In this captivating episode, the hosts of “Business Casual” delve into the hidden gems of MBA programs that might not be prominently featured in promotional materials, yet offer substantial value to students. John Byrne, Maria Wich-Vila, and Caroline Diarte Edwards explore these underappreciated assets, discussing how they can make a real difference in an MBA experience.

Caroline kicks off the conversation by highlighting Chicago Booth’s flexible curriculum, which stands out due to its minimal core requirements. This setup allows students to tailor their studies to their specific needs, advancing more quickly in areas where they already possess expertise. This approach can enhance student experience by allowing deeper dives into advanced topics. However, John raises an interesting counterpoint: could this flexibility detract from learning opportunities that come from diverse skill levels within the classroom?

Maria adds another layer to the discussion by examining the benefits of a more structured core curriculum. She notes that while some subjects may seem redundant to those with a strong background, they can facilitate peer learning and classroom interaction, ultimately contributing to a cohesive cohort. The core curriculum can also introduce subjects in new and broader contexts, enhancing understanding and perspective. This nuanced view underscores the value in diverse approaches to curriculum design, inviting MBA applicants to consider what type of program structure aligns best with their learning style and career goals.

Episode Transcript

Note: This transcript was generated by AI and may contain minor inaccuracies.

[00:00:06] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. Welcome to business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co-host, Maria Wigfilla and Caroline Diorti Edwards. Today, we’re going to talk about something that you may not really know. We’re going to talk about the underappreciated assets and the surprises and hidden advantages that different MBA programs that even top schools have. You could go to the websites of these schools and find out a lot about their MBA programs, but you actually may not see, sometimes I’ll even call them invisible strengths that schools may have. It could have to do with the way the curriculum is designed. It could have to do with career options and things like that. Caroline, do you have a favorite underappreciated asset story for one of your favorite schools?

[00:01:00] – Caroline

Yeah, I have a few. I’ll start with Chicago Booth, which has only one required course, which I think is pretty cool because most MBA programs have far more than that. It’s an extraordinarily flexible curriculum. You do need to take courses from different foundational areas, but you have lots of choices within those areas. You choose a course from their offering of financial accounting courses, you choose one microeconomics course, you choose a statistics course, whether there are several within that that you can choose from. Then also you choose a course across functional areas such as marketing or strategy or finance. I think that’s great because it means that if you have a strong background in a particular area, you can go straight to an advanced class in that function or in that foundational area rather than having to take a basic class along with all of your classmates. So it’s a wonderful way to be able to really tailor your NBA.

[00:02:08] – John

True. In many schools, frankly, the core curriculum is your first two years with few electives, if any. So the ability to wave out or take advanced courses in something you already know instead of discussing the same old thing that you are very familiar with could be a real big advantage. I also wonder if that’s a disadvantage, Caroline, because if I’m a student, okay, let’s say I’m a poet, which is what I am, and I go to a quanti program like Chicago Booth, I actually would want finance people. Maybe they’re doing finance undergrad, maybe they came from a financial background. I would want them on my team or in the class because they’re going to help me learn the subject better. And if you can weigh out, then you don’t have that advantage. Am I right on that?

[00:03:03] – Caroline

Yeah, that’s true. That’s a good point that sometimes it’s useful to have the people with really advanced skills in the classroom. But then you’re requiring them to make a sacrifice to a certain extent, right? Because they’re taking that course without actually necessarily… Perhaps they’re probably contributing a lot more than they are gaining from it. So I think overall, it’s to students’ benefit to be able to take the courses that will really stretch them the most.

[00:03:35] – John

True. Maria, do you have a favorite underappreciated asset out of business school?

