Getting An MBA In One Of The Most Livable Cities In America

Downtown city skyline view of Philadelphia Pennsylvania USA over the Schuylkill River and boardwalk

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Outside Take: “Philadelphia might have a reputation for being an industrial city full of rowdy sports fans who exclusively eat cheesesteaks, but those who only see the grit are missing all the green. The quantity of space devoted to parks and recreation is impressive. Not only was the city designed to draw residents outdoors as far back as the 17th century, but it continues to build on that legacy. Two miles northwest of City Hall along the Schuylkill River’s banks, 2,050-acre Fairmount Park is a conservation triumph, established in the 1800s to protect the city’s primary water source. It’s composed of hardwood forest, serpentine creeks, and more than 50 miles of trails.”

Think Philly, and you have to think Wharton. Every large, urban MBA program gets tagged as “cutthroat.” That includes the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In the heart of Philadelphia, the Wharton School has long been the largest full-time MBA program in the United States with 916 students in the Class of 2022 alone. The business school can trace its roots back to 1881, an Ivy that emerged as a finance and management powerhouse. With that come the usual stereotypes: stuffy, entitled, judgmental. Funny thing is, you won’t find those types roaming Huntsman Hall. That’s because the Wharton School weeds those candidates out early in the application process. Instead, they favor applicants who possess a rather unique skill set: respect, flexibility, persuasiveness, and humility.

Ranked third best behind only Stanford and Chicago Booth by Poets&Quants, Wharton may have the reputation as the best school for finance but it is far more than that with superb faculty in virtually every single discipline from marketing to general management. According to business school deans and MBA directors, in fact, the MBA program ranks among the elite in nearly every possible concentration: Finance, Marketing, Real Estate, Analytics, Entrepreneurship, General Management, International Business, And Operations.

After two years of steady gains, the median salary for Wharton MBA graduates remained flat at $150,000 last year, according to the school’s just-published 2020 employment report. That’s a big change from last year when Wharton’s 2019 graduates had reported significant gains in median salary, a $15,000 bump from $135,000 in 2018 to the $150K mark.

But while salaries remained steady in a coronavirus-plagued year, Wharton’s overall employment rate dipped a bit. Of 681 graduates seeking employment, 637 received a job offer three months after graduation, for a rate of 93.5% — down four and one-half percentage points from 98% last year. Some 91.6% reported accepting a job offer, also down from last year’s rate, which was 93.0%. Those are still terrific outcomes for a great school during a difficult year.

Bicyclists along the lakeshore in Chicago

Chicago, Illinois

Outside Take: “With Lake Michigan at its doorstep and more than 8,800 acres of green­space, Chicago is well provisioned for outdoor recreation, especially if you’re an urban cyclist. Over 300 miles of bike lanes give the Windy City plenty of two-wheel cred, although unmet promises for new paths have irked residents for decades. That’s finally about to change. This spring, mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a five-year, $37 million plan for dedicated bike lanes. The initiative’s latest feat, the Navy Pier Flyover project, connects the north and south legs of Chicago’s famed Lakefront Trail and routes cyclists and pedestrians above and away from road traffic, connecting 18 miles.”

Prospective MBAs have two choices in Chicago: the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business in Hyde Park and Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management in nearby Evanston, Ill., a 30-minute drive down Lake Shore Drive or the Edens Expressway to the Windy City. In the latest Poets&Quants‘ ranking, Booth’s MBA program came out second best behind only Stanford, while Kellogg’s MBA experience earned fifth place.

Booth is often referred to as a “data-driven” or “evidence-based” MBA program – a place where data is used as the starting point to formulate questions, frame issues, identify trends, pinpoint possibilities, and drive decisions. Sure, MBAs will encounter poetic case narratives filled with bumpy narratives and flawed protagonists. At its core, Booth is non-fiction journalism – facts vetted by sources – with data sets used to define, connect, predict, and measure what is often complex and contradictory.

Booth often promotes its program as a “Flexible MBA.” Forget a mandatory core that sucks up most of a first year. Here, MBAs are required to take a mandatory, student-led course called LEAD (Leadership Effectiveness and Development), which examines the fundamentals of communication and teamwork. From there, first-years pick one course each from three areas: statistics, microeconomics, and financial accounting. After that, they are free to study whatever they want.

Over at Kellogg in Evanston, the strength of the individual is measured by their ability to elevate the whole. In fact, MBAs can expect to attend over 200 team meetings by graduation, exposing them to a wide range of personalities, work styles, and roles. In other words, they are rehearsing the same interpersonal skills in the same team environments they’ll face at the next level.

“People talk in terms of collaboration and working in teams,” explains Dean Francesca Cornelli in a 2020 interview with P&Q. “The way I think about it is that we produce people with empathy and the ability to inspire others. When disruption comes and you have a great idea, you need to convince the people around you, your colleagues, your team or your investors that your idea is worth investment. You can’t do a good idea alone. You need money or talent or other things. How people influence others is so important to learn.”

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