Good Schools for an MBA in the Greater Boston Area?

Question

Hello, I am graduating from UMASS Dartmouth with a degree in economics at the end of the spring semester and am considering going to school for an MBA. What schools are the best in terms of "bang for the buck"? I have a GPA of about 3.68, so I am not really sure if I can get into the upper echelon schools, so I am looking to find a school that is very good and reputable, but also somwhat of a bragain for how good it is? If no, such school exists, just give me an idea of what the best to apply to would be.

Answer 1

GPA is less important for MBA than for academic fields. It is higher than the undergraduate GPA I had -- and I have an MBA from Duke and a PhD in Business from Berkeley.

If you can get a GMAT score above 700 and three to five years of work experience, you can get into some ranked MBA program. No program that is worth going to is going to accept you without work experience.

A top 15 program will lead to multiple six figure salaries. A ranked program that is not in the top 15 will give you lots of opportunities and a large enough boost in salary to make it worth going back to school full time. Getting an MBA at a school that is not ranked won't do much more for you than your current economics degree.

I don't think that you should limit yourself geographically. As for which are the best in Boston -- here is my list:

1. MIT
2. Harvard
3. Boston College
4. Babson
5. Boston University

Nothing else will pay off enough to justify.

Answer 2

First of all, I hope you are thinking about this for the future, not for now. The MBA won't help you much if you do it right out of school. The better schools will require a minimum of three to five years of post-undergraduate experience in order to allow you to start their programs.

Secondly, you want to go to the best school you can get into, regardless of the cost. Not that you would be looking at this echelon of schools, but let's say that you could get into Harvard or Sloan (MIT), but it would cost you $40,000 more than going somewhere else. You would probably make up most of that difference in cost in the salary you could command in your first year or so.

Among full-time programs, those ranked best in the Boston area are Babson, Bentley, Boston College, Boston University, Brandeis, Northeastern, Clark, Suffolk, and UMass-Boston. Among part-time programs, Worcester Polytechnic and Boston College are nationally-ranked, with Babson, Bentley, Clark, Northeastern, Suffolk, and U-Mass Boston also listed.

Answer 3

A GPA above 3.5 in a quant-heavy subject? Don't sell yourself short: with a good GMAT score and enough solid work and community experience behind you, that would make you a perfectly viable candidate for top schools. You'd still want some decent backups, mind you, but you're going to have to pay a lot for quality if you want to be in Boston anyway (setting Harvard aside, BU has a very good part time program, and BC and Brandeis aren't bad, but none of them come cheap), so you might as well work for a bit, build up some savings, and weigh your options.