I would also argue that lying, skillfully lying, represents an inefficient and cost effective means for gaining possession of a positional good, e.g., admission to GSB or HBS. It’s simply much cheaper than going to all the trouble of actually motorcycling to Mexico and building a school building for blind children. Better to know the guy who runs the board of the organization that sponsors those projects in Mexico.

Think strategically and profit mightily!

Amen. And congrats!

@FuriousStyles I appreciate a voice of integrity. Frequently — admittedly not always and not immediately — what goes around comes around. If it always came around immediately with absolute clarity, acting unethically would simply be incredibly, obviously stupid and not merely wrong.

Best,
Linda

Columbia’s greatest advantage is its location in New York and its status as one of the Ivy League schools. Geography is a major reason why applicants apply to schools. And yes, it’s proximity to Wall Street is both a blessing and a curse because the fortunes of the school are more closely tied to the street’s ups and downs than any other business school.

Based on survey data over the years, I believe that the quality of MBA teaching at Booth is higher and much more consistent across the board. Chicago support staff is very strong, making the MBA experience somewhat better. And the culture is less competitive and more collaborative. The school is more generous with scholarship money, too, because it has a very large endowment. Chicago also has substantially better facilities from classrooms and study rooms to open spaces for students to gather and bond.

The stated reason is they don’t want to dilute the value of their two-year, full-time programs. For years, they would divert execs into their exec education course catalog, specifically the multi-week general management program (at HBS, this is the AMP for Advanced Management Program). I believe, however, that some schools and their leadership tend to be more commercial than academic and saw that they have a valuable brand that should be extended. So these schools, which include Wharton, Northwestern and Duke, had leaders who wanted to seize market opportunities and thought of their schools less as academic places and more like businesses. If some other brands had similar leadership, you would have seen a lot more EMBA development. For example, Yale should have had an EMBA program in New York City and Dartmouth should have had one in Boston. Why? Because they would have been huges successes in markets where there are a lot of Yale and Dartmouth undergrads.

@Clint: Well said, kudos. – “My only point (and not directed at anyone in particular) is that someones time and energy would be better served by making themselves into an extraordinary candidate, than by pretending to be one.”

That’s hard to say because your application is based on a lot of different factors. If admissions like what they see generally but would be held back from a yes due to a low GMAT score, an equally low GRE might not hold them back. This would especially be true at schools that are sensitive to rankings that include GMATs in their methodology.