[00:03:40] – Maria

I do. But before I talk about that, I just didn’t want to talk about the idea of the required core and how at some schools the entire first semester is required or the entire first year is required. It does mean, look, if somebody already studied accounting, they do have to retake accounting alongside everyone else. I remember being grumpy that my required curriculum required me to take class that at the time I thought was completely irrelevant to me, that class was entrepreneurship. But I think what people find is that, for example, let’s say they are an accountant and they have to take accounting, that does give them an opportunity to contribute to their classmates. If they’re a really strong subject matter expert in one area, they probably don’t know very much at all about strategy marketing. And so they’re going to rely on their classmates. They’re giving a lot in that class, but then they’re receiving a lot in the other classes. And a lot of times in the case-based method, especially, yeah, it’s accounting, but it’s being presented in in a much more general management context. So it’s not like you’re memorizing how to do debits and credits, but you’re seeing accounting, for example, as a tool.

[00:04:38] – Maria

So it’s not like it’s complete a repetition because it is taught in a different way. I do think that the one benefit of having a core where everyone’s in the same core is that I think it really contributes with bonding. I think that you get to know your classmates. If you’re in every class together with the same people every day for an entire semester, an entire year, you get to know those people really well versus if you take one class with some people and another class with some other people. I guess there’s no one right or wrong way to do it, but I definitely think that there are pros and cons to each. I do like the idea of everyone who graduates from a certain program has that same shared language and that same foundation. If I talk to any other Harvard business school graduate and I mention the Cranberry case, going back like 30 years, everyone’s going to know exactly what that case was. There’s an upside to it, too. But I do think if somebody is really looking at the business school from a pragmatic level of I just want to get as much out of it as is beneficial to me, then maybe going to a school that has a mandatory semester or year-long required curriculum is not the best choice.

[00:05:50] – Maria

What’s interesting about this, and I think what we’re going to talk about a little more today, is that people tend to lump all these schools together. I’m applying to Harvard-Samhron. I’m applying to Harvard-Samhron and Wharton, and they’re so different. They’re so completely different. Let me see. Another school, going back to your question, John, that does, for me, always punch above its weight class is UCLA. I think that UCLA’s Career Services Office is extremely strong. I think they work one-on-one with people. One of the biggest career pivots that I personally have ever witnessed was someone who was a production assistant on a Hollywood set. And production assistant is a glorified way of saying the person who makes sure that the coffees are served and makes sure that If the props are in the right place. It is not a highly strategic analytical job. That person went to Anderson and was able to get a job in asset management coming out of Anderson. I think anyone who’s looking for a career pivot or anyone who’s looking for entrepreneurship. I mean, every business school now has entrepreneurial offerings, but UCLA has this business creation capstone option that was based upon, I believe, either the tech stars or the Y Combinator curriculum.

[00:06:56] – Maria

I think they originally built it based on one of these famous incubator curricula. I think that’s an overlooked… When people think of entrepreneurship, I don’t think they immediately think of UCLA, but I think that they should.

[00:07:10] – John

Yeah, that’s really true, particularly in the area, incidentally, besides finance, media, and entertainment, that’s obvious. But what you may not know is that the adjunct faculty in these areas at UCLA is really stellar because they have access to a lot of of our alumni who work in media and entertainment in LA, and they come to class and teach and lecture, which is really great. One of the big surprises to me over the year is how strong UNC Chapel Hill is in capital markets and investments. They have an MBA concentration in that area, but they also have a center for investment management management that’s pretty productive. And they have had a lot of success in placing graduates in very highly lucrative, desirable jobs in capital markets and investments. And that program has really increased both in power, influence, and the numbers of people coming out of it. And you wouldn’t expect UNC at Chapel Hill to be a haven for future people who want a career in wealth management. But they do an exceptional job, and it’s very hands-on with the students. In some ways, I also think that if you are a school that isn’t a Wharton or a Chicago Booth or a Columbia in finance, it’s like being Avis.

[00:08:56] – John

When Avis competed with Hertz, they try harder. And I I think this is true at UNC when it comes to investment management. You could check that out by just looking at their employment report as well as looking at all the different courses that they have in the field. They have a very in-depth portfolio on these kinds of courses to prepare people for that line of work, which is surprising in Chapel Hill of all places. Now, Caroline, you have a few others I know.

