Darden MBA Student Blog

Last year around this time I was looking for opinions on Darden vs. Duke and Darden vs. Ross.  I applied to these schools in the first round and now had to decide between multiple offers of admission.  Although I had already ranked the schools (my rankings), now that I was accepted I wanted to directly compare my options.  This process was long and agonizing.  I solicited input from dozens of people and scoured the internet for articles on “Darden vs. Michigan” and “Darden vs. Fuqua”.  Here is a summary of the feedback I received:

Close friends and family - This group focused on the towns and communities rather than the MBA programs.  Basically, my friends and family thought I should attend the school where my wife and I would be happiest over the next two years.  Important considerations were my wife’s employment opportunities, the city’s attractiveness, and the community within the MBA program.  Darden was favored here as the employment opportunities in Michigan were bleak and Durham (Duke) is not a very desirable city compared to Charlottesville (see City of Charlottesville Awards).

Coworkers - While applying to business school I was working for a management consulting firm and 90% of my coworkers already had an MBA.  When I solicited opinions of coworkers, each would start by asking me several questions regarding my goals and then focus on helping me identify the programs that fit best with my development needs.  I was a little surprised that none of my coworkers felt one program was any better than the other, and the rankings were never mentioned.

Web search - My search of blog posts and internet forums did not provide much insight.  Many of the suggestions I found focused on one or two data points from the class profile and job placement data.  For example, last week I found a post that recommended school X to an Indian student because it had 35% international students compared to 30% at school Y.  However, in this case I happen to know that the international students at school Y are fairly diverse, whereas most international students at school X are from Asia.  While the data in these online posts is generally accurate, it’s not always relevant.  Also, employment data is biased towards the short term and generally provides very little insight on the long term career benefits of different MBA programs.

In hindsight, I had subconsciously picked my school months in advance and was only trying to reconcile my instinct with all the facts, logic, and opinions of others.  Going through this reconciliation process was valuable as I was able to identify my logical rational for attending Darden such that I could easily explain my decisions to others.  Based on my experience, here are some tips for deciding between business schools.

Trust your instinct- Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink discusses how our subconscious brain is more effective in making complicated multi-objective decisions then our conscious brain.  The argument is that we can consciously identify the differences between options but do a terrible job of assessing the importance of each difference.  The notion of “fit” is just another way of saying trust your instinct.

Visit the campus - this is the best way to assess how well you “fit” with the school.  When on campus, don’t spend time gathering information that’s available through other sources.  Instead, try to immerse yourself in the culture and gauge how well it “fits” with your own personality.

Don’t put too much weight in others’ opinions - these perspectives are the result of someone else’s goals, development needs, and values.  When asking the opinions of others, try to follow up with questions that identify the underlying rationale of the position.

Forget about the rankings - they do not take individual preferences into account.  Furthermore, they change every year.  For example, Darden’s BusinessWeek ranking has fluctuated between 5 and 14 over the past ten years.

Think both short and long term - don’t make decisions based only on short term considerations such as if your target company recruits at the school.  Getting a job is just the first use of an MBA; make sure to consider the 10-30 year time horizon.

Several perspective students have asked me why Darden switched to an invitation-only interview policy.  Since I was also curious, I began asking faculty members and admissions staff what drove the decision. Given the complexity of the admissions process it was no surprise that a wide range of factors came into play.  Some of the considerations I have heard include:

Increasing number of applicants - Last year the number of applicants increased by 35% and the prior year saw an increase of 14%.  Meeting the increased demand for interviews without sacrificing quality in the interview process presented a challenge.  By switching to an invitation-only format the admissions office can limit the number of interviews and therefore ensure that the interview quality and consistency remains high.

Increasing cost and environmental impact of travel - Before Darden switched to invitation-only interviews every domestic applicant was required to visit Charlottesville for an interview.  With rising airline fares and a better understanding of how travel impacts global warming, it is in everyone’s interest to reduce the travel requirements of the application process.   The new policy has addressed these concerns as only individuals with the necessary credentials and essays are required to visit Charlottesville.

Alignment of the US and international application process - Since Darden already used an invitation-only policy for international applications, applying the same policy to domestic applications provides for a more consistent and uniform evaluation of all applicants.

