Yeah - I mean if you had a full ride to Duke or had to had to graduate HBS with $120k in debt, which would you choose?
Personally, I’d pick HBS and debt, but to each his own.
BS in Math/Physicis from MIT / Caltech / Stanford / Harvard / Princeton >> Any MBA. Having recently taking somewhat advanced math course, i realized how easy any other subject is.
Yeah DFA has done “pretty okay”, that’s a fair point. That said, I’m trying to think of a single Booth graduate fundamental investor I think is good… [wait for it]… nope, can’t do it. There probably is one but I can’t think of one right now.
All these schools are a joke for investing anyway. The best long/short investor in the country has a history degree from some scrub college with no MBA/CFA. Permanent beast mode, no MBA required.
It is interesting how all this fiasco is taking place about what school is better nowadays and where it ranks compared to XYZ yada yada. People, the fact of the matter is that it all boils down to three points:
Point one: Harvard, Yale, MIT (all not mentioned in this report) will always remian the top notch american schools in the eyes of employers no matter what fancy study/survey comes out and no matter what misbehavior is reported from school alumni/cult.
Point two: Experience will slam dunk any other degree, and possibly slam dunk point one too. so debate all you wnat cuz that semi-experienced guy from the hedge fund shop down the street carrying a hacksaw degree will have you shove your fancy top 5 school degree where the sun dont shine (along with your CFA charter)
Point three: Never argue point one and two.
Nuff said.
Nick Swenson of Groveland looks pretty decent in the microcap space. There’s a few. Even Cliff Asness of AQR was Gene Fama’s RA.
All the duke MBA students probably posted this link on their facebooks and linkedins to feel better about not getting into a top school. HBS, Stanford, MIT, UPenn…will always crush no matter what survey is made trying to push the hacksaw schools up the ladder.
I just busted out laughing and my coworkers asked what happened lol
What is DFA?
DImensional Fund Advisors.
Bromion and other people interviewing MBA candidates, whats your opinion of the Columbia Value Investing Program?
I like Columbia Value Investing, I think it’s the best MBA program for a front office investing job.
+1
DFA looks to be good marketing. “We’re smart! Invest with us.” And they give an appearance of exclusivity. People like to feel special. Really just a slight tilt from straight beta, no? How would they blow up?
So I’ve been doing a lot of research on different business schools and finally submitted my apps. (Couple interviews set up so far).
Anyway, echoing others, this list is dubious at best. Duke is good school and it’s made a lot of progress, but @ No. 1? Not a chance. Harvard @ 8? Nope. NYU @ 22? No way.
Atmosphere, student life, campus facilities, etc… are all important for b-school, but at the end of the day, most of us just want better opportunities and more $$$. So the best thing to do is to look at different schools’ employment reports. Most are pretty thorough. Things to look for are mean salary, as well as high/low ranges. Probably more important, look at the % of students within those more desirable, higher paid jobs.
Just going off my head, the list should really fall back to the defaults. H/S/W in top 3. The next set generally seems to be CBS/Booth/NYU. After that it’s sort of mixed among MIT, Hass, Kellogg, Darden, Yale, Duke Ross, UCLA and maybe a few others Duke’s employment stat’s seem to fall in this set of schools (last year they had an outlier in Telecom and Energy, both very low % of school’s overall student base). When looking at the top 3, it’s pretty clear they have a much higher % of students that fall into the higher salaries. The same goes for the next three (CBS and NYU are somewhat biased b/c of being in NYC).
Also don’t forget the handful of international schools (they seem to follow this order): LBS, Insead, HEC, and IESE. I know less about the Asian Bschools, but Insead (Singapore), HKU, HKUST, and NUS seem to be moving up; still as an international student you’d be much better off at the top US schools and really just LBS and Insead outside the US.
Anyway, summary of this is utilize more than one ranking source and view them as a directional guideline. After, do your own research!
Lets be honest though people, if you’re gonna go HBS - you better get Baker Scholar. I mean Mitt did it while also going to HLS at the same time. That dude from Enron got Baker scholar too - he’s definitely the most educated guy in his prison.
“Are you smart, Jeff?”
“I’m f–king smart.”
Still the best reponse in the history of HBS admissions interviews.
^ respect.
Thing was, the interviewer followed with, “I thought so too, so why are you giving me all of these bullsht answers?”
Interview restarted and the rest is history.
Ok Pansies,
I’m gonna tell you how to look at your MBA the smart way. No bullshit. (I’m at Wharton)
The only thing you should care about is who recruits at your school and how many alumni (who look and sound like you - meaning race and nationality) are currently at those companies. This depends on what job you are targeting, in which industry, and in which region. No school is really perfect for every job (Harvard comes close). Most schools have an edge of some sort. This is what matters.
Other than that it doesn’t really matter. Saying one MBA is better than another because of some ranking is bullshit. They use silly metrics like “How happy are you with the food served on campus?” None of that matters! Just who recurits and who has alums working at those companies.
Since this is a finance forum, let’s dispense with the other fields and talk about Finance jobs.
USA Go to one of these schools if you are tageting US finance:
Harvard (Great Brand, close to the action, sick alumni network) Wharton (Alumni network and brand)
Stanford (great brand, but far from wall street)
Booth (Nerds, I woulnd’t go here)
Columbia
EUROPE Go to one of these schools if you are targeting Europe (and are European - don’t be asian applying to Europe, you have almost no chance)
LBS (If you are targeting London - not if you are targeting continental europe)
INSEAD (The best for Continental, perhaps a slight 2nd to LBS in London Finance). Goto INsead to become a consultant, or if you are leaving banking to go to PE
Harvard (A great brand, but you are far from the action)
Wharton (Same)
ASIA Go to one of these schools if you speak Chinese and want to work in Asia. Don’t speak Chinese? Forget about it.
INSEAD (You better speak Mandarin)
Harvard (Do you speak Mandarin?)
Wharton (Mofo, do you speak Mandarin?)
The best ranking around in my opinion breaks it down this way. It is the QS here:
http://www.topmba.com/why-mba/publications/200-global-business-schools-report-2014
Truer words have not been spoken.
Similar to how I picked an engineering school.
what was it?
Not that I want to put down math stuff, but it’s a bit shallow to just say some skill is more valuable because it requires more work in an academic setting, an environment that does not fully replicate real life. If you go to a great business school, it generally shows that you have some degree of achievement after college, and this usually corresponds to some degree of non-academic ability. The CEO of my company is not a physics PhD, but he must have a strong set of non tangible skills that brought him that far. I have an engineering masters from a nerd school, but that is not anywhere as valuable as what CEO has.
There are some things that are much harder to develop than quants skills:
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Being a good salesman, for your business and for yourself. Look at Steve Jobs.
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Having good people skills and making people trust you.
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Knowing how to make good and fair judgments, and lead people into following your ideas.
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Just being tall, handsome or nice tits if you are a woman.