<p>Hi, i’m an incoming student and I have a few questions regarding Columbia’s Business School:</p>
<p>Is it common for Columbia CC/SEAS undergrad to get an MBA at Columbia B-School right after they graduate? How competitive is Columbia MBA admission? </p>
<p>Also, the B-school’s library seems to be pretty nice. Are we CC/SEAS undergrad allowed to study in there?</p>
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<p>You need work experience before going to business school.</p>
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<p>it is very nice, and anyone with an ID can go in there. It’s sometimes crowded</p>
<p>If you are one of the super high flyers, then you might get into CBS straight out of undergrad. From experience, though, the students who achieve this are simply incredibly impressive. You probably just have to take the normal route and apply after having worked a few years.</p>
<p>Stop giving people false hope. Less than 1% of people who matriculate at top business schools came straight from undergrad, and those had generally started and grown their own business while in college.</p>
<p>The lower-risk, more likely way to go to a top B-school is by working 2-4 years in business consulting or finance. CBS is promised to no one.</p>
<p>I thought Stanford was the exception to that, encouraging students right out of undergrad to apply to their BS.</p>
<p>What about someone who wants to get an MD/MBA, would that be an exception?</p>
<p>I agree with Denzera and C02</p>
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<p>no…since each school has to accept you individually so each will hold you to their respective standards</p>
<p>False hope? What about super high flyers is unclear to you? </p>
<p>Also HBS is making efforts to increase the intake from college senior applicants. They aim to fill 10% of their incoming student body with people who applied in college. This is from an HBS admissions officer who came to Columbia this spring. According to her, this trend will likely continue for a while. Not sure when you graduated, Denz, but college senior applicants are more and more welcome at B-schools. </p>
<p>ME, don’t let people discourage you. It’s a smart idea to take the GMAT while you’re in college anyway, because you’re in an academic mindset and don’t have to work 100 hrs/week (assuming you’re in IBD). Senior year isn’t going to be incredibly stressful anyway, so might as well give it a shot if you have great credentials.</p>
<p>I know about the HBS 2+2 program. and that is not for people coming directly from college. they place you into a high-end job for 2 years, and THEN take you to the MBA classes. I graduated 2006 and am applying to business schools this fall. I do kinda know what the hell is up here.</p>
<p>I fully agree with taking the GMAT as a senior. hard to motivate yourself to do that, but in between graduation and starting work is another great time to do it - you’re craving intellectual stimulation and the GMAT is like a slightly harder version of the SAT. If the SAT is like drinking from a water fountain, the GMAT is like drinking from a lawn hose - and the LSAT is like drinking from a fire hydrant.</p>
<p>The 2+2 program is for “exotic” applicants, people with non-business backgrounds. I assume ME will pursue the finance route given his nickname and interest in CBS, so 2+2 is out for him. The 10% refers to senior applicants, so yes, they include 2+2 students, BUT she explicitly stated that they are getting more and more interested in senior applicants (through the normal route, not 2+2). Obviously, whether or not accepted applicants decide to defer or not is up to them, but they have the option to attend HBS right after college. </p>
<p>When ME graduates, it’ll be 2012 and things will probably look even better for senior applicants. There’s not reason why he shouldn’t give it a shot. </p>
<p>But anyway, are you taking a course for the GMAT?</p>
<p>I attended HBS College Day in 2006. They stated there, specifically, that exactly 6 of their class of 900 students came directly from college, and that they view applicants in that situation extremely skeptically. I actually met one of the students in that category - he had started his own business while at Brown, built it, and sold it.</p>
<p>If you go to the MBA forum here on CC and try to convince the posters there that colleges are increasingly willing to accept applicants straight from college, you’ll get laughed out of the forum. If you have significant evidence to support your POV, both myself and the other posters there would love to see it - but the popular viewpoint and conventional wisdom are against you on this, pearfire.</p>
<p>Out of curiosity Denzera, were you able to find a good job quickly after the undergrad?</p>
<p>Yea, but some people defer for 1 or 2 years, so the number of successful senior applicants is probably higher, since you referred to 6 who came directly from college. Note: I’m talking about people who apply in college, which doesn’t mean that they have to go straight to B-school since they can also defer or apply for deferred admission. </p>
<p>Also the 2+2 program was launched in 2007, which obviously reflects HBS’s belief that college applicants are becoming stronger candidates. A lot of change can happen in 1 year… </p>
