The Application Process

Hi ,

I like to have some guidelines on what information I should know about the B-School I apply for. (check list)

Once you decide upon your goals and aspirations in terms of post-MBA industry, post-MBA function, geography you wish to work, you should research the following aspects of a B-school MBA program:

Key Projects/Courses/Competitions

What are 3 to 4 key projects or courses a school has to offer in terms of management learning, industry interaction and application of theories to projects of consequence? For example Michigan University Ross School of Business offers the Ross Leadership Initiative (RLI) Crises Challenge which is a time-sensitive, role-playing competition that tests students' capacity to think on their feet and cope under pressure. Watch this video for more details https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aovuava64M
Another example would be ISB's Experiential learning program wherein teams of students work as consultants for companies on key operations, finance and strategy projects for a span of 4-5 months. More information about that can be found out here: https://www.isb.edu/pgp/ExperientialLear ... amme.Shtml
Such programs offer huge practical management learning to students and aspirants should look at them.

Employment Reports

1) Industry Split
2) Function Split
3) Recruiters list: See which companies are regular recruiters over the years.

Faculty

Study their research areas and if possible briefly look at summaries of their published papers

Batch Strength

Higher the batch strength, bigger the alumni group, bigger peer and alumni networking opportunities. Works opposite way too a bigger group is using school facilities but that is not a concern if the school has a good reputation in imparting quality business Education to students regardless of batch-size.

Talk to Alumni
Nothing better than getting subjective feedback via call or email. Talk to them about Career enhancing opportunities courses/competitions/projects/fairs which the school throws at you. But make sure to talk to multiple Alumni as individual feed-back may be biased.

Rankings

Rankings are perhaps the last attribute you should look at, but we suggest to use rankings with a pinch of salt. It is always advisable to look at the parameters which are used to calculate the rankings before you start bucketing schools according to rankings.

Thanks ivyctor2010! I'd also add to find some info about the school area and the city, since you are going to live there for 2 years.

Best advice I received: if you know what types of companies you want to work for call a few of those companies to see where they recruit and how they view certain schools. No matter how great a school is, if it cannot get you to your desired Point B, it does not have that much value.