While understanding the factors that went into this decision may be interesting, the impact of the policy on prospective students is a little less complicated.  With the new policy applicants only need to visit Charlottesville after the admissions office has determined their credentials and essays meet the requirements for admissions.  This policy offers a huge benefit for students who are unsure of their admissibility, as they can now apply without visiting the school and then travel to Charlottesville if the admissions officers determine their credentials and essays meet the requirements.  On the other hand, I personally found it helpful to visit Darden before writing my essays.

With regards to the acceptance ratio of candidates that are invited to interview, there doesn’t seem to be a hard number available at this point.  By using a little inference, it is logical that only applicants with the potential to be admitted would be invited to interview.  From another angle, inviting applicants to interview who lack the credentials and essays required for admission defeats the whole purpose of invitation-only interviews.  I checked with Darden’s admissions staff on this point last week and they confirmed that every applicant invited to interview has the potential to be accepted.

My first step in selecting an MBA program was retrieving each of the published business school rankings. I then supplemented these rankings with additional criteria which were important to my decision. Finally, using the MBA program data published by US News, I was able to apply my criteria and weightings to each of the MBA programs and produce the following rankings:

The criteria and weightings used to produce these rankings are as follows:

Before discussing the weightings, let me provide some background on the originally published rankings and my additional criteria. When I first visited Darden it became apparent that the rankings did not capture many of Darden’s key advantages. For example, almost every visitor who observes a case discussion will agree that Darden offers a superior learning method. However, none of the published rankings use learning method as a criteria when comparing MBA programs. I therefore set about developing a more complete analysis that took into account this criteria along with three others. Here is what I choose:

Learning method - captures the teaching style and mix of learning methods employed by the MBA program. My preference was for programs that maximized the use of cases and active learning methods and minimized the use of lectures. This preference would also favor general management programs over more technically oriented programs (see The What and The How)

Class size - getting to know my classmates and having a sense of community within the program was an important objective, and one that would be significantly influenced by the class size. Within the 20 top schools as ranked by US News, the class size ranged from 171 at Emory-Goizueta to 910 at Harvard. Balancing between the advantages of a small and strong network vs. a larger and inherently weaker network, I gave the maximum score to schools with a class size between 250 and 350.

Undergraduate degree - having an undergraduate degree in engineering and a technical mindset, it was important for me to develop the less technical aspects of my business knowledge. Therefore, I preferred MBA programs that had a lower ratio of students with engineering, math, or science degrees. I was a little surprised at how much the MBA programs varied in this category. Within the 20 top schools as ranked by US News, the percentage of students with an engineering, math, or science degrees ranged from 21% at NYU-Stern to 61% at MIT-Sloan.

City size - in addition to the stronger sense of community enjoyed by schools in smaller cities, my wife and I also have a personal preference for smaller cities. Although this criteria is somewhat independent of the MBA program, the comfort of myself and family over the next two years was an important consideration. Therefore, I gave the maximum score to schools with a city size of under 1 million people.

In order to add these additional criteria the weighting of the original criteria must be reduced. This is fine because the reputation, selectivity, and placement scores suffer from measurement error and in some cases intentional rankings management. These are still good criteria, but should only account for about 50% of the total weighting for the following reasons:

Reputation - the US News reputation metric is based on a survey of MBA school deans and corporate recruiters. One drawback of this survey is the lack of a student perspective, which would provide some balance between the research ambitions of the deans and the teaching quality elements important to students. Additionally, corporate recruiters are concentrated on the first 1-2 years of employee performance, which favors more technical schools over the general management schools which are more focused on the long term horizon.

Selectivity - GMAT score and undergraduate GPA are the primary components of this category. From my conversations with professors and admissions staff, there is a fairly low correlation between these scores and a student’s performance as an MBA student. In fact, some admissions directors have expressed that students with the highest GMAT scores tend to have weaker essays. Admissions offices are constantly confronted with the moral dilemma of maximizing selectivity scores to improve the schools ranking vs. selecting the best student body.

Placement - this category is generally dominated by the average starting salary and bonus of graduating students. This metric can be further broken down to show that the mix of industries students pursue significantly impacts the placement score. In 2007, Darden students who accepted consulting and investment banking positions received about $21,000 more in first year compensation then the students who accepted general management positions. Thus, the placement category often reveals more about career interests of the student body then the schools overall placement effectiveness.

