Hmmmm..... organizational behavior - that's cool stuff! And, it obviously is a natural fit to your psych undergrad. Pretty much every bschool offers some org behavior coursework as part of their core curriculum. Kellogg is definitely a good choice for you, because they are one of the strongest schools for consulting in general - HBS too. And, since you're a little younger, you really might want to consider HBS - yes it's a daunting target to toss out there but you have the basics that would qualify you (you'd need to be able to highlight leadership and impact in a really big way in those essays but there's no reason you shouldn't consider Harvard!). Harvard trends a little younger, Kellogg does prefer applicants to have more work experience, but we've seen plenty of people have success there with 3+ years. You are actually in the sweet spot right now, you could theoretically be targeting schools that generally have younger students like Harvard, and you can also try for those that prefer more experience provided you can demonstrate that you're ready for bschool now. (That needs to come through in the essays, in terms of what stories you present to showcase your achievement etc.)
The specific angle that you're focusing on of org behavior consulting will actually set you up as differentiated among the larger applicant pool of people interested in just 'consulting' - so this is good. Consulting and finance are the two major tracks at ANY bschool, so you actually have plenty to choose from. You're right to identify Cornell for their strength in industrial relations through their ILR school but obviously that's separate from the MBA offered from The Johnson School. At most MBA programs you can take classes at other graduate schools on campus though, so this might be worthwhile for you to pursue. Cornell Johnson is not the best-ranked program though - it's a good school and clearly Cornell has a great reputation overall, but in terms of MBA, it's not that highly regarded compared to these others we're discussing.
Another that you may want to research is NYU - like Cornell, they have a separate Master's in Industrial/Organizational Psychology, separate from the MBA, but you maybe can take classes through that school while you're getting your MBA from Stern.
One reason that Kellogg is interesting is because Dean Blount has a PhD in management and organizations, and she frequently talks about organizations as drivers of change. That alone doesn't mean that you'd automatically have a specialty in org behavior just by going to Kellogg, but it doesn't hurt that there's an interest in this area at the top of the school! The new dean at Booth, Sunil Kumar, was also the head of org behavior when he was at Stanford. These aren't the only ways to evaluate a school but they might be worth investigating.
Speaking of Stanford: maybe that would be a target? Of course, it's really tough to get in (!!!), but in terms of your field of interest, they most definitely have some interesting stuff going on.
Cornell is very rural so you might want to rule that out if you want to go to school in the city. NYU is obviously in NYC; Kellogg and Booth are in Chicago; Stanford is Northern California, it's a beautiful campus in Silicon Valley, about an hour from San Francisco, not technically rural but definitely not city. Kellogg and Chicago Booth are both pretty large programs; NYU and Stanford are about the same.
Wow, sorry for the long post - basically you have lots to investigate - we may not have helped you narrow your list here!! But that's actually a nice problem to have, isn't it?
Happy to entertain other questions - hopefully this is helpful and not completely adding to the overwhelm!
EssaySnark
