I know—it’s easier said than done. The following tips will help you prepare for your interview so you enter on the big day feeling confident, optimistic, and ready to let your top choice MBA program know that you’re ready for business!

MBA Interview Tip #1: Relax

Anxiety will only trip you up, bust your confidence, and possibly make for an awkward, uncomfortable interview. To ease tense nerves, try learning some deep breathing exercises or visualizations to calm you down just before entering your interview, and even during it. Also, being well prepared is a sure way to build confidence and cut back on anxiety.

MBA Interview Tip #2: Know Thyself

Be able to answer the following crucial questions in a heartbeat: What are your short-term goals? What are your long-term goals? What do you hope to gain from attending this program? What will you contribute to your peers? To society? Which examples will you provide if asked about a leadership experience, a time when you failed, or your response to criticism?

MBA Interview Tip #3: Be Prepared to Answer Questions about Your Past

Knowing your resume, work accomplishments, and personal achievements is a good place to start, but you’re going to have to do more than simply reel off lists at your interview. Question the major turning points in your life that have brought you to this point. What did you gain from this particular job? From an influential experience? What if you hadn’t accepted that position?

MBA Interview Tip #4: Have Examples Ready

Your interviewer will probably ask you questions about your leadership experience, your goals, your strengths, and your weaknesses. A bland answer of “I’m good at motivating others” won’t cut it; instead, offer an example of a time in which your strength or leadership quality really carried you (and others) through a difficult situation.

MBA Interview Tip #5: Do Your School Research Beforehand

An interview isn’t just one-sided; you’ll be given a chance to ask questions too. Make sure that you’ve done your school research in advance—browsed the website, spoken to alumni and current students, etc.—so that you don’t end up asking a question whose answer you should already know. Furthermore, knowing about your target school’s mission, goals, and atmosphere will help you prove to your interviewer not only that you want to attend this school, but that you belong there.

Be prepared for your MBA interview. Review feedback from those who preceded you in the hot seat in the MBA Interview Feedback Database.

Linda Abraham is the CEO and founder of Accepted.com, a leading MBA admissions consultancy, and co-author of the new book, MBA Admission for Smarties: The No-Nonsense Guide to Acceptance at Top Business Schools.  Linda has been helping MBA applicants gain acceptance to top MBA programs since 1994.

Our Series on the Essentials of an Awesome MBA Application

Part I: The GMAT

Part II: Grade Point Average

Part III: Extracurricular Experience

Part IV: Work Experience

Part V: Leadership

Part VI: MBA Goals

Part VII: The MBA Resume

Part VIII: Getting Killer Recommendation Letters

I call “it” MBA failophobia (n): the fear of not getting into any of your top choice business schools;. However, “fears” might be a more accurate description of this phobia since it is characterized not only by the classic “fear of failure”, but is an aggregate of many; it is, in fact, a sum of fears:

THE FEAR OF NOT CUTTING IT.

Applicants to top-rated schools in any field tend to be overachievers in general; thus you have a pool of  thousands of overachievers competing against thousands of other overachievers–globally; not fun. The fear of not making the cut is as real as it is debilitating in such a competitive landscape.

THE FEAR OF BEING OUT-CLASSED.

The nagging possibility that you just might be out of your league. This fear is fed with every headline or anecdote of another ex-navy seal, poker world champion, former Olympian, single mother who discovered the cure for leukemia on her part time consulting job while lifting burning vans off of small children in Haiti during a natural disaster as her community service extra. Seriously, who can compete with that shit?

THE FEAR OF BEING FOUND OUT AS A FRAUD.

If you end up not making the cut because you are outclassed, does that make you a fraud? It’s a chilling thought to consider how many perfectly smart and capable people will put a lifetime of achievement into question based on whether or not we gain admission into a top 10 or 15 MBA program.

THE FEAR OF REJECTION.

This fear isn’t just for dating. Its the concern that after basically allowing this process to take over your life for nearly a year (or better) that you will ultimately get a “thanks, but no thanks” from the object of your affections–your dream school.

THE FEAR OF THE LONG, SLOW DEATH.

The frightening possibility of being strung along on an admissions wait list, only to have your dreams deferrred in the end. Surely, there must be a method of rejection that is more civil, more humane, than this.

THE FEAR OF WASTED TIME (AND EFFORT).

This one is enough to just make you mad. I can take a loss, but wasted time? Let’s just say that its not what I get out of bed for every day.

THE FEAR OF (NONREFUNDABLE) WASTED MONEY.

There is a special (and familiar) sting that comes with investing large amounts of money and having nil to nothing to show for it in the end. Ironically, this fear is likely to inspire you to invest even more money hedging your bets: an extra school visit; one more application (to a safety school, no less); a ding analysis to prepare you to reapply next year (IF you’re under 30; at my age, its now or never).

THE FEAR OF MASSIVE DEBT AS A REWARD FOR SUCCESS.

One of my favorite political pundits is Randi Rhodes. She has this saying that I love because it really causes one to think: “If you win, what will you have won?“

Well, one of the things that successful MBA matriculation can win you is a mountain of debt that could have you end up in one or more of the following scenarios:

• Taking an 80-hour per week job you hate so you can pay back your loans.
• Selling all your possessions in a mad dash to eliminate debt.
• Going into a non-traditional field (like entrepreneurship) with a 4-figure loan bill each month and no guaranteed income to pay it with.
• Saddling your debt for the next 15 0r 20 years, paying 10′s of thousands of dollars in interest.

THE FEAR OF PUBLIC EMBARRASSMENT.

Failure may be a part of the journey of success, but failing publicly can be an awful experience; just ask O.J. Simpson–but at least he won some football games. The mere thought of putting in all this work and proclaiming your lofty top MBA goals to the world and then coming up with nothing can be enough to make you max your visa on the next admissions consultant with a website and a pulse.

Some Common Coping Tactics of MBA Failophobiacs

The following are a list of common tactics that I have observed (and in many cases, followed) as MBA applicants attempt to create an emotional air cushion as protection against a totaled ego in the event of an admissions ding (or multiple dings, which would be more like a pile up). Most applicants actually employ any number of these tactics simultaneously (a cocktail) as they formulate a larger failophobia coping strategy.

