[推荐]About Sloan from bw

Benny

Hi a lot of people on this board are saying a lot of bad things about Sloan. Can you enlighthen us regarding the schoo'ls placement, faculties, students (they say that there is not much diversity?),facilities, and reputation.. I am an accepted applicant and am choosing from a couple of schools.. your inputs will be really helpful

First of all, like I said in my original post, there is a lot of noise on this board. You shouldn't pay attention to anyone that bashes a school, company, or group -- people have all kinds of axes to grind for personal reasons. Anyone who spends their time trash talking on a b-school discussion forum is likely not the graduate of a top MBA program, where maturity is an important factor in admissions, and has likely been rejected from the school they are bashing. Now to answer your questions... Placement -- Someone currently at Sloan should comment on recent placement statistics, but in my class (from a few years ago) I felt that the job opportunities relative to what I heard at other schools were outstanding. The main advantage is that we got all the top recruiters, but the small class size means you're not competing with several hundred peers for the same positions. People also seemed to have a diverse set of career interests. Faculty -- I think this is Sloan's main strength. The faculty are recognized worldwide leaders in their fields, and the opportunity to study under them was a real honor. And they're not just semi-retired tenured old men coasting on the past achievements -- there is amazing, ground-breaking research being conducted there, much like at the rest of MIT, all the time. Student Diversity -- Not enough women, but that's basically true for b-schools in general relative to other graduate and professional programs (like law school, which is over 50% female nationwide). Other than that, diversity in terms of work experience, countries of origin and academic backgrounds was outstanding. Certainly more engineers than other schools, but fewer than you would expect. Facilities -- Not bad but not great. Most of the classes are in the Tang center, which is pretty much state of the art as far as b-school classrooms go. But other I understand a new building is coming. That will be a welcome addition. Reputation -- A topic of particular interest to the readers of this board, so let me spend some time on it. Strengths: Sloan's reputation was the main reason I'd always dreamed of going there. I think its reputation in the world of b-schools is built on similar lines as MIT's in overall academia -- on the basis of hard skills, analysis and substance over flash. Sloan is regarded as the absolute best b-school for subjects like e-business, operations, quantitative analysis, system dynamics, and information systems. It also has an amazing reputation in finance, entrepreneurship, and economics. I can't imagine studying these subjects collectively anywhere else. I think that Sloan CEOs base their decisions on an analytical, fact-based approach, and succeed by ensuring they're always better informed than their competitors. If you want to talk about general, all purpose reputation, one measure of reputation is how firms try to woo you, and the treatment at Sloan was pretty incredible. If you want to compare with HBS, note that many or most top firms (e.g. consulting firms and i-banks) host joint recruiting / interview events with HBS and Sloan. But the Sloan-only events seemed to be more impressive, I guess because of our smaller class size. In both my summer internship and my full-time work, the Sloan name opened many doors, and the alumni network runs broad and deep. When I compared notes with other summer associates during my internship, I found out that my firm didn't ask for MBA grades at Sloan, even though they could, while they did ask for grades at Kellogg, for example. I think that general, all-purpose reputation is overblown on these boards. It's nice to impress people at dinner parties with the MIT name, but ultimately I care more about getting opportunities in my industry and in my life. My company -- which is far more selective than any business school or law school -- hires MIT, Harvard and Stanford grads, etc., but a Tuck, Darden or Haas grad that makes it through our interview process successfully is definitely considered brighter and more capable than the countless grads from "higher ranked schools" we ding every month. That being said, hires outside of a core group of 5-6 schools are rare -- but it IS quite common to see brilliant superstars without MBAs at all. I'm sure you've seen the FedEx commercial about the guy who says he doesn't do shipping because "You don't understand. I have an MBA." Don't think your MBA makes you better than anyone else. If you start thinking that way, you won't advance in your company. Remember that the firm that hires more Rhodes Scholars than anyone besides the White House is McKinsey, and McKinsey's worldwide managing director doesn't have a graduate degree. Weaknesses: When I graduated, although Sloan was increasingly moving toward placing a greater emphasis on soft skills, that's not going to happen overnight. I think part of the problem is that subjects that even many b-schoolers regard as fluff -- e.g. communications, leadership, and sometimes marketing -- have a difficult time commanding respect at a place like MIT. I do think that those subjects are worthwhile, however, and there are some wonderful professors teaching those subjects (in fact, any Sloanie will tell you that marketing with Duncan Simester is one of their favorite courses). But I don't think that emphasizing respect for those subjects has really been woven into the fabric of the school while I was there -- I hear that this is changing, however, so a current Sloanie should comment. But I think that our reputation for strength in these subjects is still not well known. I hope this helps!