citi / BAML / JP Morgan in their TMT group. I got my undergrad job through my own recruiting efforts. In high school, I had the grades and achievements to go to Penn/Duke/Cornell type school if I was willing to pay full. But I couldn't so I went to a liberal arts college that offered me the heftiest scholarship.
Even though I did well during undergrad in terms of the job I got, before I went to bschool, I always had to explain to ppl where my undergrad was (people in the US barely knew of it and those outside never). Going to a bschool to me was a prestige equalizer for me. To be honest, if I had gone to Penn/Duke type UG school, maybe I'd never gone for an MBA (because my UG school would have been well known), but I probably would have had a tougher time landing an IB spot. Because I landed a top job, maybe rightfully or wrongfully, I never had this insecurity (despite my UG school not being as well known) that I was less than a kid from a top UG. I told myself if I could get a BB job from a lesser known UG, if I had been at a top UG, I would have done even better
I think progression matters. If you're going from a top UG to a tier 2 MBA, that shows deceleration. Going from a less known UG to a top MBA shows progression. That's what matters to me. I think acceptance rates for UGs are inflated because it is so easy to apply to a bunch of schools at once with limited makeover needed for each marginal app. And honestly, at least as an international in the US, I dont think it's hard to get into a top UG school in the US if you're paying full. I also think MBA admisssions look for more holistic skillset, which they don't at an UG level.
These are some of my unhelpful ramblings on this topic
Not sure what you're defining as top UG, but all of the true top UGs are need blind so that's not a factor. Saying it's not hard to get into a top UG is just objectively incorrect. You having the grades / test scores does not mean you will get in. The vast majority of kids with perfect or near perfect grades / test scores do not get in. Definitely a big luck element if that's what you're saying.
The prestige / name brand aspect outside of your career is definitely a big factor. Interesting you mention that since the only people I know who also made it into IB the first time around and want to do an MBA purely for prestige / name recognition are also internationals. I went to a top 10 LAC and while deep down it will always bother me a bit that the average person has no idea what kind of school it is, it's not worth doing an MBA to overcome that. Not to mention an MBA is obviously always going to be less impressive than going to that same institution during UG anyway, so it's not really something you can overcome in that sense. That said, it will help your initial impression on those who are not as knowledgeable about these things and only recognize the name.
Big picture, no one cares 99.9% of the time.
Yes, I was also an international student in the US, which is why the prestige of the alma mater was a consideration for me. But back when I was in high school and applying to LACs, I thought everyone in the US knew what LACs were. What a shock I was in for when I moved across the pond
I was applying to college back in 2007, so it's been 16 years now! Back in my day, the need-blind schools for internationals were Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Amherst, and Williams (I THINK). Acceptance rate for international students even at the "top 25 LAC" I attended were 8-10%. And I got 85-90% of my costs covered by the LAC I attended. Penn, Duke, Cornell had interviewed me for undergrad and the alum interviewer at Penn had told me that if I could have pay fully I would be admitted. Another way to look at it could be I did not have the profile to be awarded scholarship by a top UG university? Maybe that's right, but 17 years on, I think I did ok given my circumstances. Sometimes I still get asked in interviews why I attended the LAC I went to (I say because of the money they gave me) and how I got a job in IB at a BB (a lot of cold emails/cold calls).
I used the term top UG loosely in my post, but I was essentially referring to the top 15 universities in the US whose brand / cache can arguably rival Oxbridge in the UK
If you have to ask… you are not prestigious.
Touche
it's because if you're an UG M7, then you don't need MBA. MBA is really for people from non-targets who want to switch their career field.
most socially competent, emotionally secure and humble mba associate
As someone a lot older than the typical MBA associate, I need to ask: what even is the point of this discussion?? Being smart enough to go to Ivy League / Oxbridge means—your being a genius is more suited for being a PhD holder or attempting law/medical school, not arguing with kids who (for all their much-touted smartness) are doing an IQ-reducing job like IB, and often cannot measure up to the sheer intellectual knowledge base of people like CFA Charter holders. Every "market day"—as the local tribal idioms of my home country would say it—or every 5 seconds, some American on WSO is wasting everyone's time by creating some variation of a prestige tier list or some prestige-related "retard-ism" of a post; kilode!?!?
