The mbaMission Podcast

Ep 59 | The Best MBA Programs Outside of the M7

• mbaMission • Season 2 • Episode 59

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Most MBA applicants are familiar with the M7 -- or "Magnificent Seven" -- a group of seven highly selective business schools that are consistently ranked among the best in the United States. In today's episode of the mbaMission podcast, we're posing the question: If the M7 became the M8, which MBA program would be added to this prestigious list? For this discussion we're joined by Poets&Quants founder and editor-in-chief, John Byrne, who originated the term "M7" and has been covering business education for decades.

01:34 Which business school would make the M8?
01:22 How was the M7 formed?
06:27 Yale SOM
08:02 Dartmouth Tuck
11:42 Berkeley Haas
12:54 Duke Fuqua 
19:01 Michigan Ross
20:12 INSEAD
22:41 London Business School
24:48 NYU Stern
30:12 UVA Darden 
35:43 Cornell Johnson 
39:34 Texas McCombs 
41:37 HEC, IESE, Cambridge Judge, Oxford Said 
43:30 Georgetown McDonough 
44:36 Vanderbilt Owen, Johns Hopkins Carey, WashU Olin 

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what is the most common metric for determining the quality of a student at a business school probably your GMAT score that's exactly right if you look at the three major employers of MBAs today you're talking consulting finance and tech who's going to be the fourth major employer of MBAs in 10 years who's number eight right now I would say got two horse race between Tuck and Yale guess who has the yield that would certainly qualify them as the number eight

school welcome to the NBA Admission Podcast where we dig deep into the world of MBA admissions with insights from the people who shape it today we're asking a question that stirred more than a few late night debates among NBA insiders if there were an M8 not just the M7 which school would make the cut to help us answer that we're joined today by a true legend in the NBA world John Burn founder and editor-inchief of Poets and Quants and the journalist who literally coined the term M7 back in the day john has been covering business education for decades from Business Week to Forbes to now running one of the most influential voices in the NBA world welcome to the podcast John so let's start off with the record john you write a lot about the M7 schools why don't you take us through the M7 sure obviously it's Stanford uh Harvard and Wharton are the top three you have Columbia MIT and then you have Chicago Booth and Kellogg and that's the M7 and you know it's an artificial elitist construct right right right of course and it occurred because many years ago uh the deans of these seven schools decided it would be helpful to get together they weren't consulting the Department of Justice about antirust matters right uh but nonetheless twice week yearly the deans get together of these seven schools the admission directors and the career management people and it's a construct that actually pisses off many other are excluded there's something called the 10 school group as well and I don't know who we I don't know exactly who's in that group there's only name most of them because right after the the top seven like who's not in the who's not in the 10 school group or is the 10 school group like the 12 school group just expanded it like the G7 became the G8 you know the the Big 10 became I don't even know how many schools are in the Big 10 right now and there's the T5 stands for magnificent the magnificent set okay so very del self-deprecating as far as what they do okay then there's the T15 which I think is the top 15 um but let's get really very specific here who's number eight jeremy what's the number eight school i mean I think we got to we got to explore let's at least identify the candidates to start right okay so I think I think before we start we start picking winners um I think in this group I would say you know I'm trying to do this geographically so I don't miss anyone we got uh we got we got you know Dartmouth Tuck we got NYU Stern um we've got uh I'm not doing geographically because I've already got lost geographically i was going to say halfway between halfway between is Yale yeah Yale UVA Darden um Berkeley you know Berkeley Hos um who am I that's that's I'm at six who am I missing there did I get That's a pretty good list okay i mean you know let me think about this for a second did I miss anyone yeah Duke oh Duke yeah of course okay there we go duke i mean listen he can keep on growing let's go west coast we could say Berkeley we could say UCLA but I think is Berkeley I think is there i think UCLA is I would say not part of the conversation i would say Cornell is not part of the conversation and I would say Cornell not yet there's some reasons to think that it is moving in the right direction other schools aren't but again we all have I would disagree with you on that one so that's okay it's okay for us okay the other thing about the M7 is they're all private universities okay and that's kind of interesting too isn't it which just goes to my elitist construct comment before but I I think that I think it's more significant not that private universities but that they're all in major cities and that people like generally speaking magnets for people who are studying business they want to be in big cities where there are jobs and so your MA would be what so I I mean I think I think there there are some who have good cases i think um to me I think among those we just named I I I think look when we talk about the M7 we're talking about you know branding and I think Halo brands really affect the NBA brand and so to me I want to play my I'll do my review at the end but I I think I think the uh the two obvious candidates to start are definitely you know definitely Dartmouth Tuck and and the Yale Soom and I think I think they benefit tremendously from their parent institutions and I I remember uh one of