1. GMAT Obsession - locking oneself up in a quiet corner of your home to study for the GMAT exam ad nauseum; oscillating between periods of extreme focus, bouts of shame and procrastination (should I really be watching Game of Thrones, or should I be practicing combinatorics?) and the resultant guilt that comes naturally with the latter.
2. Taking a Vow of Silence – the practice of not revealing your top school choices–at least not as yourself (hence using pseudonyms like “mbaover30″ or refusing to say a word about any of this madness in polite company). The theory behind this is that while not getting into your choice program(s) would be a huge disappointment, you at least might get to save yourself the embarrassment of having that happen under the watchful eyes of other people who have watched you obsess about “getting in” for the past 6-18 months.
3. Periodic Ventilation – starting/commenting on blogs, joining online mba/gmat support communities, etc. as a way to vent concerns, frustrations and fears, all the while starving for the slightest sign or gesture of affirmation that things will turn out fine (like someone of a similar profile getting into your dream school; or someone getting dinged for a weakness that you know you don’t have).
4. Applying to Safety Schools - Applying to schools that you have NO INTENTION of going to just so you can avoid a wipeout scenario (not getting into ANY of your preferred programs); question is, would you even attend your safety school(s) if you didn’t get into your target(s)? Think about it.
5. Sour Grapes – Trolling MBA admissions forums, blogs and communities viciously attacking the credibility of programs that you’d like to go to, but don’t feel confident about your chances of getting into (or have already been dinged by). This idea crosses my mind every time I read  comments like “Wharton sucks. They’ve fallen from grace!” or “Stanford is soooooooo overrated; SANTA CLARA is really where it’s at!” or “My best friend’s roomate’s cousin’s neighbor said that her experience at HBS was the pits. How could anyone go to such a place!” REALLY?
6. Hiring Mercenaries/Buying Your Freedom - Throwing thousands of dollars at GMAT prep courses and/or MBA admissions consultants (genus chargus maximus); the more cost effective (read: shoe string budget) alternative to which seems to often be taking a sour grapes approach to both of the above, claiming that they don’t really work (despite hundreds of testimonials to the contrary). Personally, I’m agnostic as to whether or not to take this route; I say do what works for you. Though, its hilarious to sit back and watch how hard people who’ve chosen either path will fight and flame to justify and validate t heir choice either way.
7. Essay Regurgitation – Taking one comment from an adcom or piece of advice from a consultant and running with it in your essays. Says HBS’s Dee Leopold in her WSJ interview, “For a while, people were getting advice that when we asked for three accomplishments you had to give one professional, one personal and one community service. I don’t know where that came from. They got to be a little formulaic.“
8. Gluttony - can be a by product of both guilt and stress; also often attributed to refusing to cook (or clean; or bathe) while hopelessly chained to a Kellogg essay or GMAT study guide. What’s your poison of choice? Late night pizza? Haagen dazs?
9. Denial – putting everything off until the very last minute, hoping  that that taking a more zen,laissez-faire/”it’ll get done” attitude will make things better; it doesn’t. It just adds more stress at the end.
10. Self induced trauma – Purposefully putting more stress on  yourself at the every end, hoping that the adrenaline rush will help you to “perform under pressure”, resulting in moments of rare brilliance and perfect execution of your MBA apps at the buzzer. Good luck with that.
11. Self deprecation - repeatedly saying that a particular dream school of yours “is a long shot” (or speaking in uncertain terms like “IF I even get in…“) to save face in the event of a possible ding. The theory in action here is if you never allow yourself to be too gung-ho about it, then any disappointment will be mitigated. Unfortunately, this tactic may also prompt you to give  less than your best, which may be likely to result in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

P.S. Have you noted fears and coping tactics not list here? Feel free to add them below so that all may be forewarned.

MBAOver30 offers the perspective of a 30-something, California-based entrepreneur who is applying to Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, MIT, Northwestern, Berkeley, UCLA and the University of Southern California. He hopes to gain acceptance to the Class of 2015 and blogs at MBAOver30.

Previous posts on Poets&Quants:

How I Totally Overestimated The MBA Admissions Process

Chevon's John Watson is the MBA who runs the largest company on the Fortune 500 list. He got his MBA from Chicago Booth.

Harvard Business School led all B-schools with the most MBAs: 40 in all. Indeed, one in every five Fortune 500 CEOs with an MBA earned it at HBS. The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School was next, with 13 CEOs, while Stanford was third, with ten.

Following the big three was the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with 7, including Chevron’s John Watson, who is the MBA who heads up the highest ranked company (No. 3) on the Fortune list. Chicago metro rival Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management is right behind Booth with six Fortune 500 CEOs, tied with Indiana University’s Kelley School with six as well. Then came Columbia Business School and the University of Virginia’s Darden School, each with four Fortune 500 CEO alums.

U.S. News said that MIT, which failed to have a single Fortune 500 chieftain with an MBA, was still third on its list overall among institutions that awarded the most other graduate degrees to the executives, after Harvard and Columbia.

When U.S. News tabulated the results the include undergraduate and all graduate degrees, it found that the 500 executives collectively earned about 465 college degrees. About 35 Fortune 500 executives didn’t graduate from college, including Ralph Lauren and Sands Corp. CEO Sheldon Adelson, who both dropped. Still, the Fortune 500 executives who completed both college and graduate school collectively earned about 200 MBAs and about 140 other graduate degrees.

Harvard University topped the list of Fortune 500 CEO degree granters with 65 total degrees, said U.S. News. The next closest school was Stanford University, which doled out 27 undergraduate and graduate degrees. University of Pennsylvania awarded a total of 24 degrees to Fortune 500 CEOs, while the executives on the Fortune list earned 18 degrees from Columbia University.

Schools With Most MBA Alums Atop The Fortune 500

Source: U.S. News & World Report analysis of Fortune 500 CEOs

DON’T MISS: FORTUNE 100 CEOS: WHEN THEY WERE MBA STUDENTS or MBA: THE FORTUNE ELITE’S PREFERRED DEGREE

Patrick G. Maggitti becomes the new dean of Villanova's business school

“Dr. Patrick Maggitti is the ideal choice for this key leadership role at Villanova University,” said university President Rev. Peter M. Donohue in a statement. “Dr. Maggitti brings a wealth of experience to his new position as Dean of the Villanova School of Business, including extraordinary vision and wide-ranging knowledge from his experience in both the academic and corporate worlds. He also has a deep commitment to our Augustinian mission and the values of service and community.”

