BU vs NorthEastern vs Babson vs Bentley

Lergnom
Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:12:57 +0000

Student profiles for MBA programs don’t look much like undergrad, but to address your more substantive comments, the similarity to BU is in the team approach and what I think is a very modern, very similar to SOM philosophy that BU describes as “fusing the art, science and technology of business.” So, for example, they look at the limitations of measurement systems, how change works across organizations, what is effective leadership, etc. (Northeastern, by comparison, is more a traditional business education.) These concepts are similar to what SOM delves into at a graduate - and thus different - level.

I think SOM has been through a dozen minor and several major overhauls. God knows, it fit uncomfortably in the larger university for many years. I suppose Yale may have more interest than some in sustainability, etc. but the core at SOM is “organizational perspectives” in which they’ve essentially relabeled the traditional roles within an organization so they can talk about them pedagogically without as much old baggage.

In other words, the BU SMG program is more like SOM than traditional business education. BU differs, I gather, by focusing more - at the grad level particularly - on information systems and offers a combined masters in info systems / business admin.

When I went to Yale, the best departments were English and History, so I majored in those. Science generally sucked until they put huge resources into it. Econ then was at a weird point where math had not yet taken over. This was a long time ago.