Greetings From Goizueta: Find Your Fit – How I Chose The Right MBA Program

Choosing a business school isn’t like choosing a college. At 18, I made my college pick based on two criteria: location and vibes. And it worked out! At this stage of life, the stakes are different. You’re investing six figures and two years of earnings potential. You bring greater work experience, clearer career goals, and more life responsibilities to the decision. As a result, the choice deserves more rigor than scanning rankings and picking the highest-ranked school that accepts you. It involves more than heading to the biggest city with the prettiest beaches and warmest weather.

I applied to four programs. I got into three. And the school I ultimately chose, Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, wasn’t the highest-ranked on my list. Here’s how I figured out it was the right choice, and more importantly, how you can create a process that works for you.

PRIORITIZE WITH YOUR NON-NEGOTIABLES

Before I visited a single campus or talked to any students, I wrote down my non-negotiables. Not my preferences or nice-to-haves, but the things that would make-or-break my experience. For me, there were three.

First, I needed a collaborative culture. My post-undergraduate years were spent in both collaborative and cutthroat work environments; I found that I thrived when there was a culture of sharing knowledge rather than hoarding it. Second, I wanted small class sizes and accessible faculty. I wasn’t interested in being one of 500 students in a lecture hall where professors didn’t know my name. Third, I needed to be in a city with a strong business community, but not one so expensive that I’d spend two years stressed about money.

You’ll have your own set of non-negotiables. For me, the location of a school matters a lot. I didn’t want to be an extended stay tourist in the city where I chose to go to school, so the fit mattered. I did not expect Atlanta to work for me as well as it did, but the city – and its surrounding suburbs and towns – have shone brightly in my two years here. Professionally, there are few places better to be than the Atlanta Metro. From MBB to Google to Porsche to Delta to Coca-Cola, if you want to work for a titan of industry, you can do it here. If you want to travel the world, you surely can do it from Hartsfield-Jackson. You can eat at some of the best restaurants the country has to offer, be around some of the smartest people you could meet, and immerse yourself in a collection of cultures that exists in only two or three other locations in America. Atlanta is a great city. For what I needed, Atlanta has provided it – and so much more.

Goizueta checked all three boxes for my non-negotiables. The program caps cohort size deliberately. Professors hold office hours that students actually use. Atlanta offers big-company opportunities and startup energy without New York or San Francisco price tags.

GET INSIDER INFORMATION

I didn’t just take the marketing material at face value though. I found people who could give me real, honest feedback about their experience.

I reached out to current students with a specific strategy. I wasn’t asking questions like “Do you like the program?” because everyone says yes when they’re talking to a prospective student. When they say no, I’ve learned, it isn’t truly representative of the experience either.

Instead, I asked questions designed to get to the truth:

“What does support look like at this school?”

“How do alumni get involved on campus?”

“Why did you choose to go here?”

“What excites you about this school and what doesn’t?”

“How do students and faculty react when things don’t go well?”

To the question “Why did you choose to go here?”, the consistent word I heard from Goizueta students was “community”. When they fleshed out the answer, they talked about the weekend trips they would take with classmates. They shared stories of school-sponsored happy hours, dances, and international excursions. They even discussed the dinners they would have with professors or the dean of the program. Across the board, people bought into each other and the community that exists at Emory Goizueta.

These what, how, and why questions get to the root of students’ decisions to join the program they did. The answers I received to these questions exposed the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement for each program. They gave me insight into the environments where I could thrive and the communities I wanted to join.

I learned that Goizueta has a culture of deep engagement from professors. It goes to the point where they hold multi-hour Saturday morning study sessions. That way, students can ask more questions to help them better grasp the material and apply it to class and the workforce. Through these discussions, I also learned that classmates came together to support students whose families that suffered from natural disasters. As valuable as webinars and campus tours are, this is the information you can only learn from someone going through what you’ll go through.

My underlying objective in all of these conversations was simple: I wanted to understand what really goes on in the programs. I needed to know what support looked like when you were struggling, what community felt like when you needed help, and whether the school’s values showed up in daily behavior or just in marketing materials.

READ THE RED FLAGS

I also learned to spot warning signs, the subtle cues that something wasn’t aligned with what I needed.

At one school I visited, I couldn’t get in touch with the admissions team on where I was supposed to meet them for the tour. I had to do a self-guided tour around the campus before receiving an email 15 minutes after the official tour was supposed to start, telling me where to go. Once I got there, they rushed me through the business school building, gave me no brochures, and did not apologize for the lack of communication. I didn’t feel wanted or appreciated. If I’m going to take two years of this one, precious life and give that (and my money) to a school, I want them to at least pretend that they want me there.

At another school, I asked about alumni engagement. The admissions ambassador stayed quiet for a bit before saying something they clearly did not want to say. The ambassador told me that they don’t get much alumni involvement either organically or from concerted efforts to increase their participation. Whether that involved social events, networking, or recruiting, there was a struggle to get alums to be present. A big part of business school is the people you meet on campus and off. So an alumni base that isn’t going to give back wasn’t going to fit my needs. That school simply wasn’t a match.

There are plenty of data points for you to consider when making a decision about where to go. Pay attention to them. If a school isn’t showing an interest in you, don’t ignore that. If they aren’t doing it now, then don’t expect them to once you give them your money and are locked in for a couple of years.

TRUST YOUR GUT, BUT VERIFY IT

After all my research, I had a short list of schools that met my criteria on paper. The final decision came down to something harder to quantify but was most important: Where could I see myself thriving? At Goizueta, I felt that. The students I met were accomplished but not self-important. The professors I spoke with were genuinely interested in teaching us and helping us grow. The city felt like somewhere I could build a life for two years, not just endure it. But I didn’t just trust the feeling. I verified it by asking hard questions, looking for red flags, and stress-testing the school’s claims about itself. Your non-negotiables will be different from mine. Your red flags will probably be a little different, too. But the process matters. Don’t let rankings, peer pressure, or admissions marketing make this decision for you. This is your two years, your money, and your career journey. Choose the place where you will thrive, not just the one with the best brand name.

---

Born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, Martin Gravely graduated from Seton Hall University with a B.S. in Marketing and Economics. After undergrad, he worked in digital marketing and social media analytics in health media before moving to into the agency world with SSCG Media Group as an analyst and brand supervisor.

DON’T MISS: GREETINGS FROM GOIZUETA: HOW A LAYOFF MADE ME A BETTER MBA

GREETINGS FROM GOIZUETA: STAY THE COURSE — THE POWER OF CLEAR VISION IN YOUR CAREER PATH

GREETINGS FROM GOIZUETA: WHY YOUR SECOND YEAR MATTERS MORE THAN YOU THINK

GREETINGS FROM GOIZUETA: MORE THAN A NETWORK – THE TRUE VALUE OF YOUR MBA EXPERIENCE

© Copyright 2026 Poets & Quants. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Poets & Quants, please submit your request HERE.