[00:09:28] – Caroline

I do. I have a few related to INSEED, if I may. So what I’d like to highlight about INSEED is that, and actually other one-year programs as well, people often think that you can’t change careers if you’re going to do a one-year program because it is obviously an accelerated format and the time goes very quickly. Two-year programs often really promote the benefit of that length of time to be able to make a transition and do internships and so on. For example, if you Also, if you look at some of the shorter programs in the US, such as the Accelerate Adoption at Columbia Business School, they’re clearly targeting that at people who have a very clear career plan and are happy not to do an internship. Many of those people are staying in the same career, looking for career acceleration rather than making a dramatic career pivot. But at INSEED, actually, most of the students are making a career change. Typically, about three quarters of students are changing their career either across one of three dimensions, and they look at career change in terms of geography, function, or sector. So three quarters are making a change across one of those dimensions.

[00:10:45] – Caroline

About a quarter of the students change across all three, which is a really dramatic career change, if you think about it. Shifting completely a different industry, a completely different function, and going to work in a country that you perhaps never worked in before. That is a tremendous leap, and I think a huge testament to the power of the school’s career services and the relationships that they’ve built up with recruiters over the years. Also, the statistics are not that different for the class that graduates in the summer versus the class that graduates in December. Of course, the December class has the option to do an internship for a couple of months over the summer, which the class graduating in the summer does not have. Yet, even without that internship option, those students are still achieving a big change in their career. I think that’s a myth that people have about one-year programs, and that is not unique to INSEAD. There are other fantastic one-year programs, particularly in Europe, where you can achieve dramatic career change.

[00:11:56] – John

Yeah, absolutely. Maria?

[00:11:59] – Maria

When we When we talk about tech careers, I think the usual suspects that come to mind are the Stanfords and the MITs. But a school that consistently punches above its weight class in tech is Kellogg. Kellogg is really thoughtful, actually, about the tech offerings that they have. I’ve always been really impressed with how they break out their tech offerings into a couple of different post-MBA career paths. They have classes if you want to follow more of a product management track versus more of a product marketing management track. They now have their AI-focused MBA program. They have their MMM program, which is more of a design-based program. I think Kellogg has, for years, they were the marketing school, but they have become so much more than that. If you’re interested in a career in tech, definitely add Kellogg amongst the top schools on your list.

[00:12:51] – John

You also have some views about health care or the business, I should say, because it’s much more broader than… You say health care, and people immediately start thinking doctors and hospitals. They may not think biotech, health tech, telecare, pharma, and everything else. But who do you think is very good for someone who wants a career in the business of health? It just may not be all that apparent to you.

[00:13:21] – Maria

Yeah. Again, the main usual suspect here would be the healthcare management program at Wharton. But other programs that, again, are sleepers that have excellent results are Duke, UNC, again, and Vanderbilt, Owen, actually. There are a lot of health insurance companies that have strong corporate presences in Nashville, and in any given year between 15 to 20, sometimes above 20 % of a class actually enters the healthcare industry. That’s huge. Most other schools, it might be 3 % or 6 %. So definitely healthcare is a huge specialty for Vanderbilt. And I think one thing that is true of all of these schools is that the geographic location, it’s not destiny. You can obviously get it, especially if it’s in Seyat, as Caroline mentioned. But any school that you go to, you’re not necessarily tethered to that region or that market. However, it can certainly help. So earlier, John, when you were talking about UNC’s Frankson in finance. I’ve actually been to the Kenan–Flagler campus, and they have like that. There’s like a whole room full of Bloomberg terminals, and there’s a stuck ticker thing flying around the ceiling of the room. It’s very impressive. You feel like you’re on a trading floor.

[00:14:31] – Maria

But Bank of America’s headquarters are not in New York City, as most people might assume, but Bank of America is headquartered in North Carolina. Same with why it helps Vanderbilt graduates get into jobs in the healthcare industry because So many health insurance companies are based in Nashville. That’s something else that I think anyone should keep in mind, regardless of what their career interest is. Look at the geography, look at the region, where are a lot of those companies based? It’s not destiny, but it certainly doesn’t hurt if you can do a project while you’re in business school with a company that’s down the street that happens to be in a field that you’re interested in.