the first people I I helped uh you know he he was an international and um he applied to he applied to to three schools he got into all three um and and his mother and grandmother were like what you didn't even apply to Yale at the time like didn't have the new building they didn't have the new dean they were like ranked number 28 or something like that and it was just the the association with Yale was was was what they I mean these are grandmothers in in a different country and and and they just had all they knew was Harvard and Yale in the United States they probably didn't even know Stanford at that time listen I think you hit on something particularly for international students right at that point they need an international brand yale is a great international brand so even if one can make the case it's not exactly number eight for some people it actually is because there is no brand there are very few brands that are as powerful as Yale across the world exciting news you can now access OnTrack by MBA Mission for free take our two-minute onboarding questionnaire to personalize your learning path choose the free plan and you'll have unlimited access to our complete modules on MBA application timelines standardized testing your professional background community leadership school selection and more you'll also get access to select lessons from our brainstorming personal statement essay resume and recommendation modules it's a great introduction to the OnTrack platform and will help you jumpstart the MBA application process get started today at ontra.mmbbam mission.com yale has a lot of momentum they have a I mean it's it's a couple years old now but it's a pretty magnificent you know building um incredible building yeah they they great faculty yeah great faculty they've got an awesome admissions team guests on our podcast as we have met bruce Bruce is legendary one of the last few true admission people out there and Laurel was great is great too and and and I think they they embrace and the community well they're very straightforward honest so I think that like they people would be surprised to know you know that that a lot of applicants start to start to identify with the school based on interactions with the with the people there right it's not just with the with the brand but like if you have a really nice conversation with an admissions person you are more likely to apply they also have a very deliberate way of teaching that other schools don't they call it the raw case method and it truly is different from most schools so it becomes a really interesting place great brand great education and sometimes the two don't necessarily go together but in the case I think it does but that said and done it the business school traditionally I'm going to be very sort of delicate here has not been considered the number eight school so if it is not the number eight school who is it then well wait a minute i thought you you would favor Yale as well that's true okay but you're going to argue against yourself i'm gonna roll it back though and Jeremy I'm not saying rolling it back right now i'm going to roll it back and say yes but or I think you're supposed to say yes and so yes and who's the other number eight who's What are the four schools that are actually the number eight i mean look I think I think I think Tuck is another really obvious choice again got the got the sort of overall brand halo um really intimate campus yeah uh you know like historically sort of like really bragged about only teaching the MBA like everyone's there for for for a reason um it's the oldest business school yeah darmmouth Tuck is the oldest business school out there yeah and I think there is something to be said for that like I think I think it is nice to be studying with people who are only doing the NBA and you're not I don't know in in class at some schools you could be in class with a part-timer and an executive and in the same class and there's maybe a little less like class spirit and cohesion and I think Tuck has really leaned into culture um I think for me fantastic they lean into winter they they enjoy their winter identity they've got the winter carnival which I attended as a student and uh that might not be for everyone you might show working together is really underestimated first off there are incredibly few residential MBAs in the world yeah uh Harvard is one tuck is one and Stanford is one and they can't even accommodate at Stanford all of their MBA students but they do have an MBA right facility uh for people to live in those are the only three business schools in the world that truly have a residential MBA right and at Dartmouth because you are isolated in handover the bonding that occurs in that program is probably better than any other program in the world period i don't care what anyone says based on the alumni giving stats right they also have the most you know engaged and loyal alumni and because they know they're not really one two three four five six or seven man the alums stick together hard and fast right right right right definitely at the same point it's a very specific type of education i remember I went up there great i think everyone eats lunch together they live together it's a fairly small class and also not for everyone dartmouth is not as far as people will make out you you can't get there uh I have a joke that you need two mules and a donkey to get there i am joking about that you're going to you're going to work your life probably in an urban center give yourself 20 months not even two years to live in an incredibly buolic place i I pass by there all the time you know being living in New England uh and and like it's a great little town it's very much where a lot of young people are these days well I'm me saying young people now sometime old but like you know if you're into people are into the outdoors especially since the pandemic if you're into hiking if you're into biking you