Researching schools

Hi Vincent! Those are excellent questions to be asking. Unfortunately it's gonna be a little bit tough to get a good handle on the first one - there's definitely no directory that maps out collaborative vs competitive (that we know of), and you're not going to hear anyone associated with a school say anything except that they're collaborative, right?

However, a quasi-proxy rule of thumb approximation thing for the 'collaborative' angle is, the smaller schools tend to put a greater focus on community. We're not saying that the larger schools have less collaborative cultures, but it's a more obvious attribute in play at smaller programs, sometimes.

This is really the type of thing where the very best way to find out is to actually visit the school. We talk about the importance of school visits on the EssaySnark blahg a lot - here's one such post: https://essaysnark.com/2010/06/how-to-choose-a-bschool/

For the teaching methods thing - also an important attribute - you should have an easier time getting the data. The BusinessWeek school profiles includes some basic information on this, and you can even search by it: https://www.businessweek.com/bschools/ra ... ool_finder

All schools use the case method. The only schools that use it (almost) exclusively are HBS and Darden (and maybe one other whose name escapes us at the moment); for other bschools, it's more of a mix.

Anyway, hope that gets you started. Let us know if we can help!

EssaySnark