“I am honored to be named Dean of the Business School at this vibrant time in Villanova’s history,” said Maggitti in a statement. “I consider myself fortunate to serve among such a strong, creative and talented group of faculty, staff, students and alumni, and I am excited to have this opportunity to work together to build and achieve even greater success for our institution.”

As Dean of Villanova University’s School of Business, Maggitti will serve as chief administrator of the school and its 2,500 students (undergraduate and graduate), 128 faculty, 50 staff members and an alumni body of nearly 30,000. The university said he will oversee an annual budget of more than $25 million and lead VSB’s long-term strategic and academic planning, curricular initiatives, faculty research support, student services, fundraising, external relations and alumni services. Maggitti currently serves as the director of the school’s Center for Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship as well as an associate professor.

The university said that Maggitti has authored numerous publications for top management journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Research Policy and the Journal of Management Studies. In 2011, he received the Villanova University “Outstanding Teaching Award” for faculty with fewer than seven years of service and, in 2004, was the recipient of the “Allen J. Krowe Award for Excellence in Teaching” from the R.H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. His research interests focus on dynamic processes, including strategy, innovation, entrepreneurship, decision-making, search behavior, and market and non-market based competition.

Prior to academia, Maggitti spent nearly 15 years in the steel and mining industries, where he founded two successful companies and held a variety of roles, including chief executive officer, director of national sales and board member. He has also consulted with a variety of international organizations on numerous facets of strategy and entrepreneurial thinking. Maggitti is dedicated to community service and currently is the Radnor Township Board of Commissioners’ appointee on the Radnor Memorial Library Board of Trustees.

Maggitti received his PhD in strategic management from the University of Maryland, College Park; an MBA with high honors from the Johns Hopkins University; and a BS in chemistry from Saint Joseph’s University.

1) Unless they are studying pharmacy or some variation of natural science–everyone’s major is exponentially easier than yours.

2) Especially the business majors.

So for years, both during and after undergrad, I unwittingly subscribed to this insidious, elitist idea and accepted it as the gospel without question. However, years later when it came time for me to apply to b-school I was in for quite the rude awakening. Like a 700-level GMAT math question, I missed a small but critical piece of logic that was throwing off my entire equation for this topic.

When I first began looking into applying to B-School, I turned to the closest thing that I had experienced to this sort of a process as a reference point: my bid for a spot at a top 10 engineering grad school some 13 years ago. I remember devoting 6 or 7 weeks to studying for the GRE exam during one of my summer internships. For some reason that I cannot remember, I neither took the exam nor looked at the exam material during the following semester that fall. In fact, I didn’t take the actual test until February of the next year–right before all the deadlines to apply to schools and fellowships; how careless and reckless was that? Ah, youth.

THINKING THAT IT WAS A WASTE OF TIME TO STUDY ENGLISH SKILLS FOR STANDARDIZED TESTS

Since I was in engineering classes each day my quant aptitude hadn’t suffered that much during the interim. And when I was 21/22 I had this weird philosophy about standardized exams where I only believed in studying for the math. Don’t ask me where I got that BS from because I haven’t the foggiest idea. Anyway, I had this (completely unfounded) superstition that English skills were so inherently cumulative that they were a waste of study time when preparing for standardized tests.

I felt very strongly that your verbal aptitude on tests like the GRE were a strict function of your exposure to classic novels, newspapers and having people around who had strong vocabularies. I thought my little self-appointed universal law (and excuse to avoid studying vocabulary words) was brilliant.

On exam day, I came down with the flu and remember going into the test with a ringing sinus headache and a handful of tissues. Ultimately, I ended up scoring well enough to gain admission to my top 2 choice schools–Georgia Tech and Michigan–both top 5 programs at the time. I also was able to land a full ride.

DEVOTING 18 MONTHS OF HIS LIFE TO PURSUE A TOP-TIER MBA

Though I never showed up at either institution (that story is for another post), I felt that I had learned a lot from the process and planned to transfer that learning into the MBA admissions process. I was completely unprepared for what would actually end up happening–about 18 months of my life being devoted primarily to pursuing a top-tier MBA–and that’s before matriculation. There will still be two years of actual school to go through after my admissions neurosis comes to a dramatic (or anticlimactic?) end.

So here’s where I forgot to carry the one:

While engineering is a tough degree program, its rigor actually works in your favor should you decide to continue your education. Why? Because engineering programs, by design, are constantly weeding out students. Classes like circuits, physical chemistry, organic chemistry and thermodynamics usually send the first wave of refugees running for cover (and switching majors) by the end of sophomore year.

Then, for those who make it through the program, more than half of them will scatter to other professions (like I did; sales, anyone?), licking their wounds, fanning the flames of intense battle and glad to be done with diodes and turbines forever. So you see, as you matriculate through advanced degrees in engineering your pool of competitors thins out more and more the higher you go.

STANFORD IS GETTING 18 APPS FOR EVERY AVAILABLE SEAT IN THE MBA CLASS

Interestingly, business school seems to work opposite to that. When MBA time comes, the best and brightest students from a multitude of undergrad majors–including engineering–suddenly become your competition for just a handful of coveted admissions slots. This circumstance is then exacerbated by the fact that 90% of the most capable applicants are all aiming for the same 10-15 schools (hence schools like Stanford getting 18 apps for every available seat; madness!).

Oh, and did I mention that just about everyone has tons of personality, superb communication skills and knows how to present/sell themselves extremely well (rendering these attributes–considered rare, differentiating gems among engineers–entirely common and unimpressive)? Not to mention that it takes 6 months to a year just to be adequately prepared to submit a strong application; and that MBA adcoms are hyper sensitive to so many discrete nuances about your application beyond your grades and scores (which is mostly what engineering schools look at). And that test; that damn GMAT test. Its adaptive, so none of my old tricks from the paper test days apply. I’m a vampire sitting by a sunlit window.

Honestly, I have no idea how this whole thing will turn out, but I know one thing for sure: until I get accepted or dinged by every school on my target list, I’m OWNED by this grueling process.

MBAOver30 offers the perspective of a 30-something, California-based entrepreneur who is applying to Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, MIT, Northwestern, Berkeley, UCLA and the University of Southern California. He hopes to gain acceptance to the Class of 2015 and blogs at MBAOver30.