know if you're into any outdoor sports it's like a it's a parrot right right i would say it's very binary though in the sense of okay the reality is if you're none of these things or in my case I went to look at it my wife needed a job hanover New Hampshire it's not necessarily a metropolis that has sort of jobs for everyone industries for everyone so the reality is for some people it is number eight it's a clear number eight i listen I love this school but at the same point it's not number eight for everybody not only is it not number eight it may not be number 10 12 15 18 and I have to I have to admit like I've I've spoken to some internationals you know I'm I'm and you know I say like are you this is true of Michigan Ross as well who which we can talk about like again I love winter but it's like if if you have never had a winter before I don't think it's that that you know know that you're going to be in a small town and that winter's going to hit and that you're you're going to probably feel a little less a little less mobile and like I think it's not that much further north than than Yale but it's enough that it's a slightly different climate and uh That can be true for some people that can be a factor for some people no definitely let me throw another school with four letters to its name that I think could be a number eight and that's HOS berkeley Hos and I'm going to tell you exactly why the location is smack dab in the middle of Silicon Valley you're at a big university startups come out of big universities i don't care what anyone says you need a big university to get to the point where you have a startup that really can be you know worldchanging and the reality for me is that's the place I want to be i'm an entrepreneur i want to be there i love it i breathe the air berkeley Hos john thoughts uh no look it's it's a it's a it's a great choice and in some ways even an obvious one um I have a totally different perspective on this first off uh I don't believe in brand Halo why maybe because I'm not an elitist it doesn't matter to me if you're part of the Ivy League or you're not or you're even part of the public Ivy's i agree with that but students don't but but I'm not I wouldn't select uh the number eight school playing by the same rules as the seven deans in his exclusive club created many years ago right so I I look at it two different ways what do prospective students choose okay right so if you looked at yield rates you would essentially know what a an informed discerning crowd of perspective students are choosing as a number eight school right and if you look by employers you would know which school the employers choose as a number eight school that's fair so guess guess who has the yield that would certainly qualify them as the number eight school duke Fugqua okay that makes sense duke's yield is over 57% now for those who don't know yield is the percentage of accepted applicants who enroll in the school in other words you have to invite a lot more people than will come because people have multiple offers and they choose one school over another to have a yield rate of over 50% is exceptional yes put it in perspective it's better than Colombia it's better than MIT it's better than Chicago and it's better than Kellogg in fact Kellogg's yield rate is 38% compared to 57% chicago is 49 MIT 50 Columbia 51 duke beats all of them right okay and that that is really astounding you look at the accept rate accept rate is 19.5% at Duke these days that's lower than Chicago which is 28.7 it's always surprising and lower than Kellogg well they they have an exceptional director of admissions who should have been the Harvard Business School director of admissions years ago right u but unfortunately was not and I think she has worked magic at the school but it's a great school y it really is let me put in a commercial for Duke good school that I love i finally began to understand how you pronounce the name which is fa it's a hard name to pronounce one thing I love about Duke is their social impact focus in actual fact they put in a lot of money to that they take it very seriously and the reality is is they have this really rich social impact curriculum in the sense that a lot of schools talk about social impact they're the ones who are really doing it very well okay and then okay then then take the employer outlook now you can argue that the best way to measure uh employers thoughts about an M8 uh would not be by placement because placement is a tricky stat right it's why Stanford always trails most of its peer schools because the kids are pretty choosy and more often they not they don't go the mainstream way in consulting and finance they're looking for the recruiters who do onesie and twoozy recruits right right right uh private equity primarily in hedge funds yes so the lead time to get a job is a lot longer so placement rate isn't exactly what you want to look at when you look at employer preferences but how much is an employer willing to pay a school's graduates i think tells you how desirable they are yeah and guess who is MA on that score dartmouth Duck okay no question about it the median salary the median salary at Dartmouth Tuck is $175,000 now that's we're not talking signing bonus performance bonus right uh relocation expenses tuition reimbursement just base salary 175 it's equal to Harvard it's equal to Colombia Chicago Wharton it's above MIT incidentally right right dartmouth Tuck here's here's the thing and not to push back too hard again on Dartmouth Tuck because it's a great school perfect for some from some folks though it sends a lot of people to consulting we're going to get some comments under this yeah I love Dharma don't worry i love Dharma Talk a lot of my a lot of my clients go What's wrong with consulting it's one of the most competitive most selective industries in the world for recruiting except that also means that the average salary is going to be higher if you