Another Take on Target Schools: Representation at America's Elite B-Schools

People discuss target schools and rankings all the time but usually people just toss out anecdotes with no facts to back up their statements. One way to gauge how strong of a target school a certain college is to see how many alums end up at elite business schools (M7) since it goes to follow that in order to get admitted into an elite MBA program you need to have a prestigious job and in order to land that prestigious job, you need to go to a highly regarded school.

So, without further a due, here at the top feeder colleges to the M7 minus MIT and Kellogg plus Tuck.

http://poetsandquants.com/2011/10/06/top-feeder-c… http://poetsandquants.com/2012/05/30/top-feeder-c… http://poetsandquants.com/2011/08/15/top-feeder-c… http://poetsandquants.com/2011/08/07/top-feeder-s… http://poetsandquants.com/2011/09/14/top-feeder-c… http://poetsandquants.com/2011/09/07/top-feeder-s…

TOTAL ESTIMATED (Harvard+Wharton+Stanford+Columbia+Chicago Booth+Dartmouth Tuck)

Harvard: 192 University of Pennsylvania: 183

Stanford: 117 Yale: 113

Princeton: 101 Duke: 95 Columbia: 89 Berkeley: 84 Dartmouth: 80 Georgetown: 79

Northwestern: 67 Cornell: 59 UVA: 58 MIT: 54 Michigan: 49 Brown: 47 New York University: 42 UCLA: 41

University of Southern California: 25 University of Texas-Austin: 24 Williams College: 24 Washington University in St. Louis: 17 University of Chicago: 12 Middlebury: 11 Georgia Tech: 10 CMU: 9 Illinois: 9 Vanderbilt: 9 Tufts: 8 Boston University: 7 Maryland: 7 Bowdoin: 6 Johns Hopkins: 6 Notre Dame: 6 Penn State: 6 Purdue: 6 Amherst: 5 Boston College: 5 Colby College: 5 Bates: 4 BYU: 3 Haverford: 3 UNC: 3

21 Comments
 

Pretty good list. I think this can shed some light on the whole "I go to a semi target that you've never heard of, what are my chances?" questions.

 
Powa23I am surprised how poorly UK schools and Canadian schools are represented and how many students from the ITTs are representedé

It is not the logical career path for people from the UK to take a MBA in the US for 3 reasons: 1. You dont need it (as much) to progress in your career - unless you move to the US 2. It takes longer and is more expensive than top MBAs in Europe 3. You don't benefit from the network as much if you do not plan to stay in the US

 
atleastimnotabanker
Powa23I am surprised how poorly UK schools and Canadian schools are represented and how many students from the ITTs are representedé

It is not the logical career path for people from the UK to take a MBA in the US for 3 reasons: 1. You dont need it (as much) to progress in your career - unless you move to the US 2. It takes longer and is more expensive than top MBAs in Europe 3. You don't benefit from the network as much if you do not plan to stay in the US

Same goes for Canadian candidates, and probably anyone else in Europe, Australia, NZ, etc.
 

This list means nothing. According to your list BYU has 3, but according to the HBS list there are 8 BYU graduates with HBS class of 2013 on Facebook.

Furthermore for larger MBA programs being school #26 still means 8-10 students, which is significant enough to double the number of students for a lot of the lower ranked schools.

 
Best Response

I actually got interested in this and added the numbers again. Turns out that he was right up until UCLA. Here is the list.

harvard 192 Upenn 183

Stanford 117 Yale 113

Princeton 101 duke 95 Columbia 89 Berkeley 84 dartmouth 80 Georgetown 79

Northwestern 67 Cornell 59 Indian Institute of Tech 58 Univ of Virginia 58 Brown 54 MIT 54 Univ of Michigan 49 NYU 42 UCLA 41 Univ of Texas-Austin 40

West Point 29 USC 25 Boston 24 Williams 24 BYU 23 Univ of Illinois 22

Washington 17 Carnegie Mellon 14 Notre Dame 13 National Univ. of Singapore 13 Univ of Chicago 12 Cambridge 12 Middlebury 11 LSE 11 Yonsei Univ 10 Seoul National Univ 10 Univ of Wisconsin 10 GIT 10 Vanderbilt 9 Oxford 9 Tufts 8 Univ of Western Ontario 8 McGill 7 Univ of Maryland 7 fudan univ. 6 bowdoin 6 Johns Hopkins 6 Univ of Georgia 6 Wellesley 6 Amherst 6 Penn State 6 Purdue 6 Colby College 5 Shanghai Jiao Tong Univ. 5 Ohio State 5 Bates 4 New Economic School 4 Peking 4 UNC 4 haverford 3 Rice 3 Univ. of New South Wales 3

 

Williams does pretty damn well, considering its overall size.

The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be the shepherd.
 

The only correction I would add is that Michigan has 49 but other than that, good job! Dartmouth does especially well given the fact that it only has 1100-1200 undergraduates each year.

 

seedy, I would add Dartmouth to your list. Berkeley does ok too-its clearly in a league of its own among the state schools for high finance/consulting.

 

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