Joe Mihalic graduated from Harvard Business School in 2009 with $101,000 of student debt. The Dell manager went on a crash financial diet to pay it off.

When he graduated from the Harvard Business School three years ago this month, the economy was a wreck. Nearly one in four of his classmates didn’t have a job at graduation in May of 2009. Yet, Joe Mihalic, then 26, was able to land a job with Dell in Austin, Texas, at twice as much as the $52,000 a year he made before earning his MBA.

But there was some overhang from his experience in Boston: roughly $101,000 in loans that he had to borrow to get the degree, even after Harvard gave him $54,000 in fellowship support.

Mihalic, of course, is hardly alone. The average debt of a Harvard MBA last year was $77,880, up from $73,110 a year earlier. Wharton MBAs, however, racked up average debt loads estimated to be an unprecedented $114,000, and the median financial burden for an MBA from a top ten business school from the Class of 2011 is about $88,500.

Despite Mihalic’s six-figure burden in the midst of the economic downturn, he gleefully jumped into a free-spending lifestyle that had defined his MBA experience. He bought a 2004 BWM M3 in the same month he graduated from Harvard. From Thursday to Saturday nights, he did the town with pricey dinners and drinks. For his 28th birthday, he bar hopped with friends in a black stretch Hummer. Though Mihalic had budgeted $850 a month for entertainment, he was commonly spending $1,300 monthly.

AFTER MAKING $22,000 IN MONTHLY PAYMENTS, THE HARVARD MBA STILL OWED $90,717

But there was one place where he didn’t slough off. For 21 months straight, he dutifully made the monthly $1,057 payments on his student debt. It wasn’t until the summer of last year when he checked his balance and was thrown into shock. After paying out more than $22,000, he still owed $90,717, a sum that exceeded his after-tax salary for a year.

A back-of-the-envelope calculation showed that he would pay $42,000 in additional interest if the loans went to their natural 10- and 15-year terms. That is when he vowed to go on an extreme financial diet to get rid of the financial burden. “Student loans are a strange animal,” he reasoned. “Unlike a payment towards a car loan or a mortgage, a student loan payment doesn’t go towards something that is benefitting me in a direct way.”

Mihalic, now manager of strategic alliances and business development at Dell, vowed to do “everything in my power–short of lying, cheating, and stealing–to pay down this debt in the next ten months.” Except that in his case, he also decided to chronicle the journey on a blog called “No More Harvard Debt.” The idea to anonymously write about the sacrifices he was about to make occurred last August after knocking out a cover letter to apply for a weekend delivery job.

LOOKING FOR PART-TIME WEEKEND WORK WITH A HARVARD MBA AND A FORTUNE 50 JOB

Even to him, taking a part-time position to pay down more of his debt seemed like a peculiar thing to do as a Harvard MBA with a six-figure management job at a Fortune 50 company. “I took a step back and it wasn’t until I stopped laughing at myself that I realized others might enjoy laughing at me, too,” he recalls. “The blog started as a joke. I had every intention of following through on my challenge when I started it, but I wanted to let people be amused by it and get a laugh at it, too.”

Over the next seven and one-half months, through 88 separate posts, he vividly describes his novel experience. His blog is at times introspective, witty, and sincere, often inspirational. His finances are laid bare, open for all to see as if he were dissecting a frog in a high school lab class. From his $20 haircuts to his monthly car insurance of $171, he meticulously details every expense and just about every source of revenue in his life. Mihalic even shares an itemized credit card statement with a month’s typical charges in Austin’s 20-something bars and restaurants (among the charges were a $107.85 bill at Chez Nous, an $86.80 tab at La Condesa and a $68.13 purchase at Kona Grill). Always, he writes with humor and flair on what it is like to live a remarkably frugal life–at least for a Harvard MBA.

Joe Mihalic with his parents at his graduation from Harvard Business School

But what allows him to maintain this entertaining and often addictive narrative of what he calls “the walk to debt freedom” was his extreme goal. The challenge resulted in sacrifices that few of his classmates could ever endure. He gave up all dinner dates and didn’t go to a single movie. He stopped contributing to his 401K plan, decided against going home for Christmas and missed his friends’ parties and weddings. When he went to bars with friends, he carried a flask with booze to mix with his purchased Coke. He shared a NetFlix account and refused to buy a single article of clothing.

RENOUNCING PRICEY DINNERS FOR ‘CHEAP DATES’ OVER COFFEE & BAGELS

One of the more amusing aspects of his tale concerns his transformation from being a dating free spender to a “cheap date.” Renouncing his costly drinks-dinner-and-dancing routine, Mihalic started inviting women to coffee. He recounts a date with “Lindsey” over coffee and bagels during an afternoon. Initially, at least, it didn’t go well.

Wrote Mihalic: “I was actually enjoying myself until Lindsay started dropping bombs about three quarters of the way through the date. We had started talking about the subject of dating, and she told me that she was looking for somebody between 34 to 38 years old. I’m 28, and so is she. That was super awkward, and her remark just sort of hung in the air for a few seconds. She also admitted she was dating a doctor, but she qualified it by saying that things probably wouldn’t work out with him.”

Never mind, thinks Mihalic. He rationalizes the experience, saying “She’s a cool chick, but she told me that she eats out for every meal since she doesn’t cook. That shot up some huge, bright red flags blowing in the strong breezes of caution. Not because I want a girlfriend who can cook, but because she’s practicing a flipping expensive little habit, and believe it or not, I’m actually looking for the value of frugality in a woman I date.”

HIS SACRIFICES INCLUDED RENTING SPARE BEDROOMS TO STRANGERS

To make extra money, he sold his second car and a motorcycle, rented his spare bedrooms to strangers on Craigslist, and started a side business doing landscaping work. Quickly, he chipped away at his debt. To start, he liquidated his IRA account for $8,000, sold stock worth $14,000, and used about $3,000 of available cash to wipe out one loan. Within seven months, he managed to make his final payment and rid himself of all his debt in March of this year—three months ahead of his goal.

His fanaticism to quickly toss off the debt albatross has its roots in a relatively modest upbringing, despite having a father who is a successful executive in the auto industry. “I come from a family that respects the value of money–almost to a fault,” he explained in one post. “While money never appeared to be tight, it never got thrown around, either. My mom bought my clothes at Kohl’s. If I wanted name brand, I had to pay for it myself. My mom spent her Saturday mornings clipping coupons. Every single Saturday evening–without fail, no exaggerations–we went to mass followed by dinner at Olive Garden, Red Lobster, or some similarly priced restaurant.”

