Yale MBA - Ranking & Perception? (or lack thereof?)

Originally Posted by bslo

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You can't really be this dense. The size of the entering class does not impact a school's selectivity the way that you think it does. Think about it. Harvard UG has a much bigger entering class than many schools. Pick a podunk local liberal arts college, for example, with an entering class that is about 1/5 of Harvard's. Does this stat indicate that most Harvard students wouldn't have been admitted? If you think the answer is yes, I'm not sure what your Yale MBA did for you (not to mention college).

Edit: I guess I'm piling on, but maybe you need one more person to explain it to you.

Looks like you've got another rube for your poker game, Concordia! Oh boy!

Originally Posted by Lord-Barrington

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Looks like you've got another rube for your poker game, Concordia! Oh boy!


You mean somebody else who can survive the GMAT but has no clue when the person next to them is serious, or whether it is worth spending a Saturday night demonstrating that? Perhaps you are right. Not that this matters either way.

Almost every student (95%+) that matriculates at HBS could have gone to Yale's B-school. Almost every student (95%+) that matriculates at Yale's B-school would have been rejected from HBS. They are not in the same league.

I'm only adding this because this Concordia guy is still wrongly flaming people.

Originally Posted by Concordia

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Harvard and Wharton do have the advantage of critical mass-- recruiters know that they're going to see a ton of people interested in banking, and many of the recuiters went to those same schools. So they show up to run interviews, etc., and the cycle continues. Other places may be too small or new or focused elsewhere to get the automatic visit. And still others might once have been viewed as good targets but now the job offers from a particular firm that would once have been accepted gleefully are now pushed back. So the recruiters go other places where they won't have to work as hard. What may have been true about a relationship 5 years ago might not be now.

Be aware, though that you need to find your own way through that problem, and it will depend on your own strengths and weaknesses (and preferences). If you go to an I-banking-oriented school to get trained, you will have potentially useful classes, and a lot of classmates who know the ropes because they came from the firms that will recruit interns and graduates. All well and good. But then, you might find yourself a the back of the queue when resumes are vetted and Goldman decides which 5% of your classmates they want to talk to. Post-2008, things might have become even more complicated as unemployed JDs try to land Wall Street jobs, and so on. So there aren't any easy solutions.

If you know exactly where you would like to work (or what sort of place), try to look forward and reason back. What kind of resume do you want to have in two years, and if the best you can get winds up being the same as everyone else's, how are you going to break the logjam and stand out from the pack, having learned about what you want to do and where? Could be professor recs, or demonstrable knowledge of an industry that the big shops are trying to figure out. Depending on who you are and where the economic cycle is at graduation, the right push might come from a big "target" school or another kind of place altogether.

Thanks. I realize at the top schools the competition will be tougher; however, I think with my experience + attitude + personality, I can nail the interviews.....I just need to get in to a school where they intend to interview. I realize nothing is promised and b-school is a risk...I just need to make sure its a calculated risk. I don't want spend $150k on a MBA like Yale and still be looking in from the outside.

Thanks everyone for their input!

Originally Posted by hrb

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On a side note, for the OP, how would a yale degree compare to top canadian MBA's for someone working in canada/abroad, what in your minds (both canadian and intl) are the top 5 in Canada (there is, from a publication perspective, fluctuation on this ranking depending on sources)?

I think the Yale brand name is very powerful. I don't think most Canadian MBA's carry much clout in the US or Internationally.

Locally, everyone seems to have a regional mba from one of the two large schools in BC (UBC/SFU), or have a Queens/Richard Ivey MBA (less common). I was thinking having a name like Yale (or wharton, etc) would jump up at a recruiter after going through stack after stack of UBC resumes.

On a personal level, getting a Canadian mba doesn't really appeal to me as I just don't see them as being that competitive to get into (maybe its my ego, but I want to get into the best).

One final thing, while you're doing your research. Beyond the "good for industry X" rankings that the geniuses at USNews and similar places like to publish, schools often like to list companies where their students go to work. So if 35% do banking, but 90% of them go down the road to EnormousRegionalBank, that is worth knowing.