Take home exams are standard at Darden, thanks to the University of Virginia Honor System. To limit fraud, the Honor System provides a harsh single sanction penalty for violations and requires students to sign an honor pledge on every exam. Before discussing the Darden/UVA system in more detail, let’s first introduce three levers for academic fraud management:

What’s interesting is how institutions have gravitated towards different levers. The University of Michigan’s undergraduate program has focused on the detection method for assignments. Since the mid ’90s, students have submitted essays (and computer programs) online. These submissions are compared against all previous submissions and a broader internet search. Even though the existence of this detection system is highly publicized, several students are caught plagiarizing every year. I can distinctly remember one student received a failing grade for submitting two lines of plagiarized computer code buried in a program of over 10,000 lines. From my own experience, honest students appreciate the fair objectivity of a good detection system.

Most universities utilize the prevention method when administrating exams. Usually exams are proctored by professors and student assistants. In some cases paper and pens are provided for the exam to prevent students from cheating with crib sheets. By their implicit nature, these prevention techniques lead to a distrustful environment and generate a fair amount of student anxiety. Ultimately, fraud prevention interferes with the learning process.

The Darden honor system is exclusively focused on the penalization method. Given the strong message sent to students by the single sanction system (expulsion), prevention and detection are virtually unnecessary. Students and professors benefit from mutual trust and a healthy cooperative learning environment. Additionally, students are free of the anxiety created by prevention and detection methods and professors do not have to spend time managing fraud.

So why doesn’t every institution rely on penalization? In my opinion there are two reasons:

1. Culture is a hard thing to change. The University of Virginia stands behind the Honor System because it has worked since 1842. For another university to adopt this system would require a significant adjustment. For example, students who expected to receive a failing grade if caught cheating would actually be expelled. Also, the faculty may be comfortable with and unwilling to abandon the prevention and detection methods they have used for several years.
2. Not everyone is comfortable with a single sanction system. While expulsion may seem fair for a student that copied a friend’s final exam answers, the fairness of expulsion for “lesser” acts is sometimes questioned. I think people get stuck here by focusing on the act of fraud rather then the underling dishonesty. If there are no gradients in honesty (i.e. half-honest), then there probably shouldn’t be any gradients in punishment.

Personally, in an environment of trust, a take home exam is certainly more appealing then a proctored exam.

These are some tips for prospective students preparing to visit Darden. Given the unique teaching method at Darden, the class visit will probably be the most important part of your trip to Charlottesville. If you still need to register for a class visit, there are instructions on the Darden admissions webpage.

The following tips are based on my own experience visiting Darden and my experience hosting perspective students (about 5 students to date).

Use your student host as a resource - You will be paired with a first year student host for your class visit. Since most student hosts applied to several schools and were accepted to multiple MBA programs, they can provide some advice on how to choose between schools. Don’t be shy about asking your host which other MBA programs they considered and why they choose Darden. Some of us have really great stories on why we came to Darden.

Class visits are non-evaluative - As a student host, I can confirm that your class visit is not evaluative. Of course, if a prospective student does something completely outrageous (use your imagination), word could get back to admissions. But I’ve never heard of this happening. Having non-evaluative class visits allows prospective students to more naturally and openly engage with Darden students.

Participate in the section norms - Each Darden section has its own way of introducing guests. In my section we ask guests to introduce themselves (name, job, where you live) and tell an embarrassing story. Another section asks guests to select a piece of paper from a cup and then answer the question on the slip. Whatever the section tradition, participating will give you a flavor for Darden.

Class discussion is not a good indicator of student aptitude – Before coming to class, students work through the case individually and then with their learning team. The purpose of the class discussion is to validate individual analysis and resolve any confusion on the concepts. Students generally come to class with less than a 100% understanding of the case, as it is generally more efficient to tackle 80-90% of case issues in learning team and then rely on the class discussion to reach the 100% level. Therefore it’s expected that many students will come to class with questions on the case and concepts; this is efficiency not aptitude.

Be cautious about participating in case discussion - Learning how to productively participate in the case method takes time. Over the last three months, my section has evolved in how we discuss cases and some individuals have entirely changed the way they engage in the class discussion. If you have a question or something to add to the case, it’s probably safer to bring it up with your host after class.