Lol - this entire thread is the epitome of first world problems.
I went to Princeton undergrad and I am now at HBS. Despite the high quality of my colleagues at both places, I would def say that HBS (and therefore the MBA) is a tier above.
At undergrad, for the good or the worst, you have an almost entire class of Americans (remaining ones being very bright Indian and Chinese students).
The diversity of backgrounds in the MBA is much stronger. For instance, in my HBS MBA section, the smartest people are a Portuguese guy and a Brazilian dude extremely hardworking and smart people).
Non-HSW M7 schools are not prestigious
I would agree. Undergrad is the real litmus test.
MBAs are influenced by tons of nonsense (even more so than undergrad), are you a female engineer in the south in a refinery with all males ? Welp - they want that representation, welcome to the program. Undergrad gives much less care about compiling a group of folks with truly different experiences.
Ps with that’s said….I’ve seen it all this point. I’ve seen people from Penn State that are better than people from Penn etc. at a certain point, this shit doesn’t matter you either have it or you don’t
Agreed on undergrad being a better litmus test but it seems odd to assert that undergrad gives "much less care" about diverse experiences. UG adcoms are well known to factor in geographic diversity (e.g. perfect stats from Montana get more looks than perfect stats from California), gender & major diversity (e.g. female to STEM), and general racial diversity, when it comes to admissions.
It’s a massive factor for MBA, can get you into a school you’d have zero chance at undergrad.
Who cares, its all shitshow anyways. Still, I'd rather be an MBA associate who becomes a decent MD than being a Harvard grad who eventually ends up in corp dev after failing to get a promo at an MF. Generally, however, getting an undergrad from a great university is considered more of an achievement than getting an MBA; it's just how a lot of people perceive it, and that is what matters I think.
(Went to m7 MBA. Went to much more prestigious UG).
Would agree that UG matters more. Deliberately chose not to go to highest ranked MBA because I had already made up my mind on where I wanted to live. Rationale was literally "well, they're going to see my UG anyway, so I don't need to go to X to prove I could do it."
Not reflective of how sane people probably think and most definitely not advice. But that was my train of thought
This is honestly a pretty laughable question.
Since high school kids really just go to school or do the same generic activities (minus a few exceptional athletes etc) all undergrad acceptance is based on more or less exclusively test score and gpa. Further, it’s basically every high school kid in the country competing. Regardless if you are a PhD in astrophysics, a doctor, a lawyer, a coder/programmer, an engineer, a hedge fund wiz, a entrepreneurial billionaire drop out, or a genius musician, you are likely going to at least enroll in a college and try to get into the top us news schools.
MBA’s on the other hand, slice off all academia, almost all people in alternate fields, many business people who don’t need an mba for their career path (entrepreneurs, hedge funds, or just people who like the firm they are at and don’t plan on leaving) and more.
The result is as someone mentioned, massively higher acceptance rates for MBA’s versus undergraduate institutions. Additionally, anecdotally, I can tell you going to both the mba and undergrad school of Harvard/stanford/upenn/kellogg/booth/mit, my undergrad peers were academically sharper than my graduate school peers. My mba cohort had a lot of people who it seemed were able to navigate the corporate world and land blue chip jobs out of undergrad in different fields—but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are great at math or problem solving. I know one girl who took a year to basically study for the gmat as she had a really cushy job that positioned her well for acceptance. The equivalent of this would be someone taking half a high school course load and studying for the sat for a year which basically doesn’t happen.
I met a ton of dumb undergraduates and dumb MBA’s. I also met a ton of brilliant undergrads and MBA’s. On average, the MBA’s were dumber than the undergrads. I would go as far as to say the average northwestern undergrad is probably more intelligent than the average hbs student. It’s that stark.
+1, my experience exactly. The average Northwestern or UChicago undergraduate is absolutely more talented / intelligent than a HBS/GSB grad. Getting into a top ten undergraduate program is much, much, much (can't understate this) more difficult than getting into H/S/W MBA. No disrespect towards MBAs but the difference in raw academic ability between top undergrad and top MBA students is massive.
Dumb question.Prestige only matters when you have no accomplishment of your own to point to.
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