To Which Top Business Schools Should I Apply?

Once you know you want to get an MBA, the next step, of course, is to decide where.

There are applicants who will look only at rankings and select the three or five top business schools without any further consideration, or those who will only take Harvard Business School or Stanford GSB into consideration. However, I truly believe you have go beyond rankings and brand names when choosing your MBA.

Am I saying brand is not important? Absolutely not. It just means that it is simply another factor to take into account; an important one, but not the only one.

The majority of applicants will have to look beyond the top three to five programs in their MBA program selection. Therefore, it is imperative to know the MBA program you are applying to is the best choice you can make, and offers the best environment for you to thrive. In order to do that, an applicant must get to know different programs in depth, to really be able to identify fit, to discover which one better suits his or her career goals, and to explain why they want to go there when asked in their application. And they will ask for specifics.

As such, it is in an applicant’s best interests to spend time and effort going beyond an MBA program’s website in order to achieve that kind of knowledge. We are talking about one or two years and a lot of money after all.

Here are a few tips that worked for me when I was in the position of having to create a shortlist of top business schools:

Be clear on what you want to get from your MBA: think about your career goals, a small campus experience vs a big city, small class size vs big class size, collaboration vs a more independent environment. These factors will determine which schools better suit your interests and will make the decision easier for you. For example, if you have very specific career goals, there might be a particular school that, even if not super elite, provides the best opportunities due to its location or ties to the industry where your career goals are focused. That is something to consider.