[00:15:09] – John

Yeah, true. In health care, you also have schools that may not be on your radar that have really made big bets in the business of health. I’m primarily thinking of Johns Hopkins Business School, which isn’t a top 25 MBA program, but at the same time, they’ve aligned themselves with different schools at Johns Hopkins that are very strong in health and have come up with really some novel and innovative programs for business students who are interested in the business health. Same as Trey Waschew-Olen, which more recently decided to double down and really make a big move into health care. All of this, incidentally, I think is because health care, first off, is just a massive part of our GDP, and it’s an area that has tended to underemploy MBA graduates in the past. But I see that as changing dramatically over the next 10 years, where I think health care is going to be as important as technology as in general to the MBA population and jobs coming out. Now, Caroline, you also have some thoughts about MIT, I think.

[00:16:32] – Caroline

Yeah, that’s right. Mit Sloan is obviously known as one of the top business schools in the world. What is perhaps less well known is that Sloan is actually redesigned as a gateway to MIT as a whole. There are a lot of other courses that you can take and great classes that you can get involved with and projects outside of Sloan itself. For example, one area that’s of particular interest at the moment, of course, is AI. Whereas at many MBA programs, you’ll be able to take AI electives and get exposure to AI simulations. At MIT, you can actually work alongside people who are actually building the technology. I think that’s a huge advantage for students who really want to get hands-on experience and get real deep expertise in this area. Another area that is a great strength at MIT is that it’s one of the most important global hubs for the energy transition and climate innovation. They’ve got a very strong pipeline into climate tech sustainability, Infrastructure investing. You can work on projects spanning renewables, climate finance, climate policy. There are a lot of deep areas expertise that you can tap into as an MIT MBA student that give you access to experience that you might not get at some other business schools.

[00:18:12] – Caroline

Of course, the opportunity to build relationships with people students from other parts of the school that could potentially lead on to new opportunities, new ventures, and so on. So a tremendously rich ecosystem that you get access to as a Sloan student. Yeah.

[00:18:32] – John

I’ll mention one that I’ve known for many years, and I don’t know how underappreciated it is. Perhaps if you’re new to the world of MBAs and you’re just starting your exploration, you may not know this, But Indiana Kelly School of Business is a real target school for CPG firms. Proctor & Gamble is a heavy recruiter of the graduates there, and so is Nestlé, Colgate, Pomalow. All you got to do is just look at their employment report. You’ll see General Mills, Kraft, Heinz, Mars, Peptico, Kimberly Clarke, because the school is so strong in CPG. And that means, too, incidentally, that many Kelly alums hold key positions at these companies, so they’re actually more inclined to hire MBAs from the Kelly School, given the track record of the school in consumer marketing. Of course, there’s an academy there to prepare people for this specific industry. There’s a consumer marketing workshop. There’s a center for global sales leadership. They really have this waterfront covered in ways that most business schools, no matter what they are, don’t. That is a real gem. If you really have your heart set on being a brand manager somewhere, and CPG is the industry that’s closest to your heart and your desire, you should really look at Kelly’s School of Business.

[00:19:59] – John

Now, Maria, you have some other thoughts as well, I think.

[00:20:02] – Maria

Yeah. Caroline mentioned, rightfully, so MIT for sustainability and energy. This is something that regardless of the current political climate, no pun intended, a lot of schools are investing in. I know that, for example, Berkeley has a relatively new program with sustainability. Duke actually offers two different MBA concentrations related to energy. One is more general, the MBA in Energy and Environment, and they also have a specific MBA concentration in Energy Finance. But anyone interested in energy should also look at the schools based in Texas. So UT Austin and Rice. I think when we talk about sustainability, there’s the newer types of energy sources such as solar or wind or geothermal or what have you. But there’s also a lot of emphasis on how do we take the existing natural gas industry, how do we take the existing oil, petroleum industry, and how do we take those industries and make them less damaging to the environment. The schools in Texas are particularly well positioned to help you explore that because oil and gas is not going away, at least not for several more decades. As long as we will be dependent upon it, let’s try to find ways to curtail the damage that it does.

