London Business School's main Georgian building

It was Samuel Johnson who once made the still-true observation: “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.” In that quote lies the greatest advantage of the London Business School; its location in one of the world’s great cities. Set just across the street from the lovely green grounds of Regent’s Park, London Business School is postcard-perfect England. Inside the grand Georgian walls, you’ll hear plenty of leading-edge discussions between faculty and students on globalization, strategy and technology. Increasingly, London has gained widespread recognition as the best of all the business schools outside the U.S.

And then there is Wharton, one of the very best schools inside the U.S. For years, Wharton’s strength in finance has overshadowed faculty and programs in other departments. That’s no longer true, and hasn’t been for some time. Looked at another way, Wharton is the world’s largest department store devoted to graduate business education: As the business school with the largest faculty and the largest number of elective courses, there is something for everyone here.

Top Ten Reasons to Go to Wharton?

1. You want to work for a financial services firm and want the single best degree to do so.
2. You want lots of choices in courses, joint programs with other schools.
3. You’re not yet sure what you want to concentrate in and want to insure you have a deep dive in virtually any subject.
4. You’re up for an intense, competitive culture.
5. You thrive in a larger environment and enjoy being a smaller fish in a bigger pond.
6. You want to work, live and play in world-class business school facilities.
7. You expect to be among the highest paid MBAs in the world.
8. You prefer smaller, manageable cities to larger, more congested ones.
9. You think Rocky is one of the best pictures ever made.

Top Ten Reasons to Go to London?

1. It’s by most accounts the best MBA program outside the U.S. and one of the best in the world.
2. It’s all about location, location, location. That is, London.
3. You want a truly global experience, with the largest possible percentage of classmates from all over the world.
4. You expect to work in Europe, and particularly the United Kingdom, and want to be part of an extremely strong alumni base in the city where many players got their MBA ticket punched where you did.
5. You already at least two languages fluently or want to learn to be fluent in more than just English.
6. You want the intellectual challenge that comes from being in a completely different environment, yet one where English is still the spoken language.
7. You don’t mind paying about 40% more for rent, 20% more for groceries, or nearly 60% more for a meal in a mid-range restaurant.
8. You don’t mind traffic, people congestion, overpriced housing, and putting up with the hassles of big city life.
9. You love big city life, or at least badly want to try it out, and you tend to dislike small towns in isolated places.
10. You love English literature, The Beatles, the whole idea of Royalty, and West End theater.

The more detailed differences between London and Wharton?

Wharton's Huntsman Hall in Philadelphia

Geography: London is the quintessential global city. The gateway to the European Union, London is headquarters to a third of the world’s largest companies. Every leading financial institution in the world is represented here. Its location brings the school massive benefits: a living laboratory of markets and businesses, an endless supply of well-qualified adjunct teachers, and more visiting executives who gravitate to its classrooms to speak and lecture. “We’re in the heart of the city,” says David Simpson, former admissions director at LBS. “A big part of life at the school is life in London.” There are few cities in the world that are as alive, exciting and dynamic than London, and it’s especially a great benefit to have Regent’s Park just across the street. The Sherlock Homes’ museum is a mere three-minute walk away. The financial district, dubbed “The City,” is about a 15-minute ride on the Underground. Students live throughout London and get to campus by bus or subway (the school is just a block away from the Baker Street underground stop). The drawback to London’s location is also obvious: it’s fairly easy to get lost here. Wharton’s location in the heart of Philadelphia makes it a train ride away from either New York or Washington, but compared to worldly London, Philly feels small town and provincial. Nonetheless, despite some concerns over the neighborhood surrounding the school, Wharton is in an extremely safe and comfortable place. With the fifth largest population in the U.S., Philadelphia is a great, compact city, with world-class restaurants and cultural attractions. Most students who attend Wharton have never been to Philadelphia and are usually pleasantly surprised by the city’s livability. Says Wharton’s Cutler: It’s fair to say that you can’t compare Philly to New York. They are different places. It’s not better or worse, they are different.”