And dig beyond that if you can. Sometimes a school's best connection with a prestigious firm will be in, say, sales and trading or private banking. Or the Shanghai branch if you have a Chinese passport. Which might not help you very much if you want another department. Conversely, there are firms or departments that might not show up a lot on the list where you might be welcome anyway, as long as you've planned your internship correctly and got to know the right professors. So figure out what you can do already and what you need to learn.

Originally Posted by micbain

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I think the Yale brand name is very powerful. I don't think most Canadian MBA's carry much clout in the US or Internationally.

Locally, everyone seems to have a regional mba from one of the two large schools in BC (UBC/SFU), or have a Queens/Richard Ivey MBA (less common). I was thinking having a name like Yale (or wharton, etc) would jump up at a recruiter after going through stack after stack of UBC resumes.

On a personal level, getting a Canadian mba doesn't really appeal to me as I just don't see them as being that competitive to get into (maybe its my ego, but I want to get into the best).

Yale is a good brand name but to be honest I've never heard of their MBA program.

McGill is a top tier school in Canada and in Canada it carries weight so don't blow off all Canadian schools.

back on topic, really, SOM belongs where it is on the rankings (around #10). I might choose it over Stern, I wouldn't choose it over Haas, Chicago, Tuck. Definitely not over HSM (M=MIT). And I would definitely choose it over the UCLAs, Austins, UVAs, Dukes, etc.

Yale is trying to be the next Tuck or Haas right now. It can't even sniff being the next Harvard, yet.

Of course, a scholarship would change things. I would take SOM tuition scholarship over Tuck no scholarship.

If you know what field you want to get into, all you need to look at is the average salaries for grads in each field from each school.

Originally Posted by dragon8

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Yale is a good brand name but to be honest I've never heard of their MBA program.

McGill is a top tier school in Canada and in Canada it carries weight so don't blow off all Canadian schools.

The only Canadian MBAs with any international reach are Western and Toronto, period. McGill, UBC, and Queens are good regionals but have practically zero reach outside of Canada as their recruitment shows. I also feel that the reach of those schools outside of Canada is overrated.

In reality the only schools that can claim to have true international reach are pretty limited and heavily skewed towards American schools.

Originally Posted by Tarmac

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back on topic, really, SOM belongs where it is on the rankings (around #10). I might choose it over Stern,

depends on your focus. For finance, I wouldn't and didn't.

Originally Posted by Lord-Barrington

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The only Canadian MBAs with any international reach are Western and Toronto, period. McGill, UBC, and Queens are good regionals but have practically zero reach outside of Canada as their recruitment shows. I also feel that the reach of those schools outside of Canada is overrated.

In reality the only schools that can claim to have true international reach are pretty limited and heavily skewed towards American schools.

I agree that US colleges and universities are probably the best in the world.

Originally Posted by gdl203

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In the US, it is not a target school. In other regions, I don't know - the Yale brand is powerful so I wouldn't discount that. I'm not from the US and when I told my mother I was turning down a Yale offer, her jaw dropped and she almost cried...

I think the Yale brand has a more "elite" reputation outside the US than it does in the US (for now).

uhhh yale has a way better rep in the US than outside. most ppl outside US have never heard of it

If one (the op) is looking to come back to west coast canada, then would he be better off coming back with a Yale degree or a western,t.o., McGill, UBC, Queens, degree? Queens has a joint MBA w/ Cornell, which would, in theory, bring up it's intl rep. I am not in a position to say whether or not this is the case, but thought i would throw it out there for those more in the know.

Originally Posted by Lord-Barrington

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The only Canadian MBAs with any international reach are Western and Toronto, period. McGill, UBC, and Queens are good regionals but have practically zero reach outside of Canada as their recruitment shows. I also feel that the reach of those schools outside of Canada is overrated.

In reality the only schools that can claim to have true international reach are pretty limited and heavily skewed towards American schools.

Originally Posted by scientific

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uhhh yale has a way better rep in the US than outside. most ppl outside US have never heard of it