[00:21:20] – Maria

And so some of these programs in Texas are particularly focused on these sorts of initiatives.

[00:21:25] – John

Yeah. I think this is an interesting issue. I’m just throw it out there because I believe it to be true, given all the conversations I’ve had with a number of Texas schools. A lot of the funding of Texas schools comes from the old fossil industry. And so The websites of these schools may actually under-promote their offerings in alternative energy. So this is a real gem that we’re telling you because believe me, they believe in alternative sources of energy, but because of their dependence on funding from oil and gas industry players, they may be a little more reluctant to actually advertise this part of what they do. But make no mistake, those are really good places to go and study the alternatives to our traditional way of thinking about the energy industry. Caroline, do you have any other gems to impart?

[00:22:22] – Caroline

Sure. Something else that I think is underappreciated by the international schools is the alumni networks that you get access to internationally. I think that in general, MBA candidates and people who think about doing an MBA focus a lot on the MBA experience, which I think is, of course, very Very natural what they will get out of that one year or two years and what they will get out of the program upon graduation in terms of employment opportunities immediately post-MBA. But a big part of the value that you get in the long term is being part of that wider network, and that really pays dividends over your entire career. Given the volatility in the job market and the economy and the fact that most people have to reinvent themselves career-wise, if not many times, probably at least once in their lifetime, and in most cases, probably more times than that, having access to a wide and supportive network is a huge asset in terms of being able to open doors and get access to opportunities that might not otherwise be possible. One example of that, when I was at INSEAD, McKinsey did a study looking at the alumni networks of different schools.

[00:23:49] – Caroline

At that time, they found that INSEAD had, I think at the time it was about 25 countries where the school had more than 100 MBA alumni. The school that came closest to that was HBS, which had about 12 countries with over 100 alumni. That study was actually done about 20 years ago. That difference has compounded over time because, of course, INSEAD Over the past 20 years has grown the program and graduates 900 to 1,000 students per year. With the Singapore campus and the expansion of the school, there are graduates going to more and more countries around the world every year. The size of the alumni populations in different countries has grown. That’s a huge asset to people coming out of the program. They’re going to be working outside of their home country. If you’re going to be working, you’re going to be globally mobile, being able to tap into that network is a huge asset. Just to give a few examples of that, INSEED has over 4,000 alumni alumni in the US, so a pretty substantial population. For example, here in Bay Area where I live, there’s a very active alumni network here. In Hong Kong, the school has 800 alumni.

[00:25:12] – Caroline

In Poland, the school has 400 alumni. You can really go to pretty much any country around the world and tap into a local network. When I graduated from the program myself, my fiance was working in Indonesia, so I was trying to find job in Indonesia as well. At that time, the career opportunities for someone coming out of an MBA program was somewhat limited. But I met up with a whole bunch of INSEAD alumni who were there, and that was a great way for me to open doors and find a great job there. The Alumni Network is just a tremendous asset, and I re encourage candidates to dig into the position and the location of the alumni network that they will get access to and really think about which network will be most useful for them.

[00:26:08] – John

Right. Absolutely. One of the surprises for me has been the role of private equity in recruiting MBAs and the number of MBAs who really want to go into private equity, which is a very difficult field to enter, largely because most MBA graduates who get jobs in PE already had experience in PE beforehand, or certainly in investment banking. But one school that you might not immediately think of when you think about private equity and venture capital is a with Tuck. Now, next month in February, Tuck will have the 21st annual Private Equity and Venture Capital conference. Tuck has a center for private equity. The first dean I ever knew at Tuck, Colin Bladen, was the guy who started this like a quarter of a century ago. And the school has had a great amount of success in having a fair number of alums in this industry, where you generally would expect the schools like Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Wharton to be much more predominant. And It’s a surprise. Even at this conference, for example, in terms of the heavyweights that are going to be there, there’ll be the Senior Partner and Chairman of Global Private Equity at Bain, the Managing Director at Berkshire Partners.