Size: Wharton is one of the largest full-time MBA programs in the world. Total full-time MBA enrollment at Wharton is 1,674, versus London’s 640. So the difference between the entering class is 860 versus 320. Incoming Wharton students are divided into four groups of about 210 students that are known as clusters. Then, each cluster is chopped into three cohorts of about 70 students. Every cohort moves through the core curriculum as a unit, sharing the first year of their academic experience. You can waive out of the core courses if you have prior experience in the subject and move onto more advanced coursework. Only three courses can’t be waived at Wharton: business ethics, leadership, and communications.

London Business School

Culture: London and Wharton are big-city schools with all the advantages and disadvantages that come with being in active, dynamic cities. Typically, schools in large urban settings tend to have more intense and competitive cultures. It’s easier to escape school in a big city than it is in a college town or rural setting. Still, the smaller size of the London program and the smaller space in which all the action occurs helps to foster a great deal of collaboration on campus. The global nature of the program is a greater constant in London, of course, with as many as 59 languages spoken in a single class. Sometimes, class discussions are hard to follow because of it. Surprisingly, students say the cultures blend together well. “The key personal characteristics of people here are open-mindedness and a decision to work with people from other backgrounds,” says Simpson. In comparison to London, Wharton has one significant disadvantage for MBA students: it has one of the largest undergraduate business and executive educations programs in the world, with 2,621 undergrads and 9,000 executives attending seminars and longer programs. London has no undergraduate business population.

Facilities: London Business School is probably the only b-school in the world that has its own private entrance to a British pub. It also has one of the least noticeable entrances, marked by a couple of small signs that swing from the overhang of a building facade. Behind it is a different world: a gorgeous building designed in the 1980s by architect John Nash just across the street from one of the world’s most famous parks, Regent’s Park. The property is officially owned by the Queen who requires that it not be shown off for all its domed and arched majesty. As beautiful as it is, the building is overcrowded with narrow hallways and few study rooms. Most students have to walk a block away across a busy street to find a place for their team meetings. It’s a big contrast to Wharton, which can lay claim to some of the best facilities in the world.

Statue of Ben Franklin on the University of Pennsylvania campus.

The B-school campus is composed of seven buildings on and off Locust Walk, the brick-lined pedestrian thoroughfare at the heart of Penn. The buildings are closely clustered around the area of campus known as the “Wharton Quad,” a great meeting place and hub for students. The newest building, Jon M. Huntsman Hall, is home to both the undergraduate and graduate divisions of Wharton. It represents the single largest addition of academic space on the Penn campus in more than half a century. It’s a gorgeous world-class building of 320,000 square feet, designed around Wharton’s cohort learning model. This building alone boasts 48 clasrooms, four computer labs, 57 group study rooms, four floors of faculty offices, a 300-seat auditorium, student cafes and study lounges. If you’re keeping count, it’s essentially three buildings at London versus seven at Wharton.

Teaching Methods: Both schools offer up a variety of teaching methods, from case study to lectures and team projects. There’s really no major difference in the classroom approaches at Wharton and London, though the more flexible space at Wharton offers the opportunity for more experiential opportunities. Wharton says that case studies make up about 35% of the work, team projects account for 25%, and lectures take up 20%. London says that case studies account for a third of the class work, with lectures taking up another third, and team projects making up about 15% of the workload. There’s a heavy emphasis on teamwork and collaboration at London. Much of your success, particularly in the first year, depends equally on the five or six people carefully chosen to be in your study group. The schools say that as much as half of your first year grade is based on team work. What’s more, every London MBA must graduate with competency in one language other than English.