go to Dartmouth top oh sure yeah yeah so so that's it okay but they have the disadvantage of being in handover you could say that salaries are much higher in California at Berkeley and Stanford and UCLA and much higher in New York at Columbia and NYU nonetheless in Hanover New Hampshire Dartmouth is killing it on pay except let's push this a little bit farther but it also means that a lot of Dartmouth Tucks students go into consulting which is true which is that's another reason I love Dartmouth Tuck if you want to go into consulting it's a great choice there we all agree on that okay to me it's a PhD in business after you get your MBA right let's pause though if I want to go to a startup and make $60,000 a year that is my intention dharmmat talk suddenly the numbers and you start poking around in a little bit and you say well listen maybe the average salary isn't exactly giving me the answer I want if I want to go to the world of startups or if I want to do something else yeah i mean look I I of all things I was actually at Dartmouth this is years ago so it might not be totally fair uh and the and the career placement officer said to me I said to him like well what about ex exactly that constituent and and he kind of said to me you know people at Dart don't want those jobs and and maybe that's maybe that's changed in the last you know the last I don't know I think it was 10 years ago probably so maybe that's changed and maybe maybe I I would say that's a broad critique of of virtually any

school

easier NBA program in the world and yet has the highest percentage of people doing startups and going to early stage companies where equity plays a role and lowers your base salary as you is what the point you're making but Stanford isn't having that problem because they have the highest median salary of any school i I think John's making an argument here that that Yale that Yale and Tuck should be like in the M5 or something like that we should mention Duke and Duke and listen it's again these four-letter schools that we're talking about here duke Tuck Yale Hos Ross the four-letter schools i think Harold you're coining a new term a new grouping of schools i think Ross had it had I mean I think look these are excellent schools if I'm going to say Ross had its moment like it had its moment to maybe charge with its brand but I don't think it's like I don't think it's it's a school that's done for i think you're you're be incredibly lucky to go to a school like that but I think when they had so much momentum a while back they they one of the first to get you know massive gift build a new building and have all all of that all people liked the school they get good jobs out of that school and not only that and this is an important point to make uh it's a school that truly leverages university yes as Yale does incidentally in the old days when Yale was like 28 uh Yale was completely peripheral to the entire university it was Ted Snyder as dean who really embraced the school right and allowed other graduate students at Yale to come into the business school and for business schools to go out yes yes uh and and they made great lens to try to manage the academic calendar to make that as easy as possible um and now that Yale truly takes into account Yeah uh the opportunities throughout the entire university which leads us to another point that you were making before about NC should there be an international school and that should be number M um an MA and clearly it would be NCA even over London Business School yes so what's the case for ANSAD right there well I mean I think you know certainly extremely I mean obviously extremely global uh you know two campuses you can study on either one uh you know true international like you know American schools are 35% and probably pretending they're 40% by counting some dual citizens or people who maybe were you know born in some country but have lived here for 20 years whatever like INSEAD really is an international program where you're going to get way more people from you know from South America from Asia from Africa um and and uh I think it's about 90% international of course the 10% being like local there aren't a lot of French people who are studying for their MBAs in general so it's just kind of built in um you know it is a it is also a consulting factory i mean 5% of their class that's higher I believe than any other program and a high percentage of them are sponsored by consulting firms and don't even recruit yeah right it's a it's a one-year program that's or and sometimes there's a 10 months 10 months or you can do a version with a with a brief with a start is that the January start date i think yeah you can do a brief brief break so you can take an take a summer internship or an internship at some point right um it's a different experience it's it's it may be an apples it may not be an apples to apples experience totally it's it's close it's a tough experience though in Seattle is a can be quite a difficult academic road it's a little bit grindy and whether or not that's because it's only Yeah yeah so accelerated 10 mods obviously very high performing group there but it may you truly know you want to work internationally you want an international career it's it's hard to argue with it like if you it's way tougher to to recruit in Europe or the Middle East from you know from UCLA right you know or from from Berkeley or or even for that sake from Darden or Duke or what about recruiting in North America from NCI that becomes much that becomes harder but but you've got to be you've got to be then you're probably looking at your consulting firm and saying I'm going to use that as an avenue to to recruit that's right and then you go back to your consulting firm and you eventually rotate over it's funny though we mentioned very quickly jumped over it is this notion of the London Business School if before this conversation I said okay who's number eight