One anecdote is especially telling. “My dad is extremely careful with money, and he has gone to lengths to try to instill that value within me,” the Harvard MBA wrote. “It took him two weeks and a couple of trips to K-Mart before he finally bought me a bicycle when I was five. When I outgrew that, he paid for a second bike a few years later. On the car ride home after the second shopping trip, he told me that that would be the last bike he ever paid for.”

‘I NEVER FELT FAT AND HAPPY AND WAS ALWAYS WATCHING MY BACK FOR THAT TAP ON THE SHOULDER THAT SIGNALS THE BEGINNING OF A LAYOFF’

After he graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in business in 2005, he went to work as a supervisor in a factory in Austin. “I decided the bonuses and raises of my blue-collar staff so I knew how little they made and I saw how many of them were living paycheck to paycheck,” he wrote. “In addition, the factory was constantly under the threat of being outsourced and off-shored. Between these two influences, I never felt fat and happy, and was always watching my back for that tap on the shoulder that signals the beginning of a layoff.”

He concedes now that a shift in his lifestyle occurred during his two years in the MBA program at Harvard. “At HBS, $100 dinners for one person in downtown Boston are a standard affair,” he says. “Nobody thinks twice about taking an international vacation–they just go. I remember a friend told me she was going with a group of students to Oktoberfest for the weekend. I asked her what bar she was heading to. She laughed at me and told me the bars in Germany–she was going to the actual Oktoberfest–for the weekend!”

In his blog, Mihalic lays bare all the financial detail of his life

Was Harvard ultimately worth it? Mihalic says he has no remorse at having gotten an MBA from Harvard, regardless of the cost. “Harvard,” he says emphatically, “was a great and awesome experience.” Or as he put it on his blog, ” HBS will forever hold a special place in my heart. There aren’t enough gigabytes on this blog to list all the reasons to attend HBS.”

His conclusion is obvious, yet filled with truth. “A lot of people in this country–regardless of socioeconomic status–have an unhealthy obsession with things and experiences and statuses. We shop brands; we drop names. We try to keep up with the Joneses. We comfortably tolerate an unhealthy level of debt.”

WHEN HE FINALLY PAID OFF HIS DEBT ON MARCH 29TH, HE WAS FLAT BROKE

That was something Mihalic couldn’t quite tolerate. One of his loans–for $26,101–was at an interest rate of 7.9%. Another couple of loans–for a total of $43,068–carried an interest rate of 6.8% (see table above). So he was extra anxious to ditch the debt. Each day during his challenge, Mihalic would pore over a spreadsheet that tracked his progress. The negatives, when he went over his budget, were marked in red, and the positives were in green. On March 29th, after much discipline and patience, he made his final payment on the debt, three months ahead of his ten-month deadline. Mihalic says he then had to ask his roommates for their rent a few days early so he could meet his mortgage payment for the month on time.

“I felt good,” he recalls, after sending in his last check. “I knew that the reward would be worth it. I got misty-eyed looking at the progress I made and all the work that went into it. My heart was beating so hard and I was still in shock that I had done it. On that day I made that payment, I had nothing. But every day I go to work now I’m actually increasing my wealth instead of reducing my debt.”

DON’T MISS: MBA DEBT: THE BURDEN GROWS HEAVIER & GETS SCARIER or THE CLASS THE LOANS FELL ON

The red-faced student was captured on a YouTube video, slurring his words and shouting numerous obscenities. To describe the case study for his upcoming class, he proudly tells the camera and everyone else: “It’s marketing. We got to learn it so that’s what I’m fucking doing.”

The video is merely a joke, a humorous skit in this year’s Wharton Follies. But the idea of portraying a drunken MBA student for a few laughs hits home. The truth is that excessive drinking and other Mad Men-like behavior has become part of the culture of getting an MBA degree at a top school, including, in some cases, sexual harassment.

Last month, at Harvard Business School, the co-president of the school’s student follies show was disciplined because empty containers of alcoholic beverages were found on campus after the show — in violation of school policy. The crackdown by HBS administrators closely followed a report of a sexual assault that “involved unwanted groping” of a female student by one of her section mates at an off-campus venue.

During the course of their investigation, administrators say they became aware of behavior that has been disturbing to many on campus. Another female first-year student, for example, had been told that the men in her section had voted her to have “the second best rack” among her classmates. Many students, the school discovered, were playing a game popularized by the TV show “30 Rock” called “Kill, Fuck, or Marry,” in which students name classmates that they would like to murder, have intercourse with, or wed.

“The vast majority of our faculty were shocked and horrified by it,” says Robin Ely, Harvard’s senior associate dean for culture and community. “As we have learned more about what our students are experiencing, a lot of us are coming home and asking our daughters and find that it is rampant in high school. It’s a larger cultural issue.”

Confronting The B-School Culture

Those attitudes are hardly exclusive to Harvard Business School. Professors at several other schools say that the revelations are neither new nor unique.

“The problem of the ‘male adolescent culture’ at business schools is widespread,” says one prominent business school professor who preferred not to be quoted directly on the issue. “And how that ‘excludes’ groups — females, married students, and even some foreign students who don’t fit in — is also an issue. This is simply the Wall Street culture, which really hasn’t changed much since the bad old days, imported to business school.”

In 2008, for example, some MBA students at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management reportedly were so drunk at an event at the Field Museum in Chicago that the bar was shut down early. According to an email written by a student officer, some students attempted to smuggle into the museum “a substantial amount of alcohol” in large trash bins filled with bottles, cans, and flasks.

Some MBA candidates arrived at Kellogg’s open bar event already over-served and began to vomit on themselves. Some students spat at people and threw things at the museum’s $8.3 million Tyrannosaurus Rex. “It is
pretty embarrassing that the Field Museum will refuse to host future
Kellogg events unless they can treat it like a high school prom, with
breathalyzers, high security, and chaperones,” wrote Andrea Hanson, then a vice president of the Kellogg Student Association.