Entrance to the London Business School

Program Focus: The most common misperception about Wharton is that it is largely a finance school, while the greatest myth about London is that it is a school for international business. While it’s true that Wharton boasts a superb finance faculty and London is as international a school as you’ll find anywhere, these world-class schools are far more than their reputations suggest. Wharton offers a dazzling array of course options and program alternatives, with more electives than any other business school in the world–nearly 200 across 11 academic departments (not including courses you can take elsewhere at the University of Pennsylvania). Wharton has a staff of more than 250 faculty members. In contrast, the much smaller London Business School obviously is far more limiting. London’s catalog of electives totals 59 courses, with the most (13) in finance, followed by management science and operations (10), and entrepreneurship (7). One difference, however, is that more of the case studies and classroom discussions are likely to be international. “A lot of what we’re about is sharing the work experience,” says Simpson. “Our strengths are finance and entrepreneurship, though we have a great strategy faculty, too.” Wharton offers more majors (18) to its students than the number of subjects (8) in which London offers electives. Interestingly, Wharton opens a door to allow its students to work with faculty and administration to develop new courses, and they often partner with faculty and businesses on individual advanced study projects. Taking five courses in a field qualifies you for one of those 18 listed majors at Wharton, including such narrow fields as health care management and environmental and risk management. In most specific areas of study, such as international business, finance, marketing, management, and entrepreneurship, Wharton is among the most highly regarded in the world for the quality of its faculty and their research, according to U.S. News & World Report’s latest survey of B-school deans and MBA directors. No school tops Wharton in finance. In marketing, Wharton is second, behind only Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management (Columbia is tied for sixth with Chicago). In management, Wharton is ranked fourth, just beneath Harvard, Stanford and Northwestern. In entrepreneurship, Wharton ranked fifth. In international business, Wharton is second (London is not ranked in this survey).

There are other advantages that London brings to the table: the school allows students to exit its program with an MBA at 15, 18, or 21 months, completing as early as December of your second year. You can frontload your coursework, waive out of core courses, sign up for flexible credit options, or choose a concentration. Moreover, in late 2010, Wharton announced several major changes to its curriculum, including free life long executive education for MBA alums.

London is the only business school in the world with its own private entrance to a British pub.

On-Campus Recruiting: London and Wharton get some of the world’s most favored employers to recruit their students: McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs. Surprisingly, though, given the global nature of the top financial and consulting firms, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase, and Deloitte Consulting were nowhere to be seen at London. They were all in force at Wharton as you can see in the table below. We give Wharton a clear edge over London in recruiting, given the school’s highly consistent superior showing in BusinessWeek’s recruiter polls. In the 2008-2009 year, 243 companies interviewed graduating MBAs on campus, 1,623 employers posted jobs on the school’s MBA Job Board, and 199 bought Wharton’s online resume books.

Alumni Network: Wharton claims the largest alumni network of any business school in the world: 85,000 alums in 140 countries. That figure includes Wharton’s sizable undergraduate output. It’s a sure bet that wherever you are in the world, you’ll find Wharton MBAs or even a Wharton Alumni Club to use as a networking base. London claims more than 30,000 alums in “over 130 countries” and alumni clubs in cities from Atlanta to Zurich. Obviously, London Business School can play the underdog in just about any other city in the world with the exception of London. The esprit de corps of London grads is considerable, however, giving us the impression that this is a strong network to leverage on your behalf.

Rankings:

London Business School has made a lot of progress in rankings over the past few years. Most notably, it came in first in The Financial Times’ global ranking of the best full-time MBA programs for 2010, after tying Wharton for first in the previous year. Forbes, which has a separate ranking for non-U.S. schools with two-year MBA programs, also ranks it first in that category. Many of the numbers in the table below are not directly comparable because several of the ranking organizations separate out the U.S. schools from the non-U.S. schools where there is obviously less competition. The P&Q rank–which factors into consideration all the major rankings weighted by their individual authority–places London first among all non-U.S. institutions. These are the up-to-date rankings from each ranking organization.

