By Jenny George*
Choosing a good business school should be different for each person because everyone has different objectives. Knowing the fundamental differences between schools, however, will assist in making a more informed decision.
To start with, many business schools around the world are ranked by media organizations such as the UK-based Financial Times, the US BusinessWeek, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist Intelligence Unit and many others.
Are rankings important? They are only insofar as they are a single number that draws together a whole range of quality measures.
It tends to be true that higher-ranked schools are likely to attract better students and faculty members, and that they will probably indicate something about the placement and career prospects of people who graduate from the program.
But while you should not be too concerned about rankings, you should care about the underlying factors they measure. One of these is student quality: a huge amount of the education you get in the classroom will depend on the quality of the interactions you have with other people, and those interactions are dependent on those others.
Good programs ensure there is diversity in the classroom, including industry, cultural and general life experience diversity. Diversity is all about making sure you get exposed to people you can learn from.
For example, some people in your class may have been involved in a corporate merger. Having someone in your group with this experience can be a great learning opportunity for you.
You should also care about whether the people around you are bright – and that is where the Graduate Management Admissions Test comes in. The GMAT is a computer adaptive standardized test for measuring aptitude to succeed academically in graduate business studies.
Those who do well on the test and join your class will make learning so much more fun as they are likely to be quick, sharp, capable and competent.
These people are going to form your future network and, because you should care about the value of your education in 30 years time, you should also care about the network you will take with you.
Who are the academics?
The second thing you should care about is the quality of the faculty who are teaching you. Look for academics who are really good teachers. Finding that out normally requires sitting in one of their classes or talking to other students.
If you are an international student or it is physically impossible for you to experience a class first-hand, trawl web sites for some class videos. Ask the business school how to get in touch with current students, then ask these students real questions.
Now that blogging has become such a phenomenon, you can often do a simple Google search to find the unvarnished opinions of current students though a blog.
You also need to find out if the academics actually care about business. Do they have regular consulting relationships or lots of contacts with the business community?
Then again, does the school itself have strong business connections? How many times do business people come into the school to speak? Does the school have student clubs that are engaged with business and facilitated by faculty members?
There are other questions in this vein: do the career placement services network with the business community? Do students get the opportunity to do real-life projects that are actually based in companies and on live cases?
Research quality
The last thing about faculty is that they should be engaged in interesting, relevant and cutting-edge research. Research is important because it demonstrates the academics are innovative leaders in their discipline. This helps the university’s brand name – and your MBA brand name - and reassures that the things you are learning are at the forefront of the knowledge in that area.
Assessing research quality is a much more difficult question. So you should find out if the faculty members are engaged at high levels within their discipline. For example, are they a part of or a fellow of a society in their discipline, or are they an editor of a journal?
Many faculty members now put their research papers online. They are not always the easiest things to read but you can get a sense of what topics they are deeply engaged in.
Getting a job
The third thing you should think about in your quest to find the right business school is how effective it will be in helping you in your search for work. Most schools will help you refine what you want to do, assist you to think through your career moves, then support you in that process.
You should also look for schools that have good placement statistics. These statistics form a regular part of rankings and as schools do collect that data, ask for it.
Find out what percentage of students get jobs within three months of graduating. For the top schools, those statistics are almost always in the 90s. And ask how many students have a job by graduation date: this uncovers whether recruiters come on campus as well.
You might also be interested in the percentage salary increase from pre-MBA jobs to post-MBA jobs. But you need to know that statistic much more precisely than the average because the average is going to include a whole lot of people who may not look like you. So ask whoever supplies the data if you can drill down to locate people who are much the same as you.
For example, if you have three years work experience, you come from Asia and you want to work in the IT sector, then there will be a particular profile of what normally happens to people like you, and what their salary increase normally looks like, so ask about that.
You can also get salary increases from rankings although you will see that the rankings published by the Financial Times – a large international ranking exercise – list salaries three years after graduating. This can mean huge increases from pre and post-MBA salaries of 100-150 per cent for some exceptional years and top schools.
Most schools also measure salaries for the first job after graduation and this tends to deliver increases of 30-60 per cent.
Friends for life
The alumni network is another thing you should think about. How engaged are the former students? Does the school have international alumni chapters in parts of the world where you wish to work? Do the alumni return to the school and engage with current students?
This MBA brand value on your resume is going to be much brighter in 15 years time if the school has an engaged group of people who care about it and support it, and who are also donors.
Curriculum matters
Finally, you need to evaluate the curriculum. Most business schools have fairly similar curricula because MBAs are now a well-known, mature degree.
You don’t need a huge amount of innovation in the basics of the curriculum but you should look for innovation in the electives. And you should also look for innovation in the extra-curricular activities that the school offers.
There should be a solid business education across a wide variety of functions and disciplines. And students should have the opportunity to explore topics such as marketing in more depth as an elective or in the suite of extra-curricular activities.
Confirm that these options are available by asking whether specialists are invited to speak on fields you are interested in. Are the student clubs focused on both social and industry events? And does what you are interested in mesh with what the school is offering?
Finding the right business school is not always easy. Much of your legwork will be based on trawling the web but completing an MBA is a huge investment in resources and time, so it is worth your effort to get it right.
*Associate Professor Jennifer George is associate dean of academic programs at the Melbourne Business School www.mbs.edu
** One website that may be useful in locating business schools around the globe is The MBA directory. The directory lists more than 3,200 MBA programs in universites and business schools. But also check our coverage of the top 100 MBA business schools and the 1,000 top business schools.
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