When comparing business schools and trying to decide where to apply, applicants often focus on metrics: the rankings, reputations, average post-MBA starting salary, industry specializations, and employment statistics. Many aspiring MBAs compare business school curricula, teaching styles, and other unique resources, such as student clubs and centers of excellence. Although these are all important details to consider when deciding which school to attend, all of the top programs will be similar and fare favorably in these areas. These metrics also ignore your cultural fit with the respective programs, which is a big determinant of how your two years in school may unfold. You will obviously have a much greater chance of success at a school you love than one where you’re unhappy. Therefore, you should understand the other differences among MBA programs that will help predict the kind of experience you will have in business school.
Class size
The size of MBA cohorts at various schools can vary greatly, and this can have a tremendous impact on each school’s culture and your day-to-day experience. Harvard Business School (HBS) and Wharton typically have the largest class sizes among the top business schools. The HBS Class of 2024 consists of 1,015 students, up from 984 in 2023 and 770 in 2022, and is larger than the school’s typical class size of 930. Meanwhile, Wharton’s Class of 2024 includes 877 students, compared to 897 in 2023 and 852 in 2022. On the other end of the spectrum, Dartmouth Tuck has only 287 students in its Class of 2024 (down from 294 students in 2023), Berkeley Haas has 247 (down from 291 in 2023), and Yale SOM has 347 (pretty stable as compared to 349 in 2023).
Cultural and social impacts
How will class size affect you? It can have a huge impact on culture. Programs with small cohorts are often tight-knit—you are likely to get to know all of your classmates and run into the same people repeatedly in various classes and clubs. You very well may find other people like you in terms of background and interests, but because there will be fewer of them, you are also more likely to have meaningful interactions with people very different from you.
With larger programs, you are more likely to find more people like you. Even niche clubs may have many members. There also may be more opportunities and more variety—with more students around to organize things, there may be more clubs or more events—but you might graduate without getting to know all of your classmates. Many of the larger programs break classes into smaller groups, such as Wharton’s Cluster and Cohort system, as they strive to provide some of the same benefits of a smaller program within a larger one. Therefore, you are likely to get to know your smaller group very well and may never even meet some of your classmates in other groups.
Alumni network
Larger class sizes can also mean larger alumni networks. HBS touts its massive and very active alumni network, with 89,000 alumni living in 173 countries and 104 alumni clubs in 51 countries. Schools with smaller class sizes and smaller resulting alumni networks often claim to have tighter-knit alumni, who may be more responsive or helpful. For example, Stanford GSB’s smaller 30,000-person alumni network often tops the rankings for helpfulness in building a career and other measures of alumni network quality. Furthermore, for those who seek the potential to interact with more alumni, Stanford GSB points to the 220,000 alumni for the greater Stanford University. And Dartmouth Tuck’s comparatively tiny 10,700-person alumni network nearly ties HBS’s alumni in terms of helpfulness in building a career.
Student body
Beyond differences in business school class sizes, also consider differences in the size of each university’s overall student body. For example, NYU Stern’s MBA program may have only 324 students in the Class of 2024, but NYU has about 29,000 undergraduate students in New York City. Neighboring Columbia Business School has a much bigger MBA cohort, with 844 students in its Class of 2024, but a much smaller overall university, with only around 6,700 undergrads. These differences can greatly impact the “feel” of the school and your overall experience as well as the availability of the alumni network and resources beyond the business school after you graduate. Consider that Michigan Ross has only 380 students in its Class of 2024, but once they graduate, they will be part of the broader university’s 659,000-person alumni network—which is one of the largest in the world.
Campus location
There are other differences among MBA programs that will impact your overall experience. Is the business school’s campus stand-alone, or is it integrated into the university or even into its surrounding community or city? Is the school in an urban or suburban setting? Although Northwestern Kellogg and Chicago Booth are both situated in the Chicago area, their locations are very different. Chicago Booth is in an urban setting, blocks from museums and the lakefront beach, with students living off campus in various neighborhoods throughout Chicago, often some distance from campus. Kellogg, on the other hand, is located in more suburban Evanston, with most students living within walking or biking distance of the campus, whether they live in on- or off-campus housing options. Your day-to-day experience would be very different at each of these schools.
Unlike rankings, these differences in size and location do not mean that some schools are inherently better than others. However, they do mean that some MBA programs may be a better fit for you than others. Now is the time to do the introspective work necessary to understand what type of business school environment is best for you. Research the schools. Attend information sessions. Talk to admissions staff and students. Take the time to figure out which schools are best suited to you. This exercise should help guide you in deciding where you will apply—and it also should help you explain in your application essays why each school is such a great fit specifically for you!
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