Professor Robin Ely is Harvard's first dean for "culture and community"

Some MBA students say the partying and the jokes are light-hearted fun and that there is a generational gap that leads to misunderstandings by older faculty, particularly over the playing of the “Kill, Fuck and Marry” game. “My sense is that the game is played with some frequency, and that many students were surprised that it was cited as part of the ‘problem’ that might exist within the culture here,” explained one Harvard MBA student who asked to remain anonymous. “The game is played very casually by some, and to many it seems unreasonable to draw a line between that game being played and an incident of sexual assault.”

When It’s No Longer Fun & Games

On April 26, Harvard Business School called “mandatory lunches” with all 10 of its 90-person sections of first-year MBA sections to discuss the accusations of sexual harassment on campus. The meetings, led by both faculty and students, were scheduled at the request of student leaders after the administration began a dialogue with them.

Faculty members at several other prominent schools say the behavior is fairly prevalent. “It happens everywhere, in business schools and in the organizations MBA students come from,” says Mandy O’Neill, a professor who studies gender issues at George Mason University’s business school. “Some of the joking isn’t all that different than what goes on in the workplace. It’s the same kind of behavior. They just import it.

“Sometimes, it’s not the games they play,” adds O’Neill, who has also taught at Stanford University and the Wharton School. “It’s what they say.” It can be common, for example, for male MBA students to say they would never marry anyone in their class because aspiring career women are aggressive, assertive, and dominant. “The reason it is a problem is because it conflicts with the expectation of women as warm and submissive,” says O’Neill. “A lot of successful women will say the same thing: ‘I don’t want anyone who is that driven. I want someone who will cook and stay home and take care of the children.’ But it’s the way people talk about their classmates that I find most disturbing. Their language is, ‘She’s a bossy bitch.’”

O’Neill, however, sees graduate business education as an opportunity to more positively influence such attitudes and the behaviors they cultivate. “A business school education should be an intervention on how you can be a better and more inclusive manager and change agent. So when students go back into their industries, they have the opportunity to engage differently with their colleagues.”

At Harvard, that may well be one of the reasons Dean Nitin Nohria created the new associate dean position for culture and community soon after taking office a year-and-a-half ago and named Ely, a professor who specializes in gender issues, to the post.

“We know that there are cultural issues outside the institution, but we think that there are things we can do to address and mitigate them,” says Harvard’s Ely. “It doesn’t mean we don’t bear responsibility for addressing it. They are going to encounter these same issues when they leave. Part of our responsibility is to help them deal with these issues constructively.”

Addressing Gender Issues Inside The Classroom

As part of that initiative, Ely has authored a 40-page report on Harvard’s culture, examining 10 years of data on students and academic performance. In late March and early April, groups of faculty have come together to discuss the findings of what is still a confidential report.

“One of the main reasons for doing this is that our faculty had an uneven understanding of what our students experience,” says Ely. “So people found different things interesting and surprising. One result has to do with the gender grade gap, and that is something that has been on our minds for a while.”

A couple of years ago, a Harvard study found that proportionally more men than women receive academic honors at HBS and that had been the case for many years. Though women accounted for 36% of Harvard’s Class of 2009, only 11% of the school’s Baker Scholars were female. That honor is given to students who are in the top 5% of HBS’ graduating class. Meantime, only 21% of the first-year honors (for being in the top 20%) for the class were awarded to women, and only 22% of the second-year honors were given to women.

“We analyzed the data and found that the grade gap has actually gone,” notes Ely. “The first year of the current class of 2012, there was no significant difference in grades between men and women. And then we looked at the first term for the class of 2013, and there were no significant differences.”

Ely says that the recent revelations at Harvard won’t change the nature of her job. “In some ways, it helps to illustrate the current nature of the problem,” she says. “It gives people a sense of urgency — if they didn’t have it before. We have made progress in some ways as evidenced by the disappearance of the grade gap. But this is a complex issue, and it’s not going to go away overnight.”

DON’T MISS: QUESTIONS ARISE OVER HAVARD’S ‘MAD MEN’ CULTURE or WHAT IF DON DRAPER HAD AN MBA?

The financial burden that comes with the degree is unprecedented. The largest amount of borrowing to get an MBA degree occurs at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Last year, the average debt load for a Wharton MBA climbed to an estimated $114,339.

The crippling sums vastly overshadow the debt racked up by many of these same students during their undergraduate years–loans that they are still paying off. For all undergraduate student borrowers, the average debt in 2011 was $23,300, though one in ten owe more than $54,000, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Yet, at all of the top ten business schools, MBA debt ranges from Wharton’s $114,339 to Chicago Booth’s $71,839. The median for a top ten school is about $88,500.

Larry Mueller, Darden’s director of financial aid, attributed the “significant jump” to several factors, including “the depreciation of assets held by the student upon enrollment.” The school’s international students who tapped the loan markets for help borrowed an average $111,000 in the Class of 2011, up from $85,000 in 2009. Oddly, there was a 20% drop in the number of borrowers between Class 2009 and 2011. But most of those who dropped out, added Mueller, were borrowing lower amounts of money.

AT NINE BUSINESS SCHOOLS, MBAS GRADUATE WITH MORE THAN $90,000 IN DEBT

But there are now nine business schools in the U.S. whose MBAs graduate with more than $90,000 in debt. Last year, there were only five schools that met this threshold and in 2009 there were just two–Wharton and Yale University’s School of Management. But the Great Recession, which help to deplete the savings of incoming students, and rising tuition bills are forcing MBA candidates to borrow more and more money to get their degrees.

Some students also blame the “MBA lifestyle.” As student blogger, known as “No Debt MBA.” recently noted, “One of the frustrating things about being in business school is that students here don’t act or spend like students a lot of the time. Most activities involve going out and spending money, there are plenty of expensive trips abroad each weekend, and BMWs are much more common than hand-me-down Civics.”

Not only is the amount of debt increasing, the cost of borrowing is going up as well. Though not reflected in the indebtedness numbers, MBAs who took out loans will also pay more for them. “In 2009, loan rates for both domestic and international students were lower because the private lenders were still allowed to participate in the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program as the Stafford Loan and PLUS loan providers,” explained Darden’s Mueller. “The benefits that they offered in repayment made the loans much less expensive, so those who did not want to sell off assets at the low point in the market, even though they had money, just borrowed some money.”

