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.
Thanks for doing this AMA! SloanieCapital
I have a couple of questions:
I am an incoming student for the Class of 2019, and would likely recruit for Consulting. I am also interested in Entrepreneurship but without any startup plan. Would you say that choosing the E&I Track will put me at a disadvantage when recruiting for Consulting?
Which clubs did you participate in? What's the involvement of 1YR in the organization of conferences?
Could you comment on life for SO?
• I am an incoming student for the Class of 2019, and would likely recruit for Consulting. I am also interested in Entrepreneurship but without any startup plan. Would you say that choosing the E&I Track will put me at a disadvantage when recruiting for Consulting?
Tracks are really more for personal interest IMO. The E&I track is intense – you will need to build a startup and join various competitions. The prizes are attractive – winners get $100k grants. Read: non debt, non equity – free no strings attached grants.
That said, I didn’t participate in the track as I didn’t want to tie myself to any competitions before my startup was ready.
Others may disagree, but consulting is really a 3 month sprint and then you’re done. There’s approx. 2 months where you will spend cold calling/emailing current consultants to network, and there’s a month of intense case practice. Once you get your offer, you’re free to do anything that you want. Some choose to travel/have fun, I chose to work on my startup.
So the short answer is: no tracks don’t harm you, but I don’t think they help you either. It’s just a convenient collection of resources if you’re lazy to gather them yourself – I personally chose to personalize my education.
• Which clubs did you participate in? What's the involvement of 1YR in the organization of conferences? Clubs
Professional clubs: I personally only actively participated in the VC/PE club, but mostly just to seek VCs for my startup.
**There is such a thing known as a free lunch. **
Note that I’ve also signed up for all the different clubs, but stayed silent. Clubs provide great resources for recruiting – our consulting club gives a great guide book, consultant matching services, same for our Finance club (IBD), and investment management club (HF/AM guides). Clubs always have lunch events (free lunch!) that I join every day. I don’t recall the last time I bought lunch since there’s always a talk every day. I repeat – there is such a thing known as free lunch.
I participate more for social clubs – we have food clubs, wine clubs, startup clubs.
Conferences are a big deal here. Our big draws are the various country conferences (the Asia conference this year was huge), the Sports Analytics Conference (an even bigger draw), and the Investment Management conference (we invited Seth Klarman this year – he very rarely gives talks so this was a huge deal).
•Could you comment on life for SO?
Your SO would love living in Cambridge. Two different routes you could take:
Integrate your SO into campus life Sloan itself has many support programs: we have a Sloan partners club (forgot the exact name), and SOs regularly participate in campus activities. I personally know SOs that join our athletic clubs, our country treks, startup events, and of course, our student parties.
Not integrate your SO Cambridge itself is an amazing city – jobs are (relatively) easy to get here, and there’s always a startup here hiring. It would just be like any large city with as much (or as little) you want to do.
Great! Thank you very much for your detailed answers. A couple more questions:
I've heard not so great comments about the Career Development Office, what's your opinion?
Is there anything else you believe can be improved?
Yes. The CDO is a mixed bag -- here's hoping I NEVER get outed so they can't get back at me.
But this is irrelevant IMO.
Four cases:
You want to get into [IBD/consulting]: in this case, they are irrelevant. MBB/GS,MS,JPM are all here and actively recruiting. Your job is not so much to lean on CDO, but to show up at the events. IBD is really easy, if you can do some math, are able to put 2 words together, and show up (and sign in) for the events, you're pretty much guaranteed a first round. Consulting is a little tougher, but pretty much the same formula.
You want to get into buyside [HF/PE]: this case is mixed. If you want to do PE at Sloan, without prior PE experience, I'd just straight up say forget it. CDO is irrelevant here too. I havn't seen KKR/TPG/BX on campus (so maybe CDO can improve here a little), but if you don't already have a good buddy there, you're not getting in anyway, so moot point. HFs are a different story. If you're a quant, this is THE place to be. If you're a fundamental, well, you're not getting a job anyway (see: BlackRock)... ha sorry.
You want to get into [AMZN, GOOG]: self explanatory. Besides Stanford I highly doubt anyone else can claim to beat our CDO
You want to get into [others]: you're pretty much on your own here... but this is like all schools.
Also here's a secret option: there's a system known as "reciprocity" where many of the top schools get to share CDO resources. I've gone to HSW (yes all three) to look at their employers, and they are all open to me (once per semester), so what I've wrote above could very much be a whole bunch of empty words.
TLDR version: Sloan CDO is great at Consulting/IBD/Tech, not so much for buyside (ex-quant HF). This is mitigated by the fact that you're not getting in the buyside if you have to rely on CDO anyway - regardless of schools.
thanks for taking the time to do an ama!
Thanks for doing this. As a prospective MBA student, I'm curious to hear what you think the most compelling parts of your application were and the least compelling? How do you think you bridged the the gap to receive an acceptance?
