Application List (Part II)

Carrying on from Part I, I’m going to continue to list some of the schools on my current application list, as well as some of the reasoning that went into selecting each school.  As a note, these schools are by no means secondary on my list, they just happen to be on the second post.  Subject to change, of course :)

The Stephen M. Ross School of Business, or Ross as it is more commonly known is the first school on part II. Ross is alluring for several reasons.  First, and most obviously, Ross heavily relies on action-based learning, which is a major plus to me.  Like the case method, I’m a big fan of action-based learning for similar reasons; it is a great way to encourage participation, and involvement in the classroom.  Furthermore, the curriculum (which includes their Multidisciplinary Action Project or MAP) really gives you a hands-on education, which will be very helpful in, ya know, the real world.  Beyond the curriculum, Ross seems to be a very fun place to spend 2 years – like the Fuqua of the Midwest.  Sure it isn’t the most sexy location in the world, but from talking with alumni and current students, they make the best out of it – having top tier basketball and football teams certainly helps.  Look for a more detailed review of Ross in the very near future.

Keeping with the full names, next up is the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University more commonly cut down to “Johnson”.  Johnson seems to be a school that a lot of people applying to top 5 schools list as their “safety”.  I’m not really sure why that is, as Johnson is a great MBA program, and there is definitely nothing easy about its admissions process.  Like Tuck, Johnson is very remote, which as discussed before is both a blessing and a curse.  As one Johnson student I spoke with told me “because of our location, you really find that students are often here because the genuinely want to be;  very few people attend because they didn’t get into their other schools, unlike some MBA programs in ‘better’ locations”.  Furthermore, Johnson also allows their MBA students to really drive just about everything on campus, further promoting a sense of community.  Beyond the community, Johnson does very well with recruiting, with large portions of the student body placing well into both typical MBA jobs as well as other industries that seem to more suited to my own career search.

Last up is the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.  Wharton is by far the highest ranked school on my list, and has the lowest acceptance rate (and a very high yield) – you could say this is the biggest reach for me based on that alone.  Wharton is also a stand out on my list because it is significantly larger than the other programs, coming in at over 800 students per class year.  Furthermore, it is also against my thesis of smaller/rural schools with its location right in the heart of Philadelphia (and a SF campus too!).  In its location lies part of the reason it is on my list – I love Philadelphia.  Beyond that, Wharton is an extremely good school in my targeted industry, and has amazing professors like Jeremy Siegel and Adam Grant.  Finally Wharton’s student body, while larger than I’d prefer, is an amazing group (Funny too!)