The MBA remains a smart lifetime investment, especially when it is earned from a top-ranked school. (A 2006 GMAC report called “Value Added by Graduate Management Education” shows that grads from “top-ten” B-schools need 5.8 years to realize their investment, vs. 4.4 years among graduates from other programs.) But the degree increasingly comes with a fair amount of debt.

THE FINANCIAL BURDEN IS HIGH EVEN IF YOU GO TO A PUBLIC UNIVERSITY B-SCHOOL

An analysis by PoetsandQuants of average debt burdens reported by business schools to U.S. News & World Report shows that those burdens impact students who go to either public or private universities. Of the top 25 U.S. schools whose MBAs graduate with the most debt, seven are state schools, ranging from the University of Michigan’s Ross School, where the average MBA debt last year hit $93,602 to Minnesota’s Carlson School, where average debt amounted to $60,473.

Only one school substantially decreased the debt of its graduating MBAs: The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, which had been the beneficiary of the largest pledge–$300 million–ever made to a business school. In the past ten years, Chicago has more than tripled its scholarship assistance. The result is that Booth MBAs left the school last year with average debt of $70,839, down from $79,539 in 2010 and $86,750 in 2009. That’s a 22.5% drop in two years. MBA graduates at nearby Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management now report average indebtedness of $90,200, nearly $20,000 more than the typical Booth MBA.

The average debt burden of graduating MBAs at Harvard Business School is relatively moderate, especially when considering the value of a Harvard degree. Last year, HBS grads averaged $77,880, up from $73,110 a year earlier. Harvard keeps student borrowing down by handing out generous scholarship assistance to most of his students. Last year, Harvard, arguably the institution least in need of passing out cash to applicants or students, doled out a whopping $28 million on scholarships to its MBA candidates (see “The New B-School Arms Race for The Best & The Brightest“). Nearly 50% of every class receives an average $29,000 per year in need-based HBS fellowships.

HE GRADUATED FROM HARVARD IN 2009 AT AGE 26 WITH $101,000 IN MBA DEBT

Yet, even Harvard grads are not immune to the problem. An MBA who graduated from Harvard in 2009 at the age of 26 with $101,000 in debt quickly discovered how hard it was to pay down his huge loan. After his first 21 monthly payments of $1,057, his balance was a massive $90,717. Even after paying out more than $22,000, the balance exceeded his after-tax salary for a year as a product line manager in a Fortune 50 technology company in Austin, Texas.

Determined to payoff his loans, the Harvard MBA went on a crash financial diet. For seven months, he gave up all dinner dates and didn’t go to a single movie. He stopped contributing to his 401K plan, decided against going home for Christmas and missed his friends’ parties and weddings. He didn’t buy a single article of clothing. And to make extra money, he sold his second car and a motorcycle, rented his spare bedrooms to strangers on Craiglist, and started a side business doing landscaping work. Within seven months, he managed to make his final payment and rid himself of all his debt in March of this year.

The Harvard MBA blogged about his experience at “No More Harvard Debt.” As he explained it, “I spent the first two months of the challenge trying to convince myself that my debt should be paid down organically, not by selling off assets, but in the end–and I don’t know exactly what happened inside my head–I decided to sell my second car and motorcycle. And when I made that decision, it felt like a burden was lifted from my shoulders, and I even went on to sell other stuff I didn’t need like my roadbike and other miscellaneous junk.”

But he did it, paying down all his debt within seven months.

(See following page for our table of the top 25 schools whose MBAs graduate with the most student debt.)

 TOP 25 SCHOOLS WHOSE MBAS GRADUATE WITH THE MOST STUDENT DEBT

Source: Business schools reporting the average indebtedness of the 2011 graduating class to U.S. News & World Report

Notes: An asterisk indicates an estimate by Poets&Quants based on reporting.

DON’T MISS: MBA DEBT: THE BURDEN GROWS HEAVIER & GETS SCARIER or THE CLASS THE LOANS FELL ON

A mere half dozen of America’s most elite consulting and investment banking firms account for more than a third of the students in Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business Class of 2013, according to an analysis by Poets&Quants.

Stanford admits who have done a stint at consultants McKinsey & Co. at one time or another account for an estimated 10% of the class. The other five companies who had employed the most members of Stanford’s latest incoming class are Boston Consulting Group, Bain, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and J.P. Morgan/Chase. Together, these half dozen firms represent an estimated 33.9% of the 397 first-year students in Stanford’s MBA program. It’s also a primary reason why Stanford’s starting salaries are as high as they are–former consultants and investment bankers tend to be among the highest paid graduates.

A RARE GLIMPSE INTO THE EDUCATIONAL AND WORK BACKGROUNDS OF ENROLLED MBA STUDENTS

The data provides a rare glimpse into the educational and work backgrounds of the students accepted and enrolled at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Business schools keep this information close to the vest, never disclosing this information in typical class profiles. Yet, an applicant’s undergraduate and work backgrounds loom large in admission decisions, in some cases dwarfing the importance of other factors from grade point averages and GMAT scores to the quality of one’s essays or admissions interview.

Percentage of Class of 2013 At Five Top Schools From Six Elite Employers

Source: Poets&Quants estimates

The analysis shows that Stanford’s admissions staff relies more heavily on a handful of firms to filter applicants into its prestige MBA program than any of its top business school rivals (see table on left). The same six firms, for example, account for about half the percentage of Class of 2013 MBA students at Harvard Business School, where Poets&Quants estimates that 17.8% of the first-year students are from these same six companies. Stanford’s enrolled students from these super elite firms, in fact, is nearly four times the percentage of those at Columbia Business School, where an estimated 9.6% of the Class of 2013 have one of those six firms on their resumes.

STUDENTS FROM GOLDMAN OUTNUMBER ALL THE COMBINED MBAS FROM THE BIGGEST TECH COMPANIES

Another surprise is how few of Stanford’s MBA students hail from Silicon Valley’s most prominent high tech firms. Given the school’s location in the heart of Silicon Valley, the school’s admission policies seem to be out of whack with the school’s reputation and image. In the Class of 2013, for example, there are more former employees from investment banking firm Goldman Sachs alone than all of the students combined from Apple, Google, Cisco Systems, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, eBay, and Microsoft. Consulting firm Bain & Co., with 20 ex-employees in the first year class at Stanford, had more than twice as many staffers in Stanford’s Class of 2013 than the combined total of the seven tech companies cited above.