internationally I would have said London Business School okay and for me that seems like such an incredibly strong brand in London again English speaker sort of biased towards that but at the end of the day in it's not exactly in Paris can we agree to that we're talking about London London business school so why not London miss school yeah look it's a fantastic school again I think we're we're across the board splitting hairs what if you chose an MA by research by academic research you know who would be the M8 no what do you think I go by the FT's research rank it would the NCAD okay actually if you go by the UT Dallas rank uh you won't believe who it would be usc the Marshall School of Business okay isn't that wild yeah okay but I brought up NCAD in the context of Michigan and Yale taking full advantage of their broader universities right and allowing students to take courses throughout right and in my awkward segue to NCD the point I was really trying to get at is that NCAD is a standalone business school so it lacks the incredible advantages of a business school within a great university that has expertise in almost every field so if you want to uh have a career in climate change you can go to the school of environmental sciences at Yale yeah uh and rub shoulders with students in that area and learn from leading professors in the field yeah uh and incidentally if you want to sharpen your communication skills you can drop down to the the drama school at Yale right and take a course or if you're into healthcare you can you can go to the med school and they'll have more generalized courses uh that are businessoriented in other words there there are advantages that that really magnify the quality of your experience in ways that a standalone business goal can never do probably that I think also is is an interesting one that I think has sort of had a little bit of eb and flow is is NYU Stern where I feel like just during the absolute heyday of the of the you know the the the buildup before the financial crisis right it was like you know everyone wanted a you know a job in New York in finance right and I think that while those jobs are still popular they're definitely most most people on campus now prefer to go into the tech se I'm talking about undergrad you know want to go into the tech sector um although NYU Stern is actually in some rankings now ranking higher than Columbia well NYU Stern is still they're still b they've continued to lead into finance they've still got a a huge number of their of their class going into finance nyu Stern now has two one-year MBA programs one is the NYU tech program one is the NYU I think it's fashion and luxury program so talking about John picking up on you this notion of synergy between different schools different departments NYU tech the NBA program is better because it has the NYU tech program and that is a fant that that is a really interesting campus okay yeah but that's not my reason that was a good point though what what what is the what is the most common metric for determining the quality of a student at a business school what do you what would you say it is i mean grudgingly probably your GMAT score that's exactly right it is because it's it's the only metric that's universal right a GPA you don't know can be inflated and international students really don't have GPA because not on a 4.0 4.0 level uh so let's just take GMAT scores if you took GMAT scores guess who would be number eight nyu Stern 733 is their median GMAT score higher than Berkeley higher than Yale higher than Tuck and higher than Booth okay okay there you go but I would I I would You hate standardized test i hate them you know how I feel about stats right i feel like I feel like that stat is like we're talking about three points okay so three points between Berkeley and Tuck like are we really like then it becomes so arbitrary it's like okay I have two more tests but it's like a ranking the differences among and between the schools are meaning meaningless really statistically meaningless unless you're talking Harvard and Stanford right right and then incidentally there's a good distance between Harvard and Stanford and Wharton it's not close yeah hang on stop right there John it's not close so so let's talk real numbers here harvard Stanford GMAT versus Wharton GMAT uh like like Well one one has a median i think I think Harvard 740 okay stanford published their average at 738 wharton I think is 732 was an average if I recall and so it's not apples to apples but again like we're just it's we're talking about minuscule not even a question like one question difference across across 850 people i mean come on by the way you have somebody who likes standardized tests right here yeah standardized tests can actually save people's lives okay hey if you have a terrible GPA you walk in there and you blow out your standardized test you're you're a different candidate i wonder if we knew somebody like that and could be working at GM at NBA Mission i wonder if such a person who Let's not say who that is okay we keep on rotating or orbiting really a very unsurprising group of schools for the MA so far the next pick is Duke Fugqua period right wow we're some uh some serious comments here i I have to tell you though John here's always been my hesitation with Duke Fugqua and I loved it i almost went there myself my wife's from North Carolina it worked for a lot of different reasons nevertheless be that as it may Duke Fugqua has always bounced around number eight number nine number 10 and today this year it does next year it will 10 years from now it will is again my my anticipation i I will throw in a wrench to this analysis and I will remind you that Duke Fucle was number one in the business week ranking not all that long ago do I believe that result of course not but it was number one mhm okay okay that's point in your favor which means means it was ahead of every M7 school in that ranking right a