Stay Local or Shoot for the Stars? (for MBA)

Is it better to go to a lower-ranked b-school in order to be closer to or in the city of your choice for post-MBA life? Or, would it be better to get into the best b-school possible then hope to get a job in that city?

Examples:
For LA, would you take UCLA or Wharton?
For NYC, would you take Columbia or Stanford?
For Dallas, would you take UT or Harvard?

Clearly there are benefits to both, but would the ability to build a network in that city outweigh the extra prestige? Would love to hear any thoughts and experiences.

 

Good question, man. Actually, although the top programs also do send people regionally, since they have that prestigious name you can rest assured that that will carry wight in your job search wherever you are. (hypothetical example, you want to get into say automotive (Detroit) or Oil and Gas (Texas, ND, etc.), if you went to HBS it's still better than any regional school. Things change when you consider between regional schools, and then you have the real advantage. Soooooo if you are considering between two schools out of the top 5/10, and one is in your city of choice and the other (higher ranked) is in another city/region then you go for the schools in your target region. And the numbers pretty much bear this out.

To get more specific, have a look at the employment reports of the relevant schools, see where the specific schools you are considering send their graduates in terms of region and employers. A behavioralist approach can be enlightening - the past employment trends of your school are likely to be repeated in the future.

Hope this helps, dude, JF

 

Thanks. I was given advice by a former college professor who got his MBA from Harvard but spent his career in Dallas. He told me he thinks UT Austin would be a better choice than HBS, mainly for networking purposes.

What if you're comparing a top 10 school with a UT or UCLA and you want to be in Dallas or LA? You would take the top 10 (generally speaking)?

 

Absolutely not. The gap in prestige, network, and opportunities between say HBS/Stanford/Wharton vs UT/UCLA is so massive that it overrides regional concerns. Even Booth/Kellogg/Sloan wins out easily over those schools. A closer call would be say you want to work in oil&gas in Houston and you're deciding between say Tuck vs full-ride at UT Austin.

 

See, with MBA rankings top 10 doesnt really work.

Let see, UT or UCLA vs the CBS/MIT/Kellogg/Booth, I'd pick the M7, same goes for Tuck, and if LA for Haas... for TX, well I doubt I'd be applying to Haas if I wanted to end up in TX.

Now, when you get the to NYU/Duke/UVA/Mich/Cornell level, its a toss up. I would prob pick UT or UCLA.

I also think the LA market is much different than the Dallas market. TX loves TX... LA functions a bit more like NY IMO, I'd just make sure whichever school I'm looking at has a solid alumni base out there. But with TX, your teacher has a strong point, although not at the HSW level, and maybe not at the M7 level.

 
bmcrhino:

Is it better to go to a lower-ranked b-school in order to be closer to or in the city of your choice for post-MBA life? Or, would it be better to get into the best b-school possible then hope to get a job in that city?

Examples:
For LA, would you take UCLA or Wharton?
For NYC, would you take Columbia or Stanford?
For Dallas, would you take UT or Harvard?

Clearly there are benefits to both, but would the ability to build a network in that city outweigh the extra prestige? Would love to hear any thoughts and experiences.

It REALLY depends on the industry you want to work in, as well as the geographic location (since the dynamics and culture of business/corporate communities will vary by city and country).

For the most part though, you want to ideally go to the best school you can get into if you're relatively open-ended about your career and life going forward.

With that said, here's how it can really depend, based on your examples:

Los Angeles: for any industry outside of film/tv, you'll have more opportunities (buyside finance, consulting, real estate, marketing, corporate, etc) from Wharton than UCLA. However, the advantages aren't quite as pronounced as say NYC (Stanford vs. Columbia) because Los Angeles isn't really a business community that is MBA-centric (it's a weird economy that doesn't have as many MBA-type of jobs) - in fact, even though it's the 2nd largest US city, it's one of the least MBA-centric cities (do a brief survey of MBA grads and you'll find that surprisingly few end up in LA). So long story short, it helps going to a better school than a local one, but it's not quite as big a deal as if you were in more MBA-centric cities like NYC or the Bay Area (or even Chicago).

NYC: even though Columbia and Stanford aren't worlds apart in terms of overall rep, Stanford will give you a bit more access in certain industries, and also because Columbia isn't known for having the most close knit alumni network. Also, bear in mind that NYC is a very MBA-centric business community (even though Columbia has a ton of alums, the city has tons of all kinds of MBA alums period). It won't matter for consulting or plain vanilla finance, but it can matter for buyside jobs, nonprofit, and so forth.

Dallas: see LA discussion. Dallas isn't as MBA-centric as NYC or the Bay Area (partly also because the oil/gas doesn't see tons of MBAs like financial services / professional services consulting like in NYC). Having said that, yes HBS will still make a big difference compared to UT, but somewhat tempered by the fact that it's not in an MBA-centric city.

In other words, the reputation of your school can matter a lot for certain industries regardless of location: most notably financial services (esp. buyside jobs) and consulting. It can also matter a lot if you're looking to work/live in cities that employ a lot of MBAs: biggest hubs for MBAs being NYC, Bay Area, Chicago, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai (and you'll notice that many of these cities also have a lot of corporate HQs, financial services, consulting).