<p>From talking to a former HBS admissions officer, I gathered that HBS fears too many young talents will abandon the B-school route and opt to continue their work, so HBS is trying to “lock in” talent while students are still in college. He doesn’t work for HBS anymore, so there’s no reason why he would sell me BS, plus it sounds relatively reasonable. </p>
<p>Obviously I don’t work for HBS, so I don’t know anything for sure, but I see no reason why that one HBS lady (the one who still works for them) should have lied to us when she clearly stated that they welcome college senior applicants more and more. Yes, you can bring the argument that they sell BS all the time and that’s it’s part of their job, but at least the 2+2 program is concrete evidence that they do believe in college applicants. </p>
<p>Btw, I have a feeling we’re not on the same page. I’m talking about college applicants while you, I have the impression, are more talking about people who actually go to B-school right after undergrad without deferring.</p>
<p>I agree with a lot of what you say here, and am actually for Business school right after college in certain cases (people who’ve worked full-time before their undergrad) but the 2+2 program is a direct argument against the case for out-of-college applicants since it requires 2 years of work…It just locks in those traditional applicants early and structures them to keep BS in mind while they work. </p>
<p>It shows that no matter how much diversity they want, they still value that work experience above all else.</p>
<p>I heard Stanford was much more open to taking out-of-collegers. Maybe you should inquire about them.</p>
<p>Although B-Schools welcome new college grads more and more, they’re still competing with people who’ve worked on prestigious banking deals, turned companies around, worked 100 hour weeks and built their own companies from scratch. It’s competitive, whether you’re applying to HBS or Stanford. That said, you’re not going to get preferential treatment just because you graduated from Columbia as an undergraduate.</p>
<p>Also, as an aside, B-School isn’t as much about the school as it is about the networking: it’s probably best to get out of academia, work, and go back to B-school once you’ve purged that ‘academic’ frame of mind. I used to be VP of a business group at Columbia, and that’s the impression we got from the B-School students we spoke to :)</p>
<p>I am not qualified to speak here but please permit a few comments. The best qualified B school applicants are perhaps who need B school the least: Kluge, Buffett, etc etc had business in their veins long before credentials. Of the 5 richest men in the world a few years ago, 4 were college drop outs, only one, Buffett had a college degree and that too from Nebraska.</p>
<p>It has been said by several billionaires that not getting schooled was essential to their success. They did not have boundaries. They did not know something was not doable because a book said so. </p>
<p>So, I venture to say that whether you get into the 2+2 program as in 2 yrs work experience after undergrad or defer by 2 yrs after undergrad or straight out of undergrad would depend on the individual characteristics of the applicants. HBS would probably be applying what is called a futures test, is this person going to accomplish something so tremendous that we had better get behind him or her?</p>
<p>Look, I’m not going to argue you line-by-line because that’s not going to be productive. I assert the following:</p>
<ol>
<li>It may well be that more college students are applying to business school in their senior years. However, it is not true that more are attending business school straight out of undergrad. It is still just as necessary to get work experience to gain admission</li>
<li>The 2+2 program at HBS is evidence of this - they may want to lock in their students but they still want work experience</li>
<li>Students applying directly from college make up a very small portion of the top MBA applicant pools and a very small portion of the admittees to those top MBA programs.</li>
<li>The OP would be best served by getting work experience before applying to business school</li>
</ol>
<p>Pearfire, if you disagree with #s 1 or 3 I would suggest posting a thread on the MBA forum to that effect.</p>
<p>LionHeaded, I had some trouble getting an offer in an industry I wanted as a senior, because I hadn’t gotten the very important advice that I should have gotten a summer internship in that industry before senior year. Nevertheless I got an offer, had fun in that firm for a year, left to work on some startups, and rejoined the industry easily on the basis of my experience at the first firm. If I had just wanted some tech job, I could’ve had that easily. But this is all a very separate conversation - please PM me if you want to know more.</p>
<p>I agree with points 1-3. In fact, my point and those 3 points are not mutually exclusive, I think you have the impression that I am arguing against work experience, which isn’t true. But as a college senior you can commit to gaining work experience before going to B-school (2+2). </p>
<p>Point 4 is also true, but sometimes you don’t need the best route, because if you’re simply outstanding, the second best route might be good enough, too. I think the discussion should stop here since the OP has seen different perspectives by now.</p>