[00:27:45] – John

A lot of these people, incidentally, even if they’re not Tuck Alums, they’re Dartmouth Alums. And Dartmouth Alums hold a special place in private equity and venture capital. So that’s a big surprise to me because there you are in Hanover, New Hampshire, isolated from any major city, far away from Silicon Valley, and far away from the players where most PE firms are. And lo and behold, Tuck is punching well above its weight class in a field that is among the most lucrative for MBA graduates. Check it out. Absolutely. Do we have any others or are we exhausted? Because if we’re exhausted with our gems, I have a question I want to pose both Caroline and Maria.

[00:28:32] – Caroline

I had just one quick one. I would say that Wharton has reshifted its reputation over the past few years. It has always been known as a finance powerhouse, but it really rivals any top school in terms of soft skills training. It’s not just about hard skills and analytics. It’s very much about leadership, development, communication into personal skills. That’s also a key part of what we see in the admissions process of what they’re digging for. But I think that that is a huge shift that Wharton has made intentionally over the past few years and is maybe under appreciated given its historical reputation in finance.

[00:29:18] – John

Let me ask this question because I think it’s pertinent for many would be applicants. If you want to go to the best possible school, so let’s say you have the M7 in your sights, just for the sake of this conversation, but you know you want to enter the business of health, or you know you want to enter private equity, or you know you want to enter energy. Is it better to go to an M7 school than a school that is known or has special attributes in a given field that you know you want to enter? Because even in an M7 school, usually, the selection of elective courses, even if they don’t have a concentration in one of these fields, you can probably put together a hodgepodge of electives with a seminar with a faculty member or two and get the training that you need. Or is that better because you have the benefit of that big brand or do you go to a school like Rice for Energy or like Johns Hopkins for business of health? What do the two of you think? Maria?

[00:30:32] – Maria

I think that either path has merit. I think if you definitely know that you want to work in energy and you want to be based in Texas, then why not get a head start on focusing your studies, developing that local network, all the benefits that come, you might as well just go ahead and get a jumpstart on that as soon as possible. That having been said, I think there’s a lot to be said also for attending a higher-ranked that may have more of a general management focus because those applicants are, in fact, going to go out into a lot of these different fields anyway, even if the school doesn’t have a specialty in that field. This is where research comes in really handy. Find those companies that you admire and look them up on LinkedIn, look up their executive team web pages, see where those folks go to school. I think you’re going to find that both the top schools that might have more general management focus, send people into the C-suite. You’re also going to find that people who maybe didn’t go to those fancy schools but were very focused in what they were doing and very dedicated and just really just crushed it in their given field, they also end up advancing to the C-suite.

[00:31:46] – Maria

I don’t necessarily think that it’s what’s best. There’s no one best path, but I think that either path can get you where you want to go just depending on who you are.

[00:31:56] – John

Yeah, I think that’s true. I also think it’s helpful to look at what the elective offerings are in a given school and what faculty you’re teaching those courses. So you get a real sense of the depth of the elective offerings and how they may, frankly, overcome any concerns you may have about not getting in front of the right people or getting the basic training that will allow you to land that job. Caroline, you agree with Maria?

[00:32:27] – Caroline

Yes, absolutely. I don’t have much to I think that one of the benefits of going to a story MBA program is that it just gives you a lot of options. As we’ve discussed, you can really, in many cases, tailor your MBA to your particular interests. You can enter a specific field coming out of a lot of different schools. There are many paths to the same destination. I think that’s the wonderful thing about going to business school.

[00:32:57] – John

Indeed. All right. We hope that if anything, what we’ve done is encourage you to do your research, explore what’s written about these schools. We think you’re going to find, if you do that, as many underappreciated gems as we’ve brought to your attention today. Hey, this is John Byrne with Poets of Quants. Thanks for listening.