point in your favor but even in the future if it's number one again people will say "Well it's not really number one right?" I mean that's definitely inevitable okay so let's look 10 years argument between John right so let's look 10 years down the road let's really get into sort of curve balls here 10 years down the road who are we actually talking about at that point for for the for the M8 yeah for the M for the M8 how are things going to be different so I think you're getting towards towards my my sort of my conclusion of this whole thing which is that right now I would say you're probably looking from like a and this is just brand perception i think you're really looking at like a at like a two-horse race between Tuck and Yale but I think and and this isn't this this isn't right or wrong i I think I think I think people feel that kind of overall brand halo with with Yale and I think that in 10 years I think it is Yale i think today I'd give an honorable mention to INSEAD right um I'd give I'd give Taka um you know you know just by a nose but I think looking to the future I I think it's going to be all that really that really gets invited to the dance okay John okay I'm I'm going to say something that none of you would have said okay and what you didn't say but you should say bring it you are your alma mater yeah uva Darden in 10 years I think is going to be best position now why do I think that okay first off my my own my own bias prevented me from bringing it up i was I was like I don't want to seem like a homeworker but now I'm listening now I'm listening first off I think leadership in all that matters uh at a business school or at a company u makes a huge difference and I think in terms of leadership uh Scott Beersley at UVA Darden is among the best deans in the world today right and let's look at what he's done yeah so he's created uh a conference center on campus that generates cash and is a huge addition to that school that is beautiful it is beautiful i've only visited once it is magnificent the whole school is magnificent it's a fantastic place and and he is now building a residential center so Darden will be the next right of the of the right schools you can count on on you less than five fingers on your hand that will have a residential MBA Darden will be there uh within a year and a half right uh he's raised a lot of money for scholarships he's continuing to do that y uh the school is a case study school where the professors are truly dedicated to the mission of teaching and less concerned about the research arch and not showing up in class for students those faculty members are incredibly accessible to the students in a way uh that no other school has in fact I I'll say it right now i said it before I will always say it the best MBA teaching faculty in the world is at UVA Darden period there's no other possible contender not Harvard not Dartmouth Tuck right two schools that also emphasize teaching method and emphasize teaching okay but no one touches Darden on that score so these investments that will be cash generating over a long period of time the amount of money that's been raised the new center for artificial intelligence uh the new facilities in um in Rosland that expand the alumni network into the Washington metro area with a part-time MBA executive executive education programming uh I think all of those things those those investments that have been made in 10 years are going to pay off big time i think what's really also going to pay off and I see it you every day is that as as an MBA mission consultant I see great people I'm working with great people our firm is working with great people more and more truly great people are going to UVA truly more I had again I had a wonderful guy start a company in Europe really terrific already had his PhD and he went to UVA and he was just blown away and that's where he is right now I I think one and I I intentionally avoided mentioning it because I felt like I had to recuse myself later didn't accuse you of a conflict of interest yeah but but I I I I do first of all I do I do very much agree with the with the uh assessment of the teachers and I've only I only went to one school uh but the professors were unbelievable and I whenever I go back it's like it's you know you walk in and they still remember i mean the the the the ability for recall from these professors going to going to you know reunions and Peter oh Michael it's it's really unbelievable and the culture of the the culture is fantastic it's unbelievable i mean and it does start with the morning ritual morning coffee uh where the faculty and students mingle in in the hallways i'm still close with several professors every that can't be understated only that cannot be understated yeah that's that's the culture as good as as talking as Duke Fugqua i say like because of all the investments that Dean Beersley's put in the school I I really feel like the the the facilities second to none i mean it's it's unbelievable and wait till the residents call i mean absolutely that's really and I didn't even mention the botanical garden and the hiking trails that are now part of the business school campus with an outdoor classroom overlooking a flowing among other things i mean seriously do you know what the undergrads call the call the garage there's the parking garage sure what they call it garage mahal it's the it's the most it's the most it's the most beautiful garage you've ever been at cuz it's just it's it's just it's red brick it's ornate it's it's done so nicely and it's a garage yeah okay so you guys and let me even add to this okay and to the MBA experience at this school um to my knowledge they're the only school that has an international immersion that's fully paid for by the school because it's been endowed okay so most schools have international immersions but you got to reach into your pocket pay the airfare pay your hotel pay your food the whole thing not at UVA