Alex Chu www.mbaapply.com
 

The way I see it if you have the profile/experience to get into a HSW school and you choose to go to a UCLA or a UT then you are going to be (relatively) in the cream of the crop there.

You're pretty much guaranteed to get a job in the location that you want.

Going to HSW you might have that opportunity and you may be more likely to get a job in the industry that you want, but you are less likely to get a job in the location that you want.

 

I disagree strongly with this analysis. First, even if the HSW admit goes to say UCLA or UT, where he'll be a superstar, his immediate post-MBA options will be somewhat limited by the weaker name brand and on-campus recruiting from those schools. This will definitely be true for finance and consulting, the main post-MBA feeder industries.

Also, your last sentence is totally off base. HSW MBA opens doors anywhere in the world. Because they're powerful worldwide name brands with an expansive network (Stanford less so since it's smaller and west coast centric), you will not at all be hindered location wise.

 

I agree with this. However, for some people, it doesn't matter. Regardless of where you go for your MBA, there's a certain amount of personal initiative that you have to take. Maybe you'd have to take a little less in HSW than in a locally reputable school, but it's still there. In all but the most exclusive situations, a person who's dedicated to getting it done is going to get the same good results from either of those MBA choices. A person who thinks that he's hot shxt because he's in a MBA program and waits until graduation to start job searching is going to fail, regardless of where he goes to school.

 

It depends on:

  • What you want to do for a living. If your local school has great connections to your industry-of-choice, then it may be a good choice. If you practically need an elite education to reach your goals, then you have your answer.

  • The amount of relevant work experience that you have PRE-MBA. If you don't have much experience, then a top school may be able to shield you a bit from reality.

  • The cost of tuition. I went to a school that's very reputable in my local market and graduated with a job that paid $90K+ as a base salary. The tuition/fees for the school were about $67K before finacial aid. I was making $43K base before the MBA. That's over $50K increase in salary from a local MBA. I doubt that I would have been in a much better situation if I'd gone to one of the top 10 schools (considering the double or triple tuition and relocation expenses). By the time that you're 3 or 4 years out of the MBA, no one will give a crap about your school anymore anyway, so if you get a good job out of your local school and kick @ss at it, you'll be just as well off as anyone else is.

 

This depends completely on what you want to do post grad. If you want to go into o&g, UT-Austin is a better career choice than Harvard. Yes, Harvard students can get into the energy industry in texas, however, they have absolutely no network.

I'm not just necessarily talking first job out of college. The guy with the ut-mba in PE is going to know the energy IBankers that have MBAs, and the corp dev/acquisition guys at all the MLPs, independents, and large nationals that have UT-MBAs.

 

I don't know much about mba at U Texas, so can't comment, but I do know some people who went to UCLA for mba. None of them recommend it. they said that OCR recruiting for banking was almost non-existent, and even getting a first round interview at tier 2 consulting shop (Deloitte S&O, ATK, Mercer) was a big challenge. they said MBB don't recruit at UCLA though.

So.. yeah you may not end up with a job in LA if you go to Wharton or Columbia. But you will at least end up with a decent job in NYC or something if you go to Wharton. If you go to UCLA, yeah, you may end up living in LA but you may not have a job after getting your MBA. (or end up with your pre-MBA job) Which is a better choice? Wharton hands down. (I'd pick Tuck, Booth, Kellogg, CBS, and even NYU Stern over UCLA)

 

I agree with this. I think UCLA is a good school, with applications up big time, but job placement is still mediocre. The school recently approved plans to make Anderson a totally private entity, so we'll see how things shake out in the future. The problem with non-M7/tuck/Berkeley b-schools are that they're uncertain hedges; things could work out well or things could work out poorly depending on multiple factors.

 
Best Response
Vinsanity:

That's what I meant by "the most exclusive situations." There are some situations where you need an ELITE school's name on your resume or you have 0% chance. Those situations are much more limited than this site would have you believe.

For someone who's dedicated to succeeding, on campus recruiting is only a small piece of the puzzle. Personal initiative is a much bigger factor (even at HSW). People who don't realize that are the ones who don't get it and don't make it. Going to HSW won't change that.

Agreed.

Keep in mind that a lot of the more coveted or more interesting jobs aren't accessed through on campus recruiting.

Job leads often come from your fellow MBAs - and not necessarily just your classmates at your school. If you're reasonably social, you will likely meet other MBAs from other schools, especially if you've got some specific industry interests.

It's all about networking, and not just sending in your resume blind, cold calling, or going through on campus recruiting.

Chances are, if you want a buyside job, entertainment, sports, nonprofit, or anything that isn't cookie cutter investment banking or management consulting, you will have to network to even get an initial meeting - and that can mean having a fellow classmate make the introduction for you by calling up his/her ex-colleague, spouse/partner/bff at another b-school who has the contact, and so forth.

When people talk about networking, they often imagine alums or industry contacts, when the most obvious and strongest leads are your fellow classmates.

Alex Chu www.mbaapply.com
 

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