The Best & Worst Things MBAs Say About Their Schools

University of Chicago Booth School of Business

 

“Booth has allowed me to set my path and focus on the areas I wanted to work on. For me, these included my leadership skills and my ability to manage complex problems. Booth provided the opportunities for me to work on these, through experiential courses like LEAD, and my classmates have been incredibly supportive and great examples to help me move forward.”

 

“Booth is a commuter school. The distance between the school and where the majority of students live means that socialization is often deeply focused on “frosty beverages” and academic life is not highly valued outside the walls of the Harper Center.”

“There’s still a bit too much of a focus on the “traditional” MBA areas of banking and consulting. I would love to see Booth continue to push into other areas like marketing and tech.”

 

University of Pennsylvania Wharton School

“Wharton has a reputation of being a “finance” heavy program. Although quantitative and data driven analysis is key component to the program, being a finance school is somewhat of a misnomer. My favorite part of the program is learning from an incredibly rich student body, that come from multiple walks of life, including elementary school teaching, aircraft sales, entrepreneurship and professional sports. The size and scale of Wharton provides for an incredibly diverse student body.”

 

“There is such an emphasis on academic rigor that the workload sometimes interferes with career/networking searches.”

“Even though Wharton has one of the highest percentages of international students among U.S. MBA programs, I still think the international student community is small compared to programs in other countries.”

 

Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management

 

“The school offers deep and broad opportunities for experiential learning with real projects that are enhanced by the talent and commitment of my classmates. I am a stronger problem solver, more insightful analyst, effective teammate, and a better prepared manager after complete Kellogg’s experiential courses.”

 

“The facilities aren’t on par with an MBA program of this caliber. There isn’t a comfortable chair in the building. The food options at the Jacobs Center are terrible. Most of the classrooms are in the basement. Students are constantly being kicked out of the LSR (student lounge) for special events. Evanston has never been ideal, but the loss of The Keg has made off-campus social life in Evanston very challenging. Many students complain that they aren’t having as much fun as they anticipated.”

“There is an abundance of young, inexperienced professors who cannot bring real-life experiences of their own to the classroom to enhance discussions, bring examples to life andbring credibility to their teaching.”