IMO, School fit is the most important. You need to clearly convey to Harvard why you fit there (as opposed to Stanford). You need to clearly convey to Wharton why you would pick it over Columbia.
The standard applicant to the M7 already have great GMATs, grades, reccs, etc. Having those are par for course, it won't get you in, but can keep you out. Therefore I find it curious that many people focus on those when it's really irrelevant - either you have it or you don't; no use stressing over it.
Therefore, your hook needs to fit the culture of the school. Personally, I was quantitative and really focused on startups, so that made me a natural fit at MIT. Schools have a brand for a reason - that's their strong suit.
I feel the best way to do so would be to speak to current students and to actively find out what makes the school special, and how you can contribute (a.k.a. why they would want you). Speak to as many current students as you can.
Thanks very much for doing the AMA. My questions are more focused on the application side of things: - What was your GPA/GMAT (Q/V)? How was studying for the GMAT? (assuming you did it while employed) - How about recommendations- did you have same recommenders for each school? - Did you use an admissions consultant? - Any general advice on approaching the application process? I'm studying for the GMAT now (FML) and am planning on applying to schools in the fall. - Would you have applied to more schools in a later round if you didn't get into any of the 4 you applied to?
GPA/GMAT: 3.8/760, but from a lower ivy with massive grade inflation (NOT Harvard). Forgot Q/V split sorry.
Reccs: one similar across all schools, the other usually an alumnus/nae.
Admissions consultants: no, because I bought books online (for maybe $30 each) that pretty much could replicate what they will tell me: have a high GPA/GMAT, have a good job, visit the campus, show interest, participate in the forums, have your names checked in to events, have a hook. I already know this.
If this was a stock picking competition, you need a "differentiating view from street" so...
BEST ADVICE I CAN GIVE YOU: know the school culture. At the M7 level I honestly feel this is the most important factor. Everyone has high scores, what adcoms want to see is how you can contribute to the school.
My personal take on the way to do this is to speak to current students., not consultants. You want current students at current schools to give you the down low on what makes the school special, and how the interview process works. Something that I did during the interview process was to constantly stress the names of the current students I spoke to to adcoms, which signified my passion and research done on the school.
For what it's worth, I had friends at 2 out of the 4 schools I applied and got in to those 2. Purely anecdotal I know, but I felt it helped a lot during the interview (For e.g. "I spoke to SloanieCapital and he gave me a tour of the Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship, and it's a place I can foresee parking myself for two years working on my startup")
I know a startup at Sloan, which is focusing on this matching current students with applicants and if you're interested you can PM me and I'll share the link to their website.
Forgot to respond to studying for GMAT -- I did it as an undergrad and applied before my 5 years was up.
Thanks for doing this! While you may not have as much exposure to the non-MBA programs, I'd be very curious to get your perspective on the MFin program and how the rest of Sloan views it? I got admitted to the 12 month program and I'm trying to get a better sense of how it fits in.
The MFin is largely separate from the MBAs. If you'd like you should PM me and I can refer you to MFin(s) who might give you a better perspective than I can.
In general, out of all my classes, half are in finance. Of the half, I'd say another half overlaps with the Mfins -- they tend to congregate in slightly more quantitative classes that MBAs -- as a general rule -- avoid. So we mostly don't overlap. But they are the ones flooding Robert Merton's classes on financial options/derivatives... and actually understand it. I'm in the class but don't understand half of what's going on.
Recruiting is also different for us, many of the Mfins end up in Quant funds or risk. That's not to say they don't end up in consulting, but from what I understand, many focus on the more quant groups even within McK.
Anyhow, congrats on your admit. It's a very rigorous program and IMO the best one on the street (Princeton may disagree).
Hey Sloanie Capital - 2 questions
Can you talk a little about the VC community at Sloan? I'm a current associate at a corp VC and really think Sloan's start up and tech focus will be a good fit for me. I know there's a huge start up culture, but can you speak to what it's like for students looking to be on the other side of the table?
I'm applying R1 for 2018 and visiting Sloan (and HBS) pretty soon. Any advice for best ways to maximize my time while I'm there. Already participating in the ambassadors program.
On VCs, we have lunch talks every week from different funds (free food!). This week was a partner from NEA. Last week was Intel. Week before was Graylock I believe. Before that was GE Ventures; DFJ, etc. all big names in VC. Every single week, at least one.
The best way to get a job is to pull them to the side after the talk, and exchange business cards.
Note this does not mean it's easy to get a job from VCs. But the limiting factor won't be the access to VCs, the limiting factor would be how the applicant, as an MBA student, could prove they could contribute over the flood of current Googlers with Product and Coding and Network and likely strong education creds applying to Sequoia too.
