Research MBA Programs

Hello! I am a long time viewer of this site and I have found the information shared to be very helpful.

I was curious if anyone could provide some views or opinions regarding the differences between George Washington University's MBA program and American University's MBA program in Washington D.C. From asking around and checking the rankings it seems that GWU is superior. Does anyone have any experience to corroborate this view (is this even the case)? Are the graduate school experiences and post-grad school job prospects vastly different?

Any insight would extremely helpful.

Think it would depend somewhat on your career interests - what are you looking to go into?

Sorry for the long length of time, I am looking for a career in corporate or institutional finance. Thank you for responding!

GW definitely has the more prestigious name.

As an alum of GWSB (undergraduate) and current metro DC resident who often bumps into other local schools' alumni, I would consider GW the better school (between AU and GW).

Ignorant of all the specifics of each MBA program, here are some aspects to consider:

1) Campus Location - GW is an urban campus (more so than AU or Georgetown). Imagine the typical college campus with it's green lawn - that's AU and Georgetown. Georgetown is also on a hill and has a shuttle that has a shuttle stop to get to more urban part of DC. *A Georgetown stop is actually on GW's campus. A lot of students are attracted to the GW campus just because of its location and proximity to world institutions (i.e. couple of blocks from White House).

2) Alumni Base - GW has made a big deal about reaching out to alumni across the world. The current (and still fairly new) university president has made it a focus as well as the new business school dean. *The business school dean: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Guthrie).

3) Career Opportunities/Career Center - Even at the undergraduate level, it's not uncommon for many GW business school graduates to work on Wall Street or do some other work that involves finance. GW itself has a career center, but the business school has its own career center to serve its students. The business school career center has close ties to many top companies and many of the graduates do join those firms recruiting from the school. The MBA program also offers career treks to different companies/cities that may fit with your interests.

How's this for getting experience: https://gwtoday.gwu.edu/business-student ... nomic-plan

Of course you want to make sure GW matches up with your goals, but hopefully this helps.