Darden it's it's a mandatory immersion and it's fully paid for by an endowed so that's a student themselves NBA students that are paid to go off into another piece of the world to do a project there to study there whatever it is yeah yeah that makes sense so is that is that your pick are you are you are we I'm saying in 10 years if you want to think about the school that's going to have momentum right uh based on leadership and based on investments that have already been made in the school that will fully materialize over the next 10 years i say it's UVA Dian interesting harold where are you okay I'm at Cornell actually and we haven't we haven't even existed we haven't even talked about that yeah and let me tell you about Cornell a school that I've got to know a little bit my my father-in-law went to Cornell and he he's going to you're his new best friend there there we go um first of all he went Cornell Johnson cornell Johnson so the thing that I love about Cornell first of all is it is a wonderful community up in Ithaca New York i think it's a beautiful place people will push back and say it's very cold and it is distant i'll be the first person to admit that it is distant what Cornell does really well though is it has its immersion programs so if you want to go into investment banking they make that happen they have some great that is that is an ideal terrific program exactly right let me also add something else and John this speaks to this notion of leveraging off of other pieces of the university cornell now has their Cornell Tech campus which is right in Manhattan i went to visit with my son and it was absolutely fantastic it's it's you thought you jumped into the 22nd century it might be residential as well i mean I think I think on it's on uh Roosevelt Island it's on Roosevelt Island you sort of have Yeah they have a dorm there yeah yeah you have to but you're you're sharing it with all the other students not just business school students which is fantastic but Johnson students can go from Ithaca to Cornell Tech and spend some time there including a one one entire year of their two-year MBA program can be at Cornell Tech it's called the OnePlus 1 program very new if you want to go into tech get a general management degree then at the end of the day I just love Cornell i love the way it's going i love the direction and they're making a big commitment now okay i got to I got to put put another word in about UVA Darden you know money talks yep okay and Cornell is underresourced by every measure they have not had a great success at getting a lot of money uh from donors that's in total contrast to UVA Darden which has brought in an incredible hall under Scott Beardsley and so to me Cornell is a sort of an underfunded kind of program uh that's in bad need of significant endowment money i'm curious what do you have do you have the data on it on its uh on its yield because I I I hate to say this publicly but like at times when we have an applicant who maybe has a weakness but still wants to go to like a top MBA I I tend to say you know maybe look at Cornell like I I think I think you're still going to get a a wonderful program and a strong brand name and lots of of opportunity but it's not quite as hard to get into as you know as as the other programs not not on yieldity it's yield is under 30 yeah it's yield and selectivity yeah um Yeah but but still John and not to put too fine a point on this that Cornell Tech campus and it's absolutely beautiful it was a huge and they and they raised a lot of money to do that so one ho in 10 years our timeline here is that it starts catching up it's it's an incredible campus mike Bloomberg gave gave the initial gift for it um and uh and you know they want to they want to process it's it's it's an absolutely incredible campus it's it's nice just if you happen to be in New York take the uh take the tram over and just walk around it's just nice um I think that you know there's the the Louis Con Roosevelt Memorial is out there that you can you can go walk through it's it's it's a really really nice unusual look at the skyline of New York it's awesome i'm not so sure it's it's uh it's in my conversation but I'm okay with it being in yours okay now let's really go crazy here i don't I don't even know what the criteria is okay the criteria is a great school that's becoming a greater school however you want to put it something that is going to surprise me jeremy what school will surprise me a school you know going up like a rocket ship something that's really interesting maybe not exactly making it to the M8 but just a school that you You're saying like like an outsider right now who could build their brand exact exactly right outsider right now who could build their brand i think I think the the dark horse I doubt might be Texas Mcomes that that that might be one where I think I think uh sort of has the next shot at being at at emerging as a as like a strong MBA brand right right visit that's a good bet yeah because of the resourced and it's also surfing a wave of investment in Texas from tech firms yeah austin I read is something like the fourth or fifth city when in terms of raising capital in terms of venture capital um you know I I I think also um a totally unheralded enormous student managed investment fund there that's right enormous exactly right you know and so between VC and investment management um and again like I think I feel like high quality individuals may have like some blemish you know stats or you know their stats or stuff like that um I'm like check this out like this is it's an intimate school it's it's going to give you a lot of opportunities and this like the recruitment stats are are it's in a great city a fun city it's in a fun city absolutely the recruitment stats tend tend to skew local if if you want to make your life in Texas um it doesn't mean you can't get there from here but it becomes harder yes but Texas is a growing part