Yes, visiting the schools is the best way to go about it. Remember my advice that I've stressed above; meet current students, get their feedback, speak about what you learned from them during the interview. Also, big hint: current students are able to write letters of support (or letters to ding) for prospectives...
Awesome - thank you!
I have another question :)
Can you talk at all about grade disclosure and how it affects the culture and competitiveness between students? I know a lot of peer schools do grade non-disclosure, and obviously this is all you've experienced, but can you speak to it at all?
AFAIK nobody cares about grades here or in MBA programs in general.
I'm sorry I misled you with a too general answer.
Some companies will force this number out either way. For example this is NOT true if you're interviewing for Google, which WILL ask for your GPA. So it's probably more company specific. They have their own forms which force you to input a value, and that value can't be 0.0 (if I can remember correctly) so even if your school has a non disclosure policy, you're still forced to input it.
FWIW Sloan's policy is a little more nuanced - there is no forced non grade disclosure, but the school will never reveal your GPA to companies (school policy). It's voluntary. I have a solid B average and no one ever commented on it during interviews.
SloanieCapital obviously isn't doing IBD
I was in a BB for two years; this summer I will not be heading back to the same firm, but for FT I might, depending on how the summer/startup goes.
I am a recent Sloan grad. Some of the information above is true - some is not. Just to clarify.
This is not the case for Sloan. Google asks for GPA (I don't think it matters). They are the only one.
Disagree on the MBA side. The Sloan MFin program is great for quants. The MBA program, I would not recommend (as MBAs are older, more expensive, and far less quantitative than quants). Don't try to get your MBA at Sloan to backdoor your way into a quant position because you will get beat by an MFin in interviews every time.
I was surprised at the percentage of people who got IBD (that recruited for it). In my experience, it was over 95% of my classmates (anecdotal, I know), with the other 5% going to someone that blew up at a recruiter in an interview for asking her a non-PC question (as a stress test), and another person that was socially awkward. We had open interview slots for some of the banks, demand was that low.
This is absolutely not the case for consulting. I would say 30-40% actually get an offer, but that's the case at most schools, even HSW. The offer rate is much lower than that when you exclude the international offices. Most people get interviews, however. So if you do the math, there's a lot of culling going on after the interview rounds.
The free lunch thing is absolutely true though (as well as most of the other positives listed above).
As for the biggest disappointment of my experience, I would say CDO. (As an example, Bridgewater came to campus recruiting MBA's and CDO didn't know about this, didn't communicate this to students, and didn't even list it on their student portal)
Thanks. Our experiences may vary but this year and the year before, pretty much all (that I know) who wanted a Quant job on the MBA side got it. So maybe it's variable per year?
Bridgewater is well advertised this year.
Quick question - What are the other big feeder segments for Sloan after banking/consulting? Is Tech a truth or a stererotypical destination? If consulting fails, where else do grads tend to go for? Thnx
Yes tech is not just a stereotype. Amazon, FB, Google all do come here. Also given MIT's location in Kendall, Healthcare tends to be big here too. Companies like Genentech Novartis etc
Received a PM on buyside recruiting from Sloan so thought I'd share it publicly.
I have a background in [subset within buyside] so getting a [subset within buyside] job was not a problem for me as I knew whom to call.
That is not true for the hordes of people without buyside experience -- it is tough. I tried to transition into PE without a PE background and basically couldn't. If I were you I'd seriously think of whether your current contacts are good in the buyside in the field you want to go in. Bschool (ex-HBS, and maybe Stanford/Wharton) CDO is not that great on these firms where demand >> supply.
Great AMA, thank you!
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.
You're right and wrong on specific segments:
IBD -- Sloan is crushing it. Supply >> demand. Sloanies are just not interested in IBD for some reason. Cultural perhaps - my classmates seem to want to work on "real" projects rather than numbers on a spreadsheet (not that there's anything wrong with that). All who sought an IBD job here got it AFAIK - again caveat being not necessarily GS, but you'd get "at least" an EB. Second caveat being that EBs may be what they were looking for in the first place. Key edge here being demand CDO is not really helpful and you really need a strong network here. I would suspect this would be true to say for all bschools ex HBS (maaaaaaaybe S/W) though. No edge here.
Tech -- Well... What do you think?
So in sum, 2 "crushing it" (Tech due to MIT + tech, IBD due to lack of demand), consulting maybe, and buyside nay (with exceptions).
Hope this summarizes it more clearly!
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.
Why do 90% of MBAs sound like insufferable douchebags?
a) time pressure on b) type A personality with c) many more productive things to do.
Many in this forum wants Admission Consultant level advice for free, and they want convenient advice without self due diligence.
Fewer WSOers have gratitude, and evem fewer actually say thanks on WSO. It's pretty sad.
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.
I do. The key point is that even at Sloan, if you're trying to do a career change it can be an uphill battle.
Care to share the story?
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