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Historical Rankings by BusinessWeek:

Unfortunately, this is a little bit like comparing apples to oranges because BusinessWeek ranks non-U.S. business schools separately from its list of the best U.S. schools. As a result, the schools are not directly in competition with each other on these surveys. Nonetheless, London can’t hold a candle to Wharton which is the big winner here, having come in first in the BusinessWeek rankings on four separate occasions, from 1994 until 2002, when it fell to fifth, its lowest ranking by BW ever. Meantime, London has consistently been ranked fifth among the non-U.S. schools in the past three BusinessWeek biennial surveys over the last six years. Its best showing was in 2000, the first time BusinessWeek ranked schools outside the U.S. London was named the second best non-U.S. school.

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Historical Rankings by The Financial Times:

Unlike BusinessWeek’s rankings, The Financial Times includes business schools from all over the world. London Business School is now the FT’s undisputed number one school, after tying Wharton for that honor in 2009. Even so, no school has fared better than Wharton in The Financial Times’ surveys over the years. Wharton has been named the top business school in the world in nine out of the past ten years! The lowest rank awarded to London has been ninth place in 2002. The school has been ranked eighth twice, in 2000 and 2001, and fifth twice as well, in 2005 and 2006.

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Admissions:

Both London and Wharton attract some of the most talented young people in the world. They are both highly selective schools, with the barrier to entry at Wharton somewhat higher than it is at London. There are nine applicants to every seat in the class at Wharton; seven for every open seat at London. Though London appears to pay more attention to GMAT scores (notice that the lowest number it accepted is 600 vs. 540 at Wharton), its average GMATs are a full 24 points below Wharton.  * Estimate.

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Enrollment:

With entering classes that number not much more than 319 students, London is a much smaller school than Wharton which enrolls more than 800 full-timers a year. Although the number of “international” students at London far exceeds those at Wharton, the school is lacking in diversity in unusual ways. For one, only 25% of the students at London are female, vs. 40% at Wharton. For another, there are far fewer minority students, as they would be defined in the U.S. Our number for international students, moreover, at London excludes the Europeans because the school is a European school. It does include the 20% of London students from the U.S. The largest single international contingent at London is Asian, representing 22% of the latest entering class. The Wharton numbers for women, international and minority students are for the Class of 2011.

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Poets & Quants:

Surprisingly, the largest single chunk of MBAs at Wharton have undergraduate backgrounds in the humanities and social sciences. At first blush, you’d expect to see far more math and engineering folks here because of the school’s strength in finance. Instead, you get a sizable group of poets.

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Jobs and Pay:

MBAs from London Business School are getting salary and bonus offers that exceed those of graduates from the best U.S. schools. In the Class of 2009, starting pay packages averaged $137,429, nearly $14,000 more per offer than those at Wharton. The reason: Largely, it’s the cost-of-living impact. The cost of living in London–and most of Europe–is considerably higher than it is in the U.S., accounting for much of the difference. About 51% of the graduates stay in the United Kingdom.

The estimates of median pay and bonus five years after commencement come from the Forbes’ survey of the best business schools and include an analysis of compensation for the Class of 2008. The median pay estimates 10 years after graduation and over a full career come from a study by PayScale done for BusinessWeek and do not include stock options or equity stakes by entrepreneurs. The study did not include schools outside the U.S.

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Who Hires Who:

London Business School does surprisingly well, given its relatively small size. Befitting its location, finance looms large. In 2007, 46% of the school’s grads headed for jobs in financial services. Two years later, the global economic decline led to a 10-percentage point drop so that only 36% of the Class of 2009 went into finance jobs. Picking up the slack were consulting firms which scooped up 31% of London’s output, up from just 23% two years earlier. One surprise in the numbers in the table below: Prestige financial players such as Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan Chase, significant recruiters at Wharton and other top U.S. b-schools, were nowhere to be found at London Business School. Just as significant, it’s worth pointing out that more Wharton grads go into health care, technology, and consumer products and retail companies than those at London. NA does not necessarily mean that a company didn’t hire any graduates from the school, but rather that the number of grads it did hire did not qualify it for breakout treatment by the school. The cutoff number at Wharton was six hires; at London, it was two hires.