of the economy it's enormous yeah it's got a it's got a economy bigger than my home country of Canada I believe i think I really like UT i think I think you're right on that and and I think that you know geographic uh location is an important criteria for a school success in many cases and you couldn't bet in the better place right now than Austin right right uh given the growth there and given how many companies have moved out of San Francisco and Silicon Valley into the Austin area right uh and that's only going to increase so the ecosystem around the school is very strong and very entrepreneurial um yeah I I like that pick a lot you mean I you know I I could try to do something really surprising and say it's got to be an international school okay because one thing that we do know is that the international MBA programs have improved mightily right in the last quarter of a century right and um some of them are on par with the best US programs i think the Financial Times uh makes people think that those schools are better than they really are and it's an injustice frankly right because of the waiting and the methodology that favors international schools right but I think you could see an atro say Paris yeah uh an ISA in Barcelona right um Cambridge and Oxford lot going their way that's absolutely right and and to the point of leveraging the university in full Cambridge and Oxford is ideal because you're sitting at dinner time you know people who are getting PhDs in philosophy and and every other you know incredible field yes very deliberately learning from each other those collisions are central to the educational experience oxford is like one plus one program where you can get an MBA and another degree after which is really interesting and because you guys love Brand Halo let's face Cambridge and Oxford are two of the top five universities in the world right absolutely and Cambridge is in what's called the Silicon Fens so if you hear about Silicon Valley this is Silicon Fens and apparently Fens is a word that is means something in Cambridge i think it means marsh or something i'm not quite sure this is NBA mission it's not vocabulary mission but in any case okay now I think international school okay i like Cambridge and Okay but I maybe I'd even go there to say I don't know hc is is really pushing itself right now there's no question about establishing its brand closer to Paris than I but still not quite in Paris oh the shorter thought okay so now let me throw in another school that sort of builds on this notion of being in a geographically in a great place very techfocused um is Georgetown Georgetown Mcdana and let me tell you a couple things about Georgetown that make it I that I really I really like it everyone thinks about Washington DC as a city of only government i have to tell you Northern Virginia has a huge huge huge tech community right there and also Georgetown has been very deliberate in building out its real estate center the Steers real estate center it's just been over the last two three years they've gotten a lot of money they've committed to it i personally have spoken to the folks over there they are in every real estate case competition you can imagine they have again an investment fund the people are you'll believe they're really knowing real estate great ties to that community northern Virginia Tech and yes you know government you know up and down certainly but there's obviously some great things happening there can be at times things great happening in government that NBA are well suited for then Georgetown has a brand halo that's right and Georgetown has a brand halo absolutely ab: Absolutely okay here's another way to think about it and then maybe we should close right but yeah okay if you look at the three major employers of MBAs today you're talking consulting finance and tech yep who's going to be the fourth major employer of MBAs in 10 years i would say healthare that's right that's right and if you look at the business of health there are some schools that have really doubled down to differentiate themselves okay I'm going to tell Okay how about Vanderbilt for oneand how about John's Hopkins University's Kerry Business School and now Washington University's Olan Business School they have really doubled down on differentiation around the business of health and are making major inroads in this area i think that that is going to be huge in 10 years y and I think those three schools in particular are going to greatly benefit from riding that wave right right right let me also put in a commercial for Oland st louis happens to be a great entrepreneurial city it is it is it's in its DNA it honestly it is doing a great number of startups are coming in St louis for all sorts of different demographic reasons and uh really inexpensive cost of living but honestly I agree with you st washington University in St was also a great university and I know you don't think much of rankings but you know we do a proprietary ranking uh for the best MBAs for entrepreneurs and I will tell you that the Olan business school has scored exceptionally well in that ranking above many of the schools that would immediately come to mind when you think about entrepreneurship let's wrap up this episode of the NBA mission podcast I am Harold Jeremy John thanks very much for joining us today absolutely a pleasure absolutely if If you want to be one of our success stories sign up for a free consultation with a member of our full-time MBA admissions team since we've worked with tens of thousands of applicants over the past two decades we can give you our honest opinion on your chances and help you put together your very best application that is not a sales call but rather your first session with one of us for free we can give you a profile evaluation answer specific questions about the process review your resume talk about your school choices and so much more sign up at mbammission.com/cconult