The analysis of Stanford’s top feeder companies into its MBA program is based on a study of Internet records that allowed Poets&Quants to identify and confirm the educational and work backgrounds of 269 of the 397 students in the Class of 2013. We then estimated the total number of students from each feeder company based on the 68% sample of the entire class. Poets&Quants used LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and corporate internet sites to put together its profile of the class. Bain, for example, noted that it had 27 former employees in Stanford’s Class of 2012, not including six summer associates, versus the 20 in the Class of 2013. Bain identified 43 ex-employees in Harvard’s significantly larger Class of 2013 and 28 in Wharton’s Class of 2013.

FEW FROM SUCH BIG FIRMS AS GENERAL ELECTRIC, PEPSICO, KRAFT, SAMSUNG OR SIEMENS

Representation in the class by former employees of some of the best-known companies also was scant. Poets&Quants found just one former employee from each of the following major corporations: General Electric, General Motors, PepsiCo, Kraft, Merck, Samsung, and Siemens.

Despite the heavy emphasis on former consultants and investment bankers, there’s a wide variety of backgrounds in Stanford’s Class of 2013, ranging from a U.S. Army battalion staff officer and a Navy Seal to the brand manager for Oreo cookies and a Harvard Medical School-trained surgeon. Many applicants, of course, had several jobs before going to Stanford. One Dartmouth economics undergrad did a stint with McKinsey before moving on to the buyout firm Kohlberg, Kravis Roberts (KKR).  A Yalie with a degree in ethics first landed a job with BCG before moving on to Bain Capital, while a Penn undergrad with a political science degree had first worked with Merrill Lynch before going to Open Table, the restaurant booking website.

THE MOST UNUSUAL ADMIT LAST YEAR? A PROFESSIONAL POKER PLAYER

The most unusual admit, however, has to be Galen Hall, a professional poker player who has a political science degree from UC-Berkeley. According to his LinkedIn profile, Hall must have spent most of the 2010 year online because he says he  played one million hands of pokers in more than 8,000 online tournaments. Typically, Hall played 24 tables simultaneously. While he had little conventional business experience compared to most of his colleagues, Hall scored a 790 on the GMAT and according to some reports his total poker winnings come to $3.5 million.

A far more typical profile belongs to Dan Laufer, who arrived at Stanford last fall after having spent time at enterprise data and software company Mitchell International as director of strategy, analytics and operations. Before his 21-month stint at Mitchell, Laufer toted up three years and five months at Bain & Co., working as a consultant for clients in media and entertainment, telecommunications, defense contracting and meat processing. He graduated with honors from the University of Virginia with a B.S. in systems and information engineering.

Or consider Lu Ni who came to Stanford from McKinsey’s Beijing office after nearly three years with the firm. She did a double major in English literature and economics at Peking University. When she entered Peking’s graduate school, where Ni ultimately earned a master’s degree in English Lit, the university waived her examination due to her number one academic standing. Her grade point average at Peking where the grading standards are high: 3.8 on a four-point scale.

(See following page for table of the top feeder organizations into Stanford’s Graduate School of Business)

Top Feeder Companies for Stanford’s Class of 2013

Source: These numbers for Stanford’s Graduate School of Business’ Class of 2013 are calculated from LinkedIn, Facebook and other online sources, including employer websites. The work backgrounds of 269 of the 397 enrolled students, roughly 68% of the entire class, were confirmed by Poets&Quants using Internet searches. The estimate of students with work experience at a specific firm is based on the percentage of the confirmed sample who have worked for that employer.

Related Reading: Top Feeder Schools

• Top Feeder Colleges to Harvard Business School
• Top Feeder Colleges to the Wharton School of Business
• Top Feeder Colleges to Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business
• Top Feeder Colleges to Columbia Business School
• Top Feeder Colleges to the Johnson School at Cornell University
• Top Feeder Colleges to Chicago Booth

Related Reading: Top Feeder Companies

• Top Feeder Companies to Harvard Business School
• Top Feeder Companies to the Wharton School of Business
• Top Feeder Companies to Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business
• Top Feeder Companies to Columbia Business School
• Top Feeder Companies to Cornell’s Johnson School of Business

But a new survey by Universum, a firm that consults on employer branding strategies, found that the big three, which recruit and hrie the most elite MBAs to the field of consulting, all failed to crack the top 25 “ideal” employers of business students this year.

McKinsey & Co. comes in at a rank of 42nd. BCG finished with a rank of 37, and Bain was 63rd. Deloitte, on the other hand, was ranked fifth.

UPDATED MBA STUDENT RANKINGS OF IDEAL EMPLOYERS TO COME OUT IN JULY

Universum is expected to release its rankings based on MBA student surveys in July. This list is based on surveys to undergraduate students. Last year, McKinsey was ranked second among MBA students as the most “ideal” employer, just behind Google. BCG was ranked fifth and Bain sixth (see Google Tops MBA Most Wanted List).

The largest recruiters of MBAs in finance did considerably better with business students overall than the big three consulting giants. J.P. Morgan finished sixth; Goldman Sachs came in ninth, Morgan Stanley 15th, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch was 18th.

The big winner among business students was fairly predictable: Google, closely followed by Apple, Walt Disney Co., Ernst & Young, and Deloitte. Rounding out this year’s top ten are 6. J.P. Morgan, 7. Nike, 8. PriceWaterhouseCoopers, 9. Goldman Sachs, and 10. KPMG.

VIEWS OF STUDENTS DIVERGE BY THE SUBJECTS THEY STUDY

More interesting, perhaps, are the divergent views of business students with those studying engineering and other fields. While business students ranked Ernst & Young fourth, for example, the accounting firm didn’t even make the top 100 among students who study either science or engineering. And among humanities’ students, E&Y was 86th, 82 places below its rank by business students.

To come up with the list, Universum surveyed students at 318 universities and got 59,643 of them to respond. All together, the responding students provided 207,435 employer evaluations. The survey was conducted from November of 2011 to March of 2012.

Top 25 Ideal Employers For Business & Other Students in the U.S. 

Source: Universum’s America’s Ideal Employers 2012 survey released May 11, 2012

Notes: If no rank is indicated, it means the company failed to make the top 100 for the student group listed

DON’T MISS: BAIN NAMED BEST PLACE TO WORK FOR CONSULTANTS or GOOGLE TOPS MBA MOST WANTED LIST