<p>Well, if you get into the rather incestuous and inbred world of business academia, you will certainly care about the M7.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ivyedge.com/Admission_Home/Business_School/business_school.html[/url]”>http://www.ivyedge.com/Admission_Home/Business_School/business_school.html</a></p>
<p><a href=“M7 (business school[/url]) | encyclopedia article by TheFreeDictionary”>M7 (business school)</a></p> | encyclopedia article by TheFreeDictionary;
<p><a href=“http://www.mba7gcf.com/[/url]”>http://www.mba7gcf.com/</a></p>
<p>Look, I am not saying that the M7 designation is “fair”. I am saying that it is what it is. For whatever reason, the M7 is considered to be a highly exclusive group of B-schools, and hence, at least in some people’s eyes, a cut above the rest. Maybe that’s unfair, but that’s how it is. Just like how it’s not really “fair” that Harvard Business School has by far the best brand name of all of the B-schools in the world. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is, like it or not. </p>
<p>Look, it’s not a matter of most people caring or not caring about a particular school classification on a daily basis. The truth is, the vast majority of people in the world don’t know or care about any school rankings of any kind. Heck, there are hundreds of millions of people, maybe billions, in the world who don’t even get enough food to eat every day. Millions of adults in the world don’t know how to read or write in any language, including their native language. </p>
<p>Where rankings and classifications matter is when it helps you to get a job or to establish networking or rapport later in life. You’re right in the sense that 99% of the time, nobody will care about where you went to school. But it’s that 1% of the time when it matters. And after all, if you’re going to pay the same amount of money anyway (which you would if you were not a state resident of a particular public school, and you can’t get a scholarship), then you might as well take that extra boost if you can get it.</p>
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<p>That’s funny they would say that because none of these companies hires that many Michigan grads (relative to the number of graduates). According to Businessweek, here are the number of graduates hired at McKinsey from each school. </p>
<p>Columbia - 47
MIT Sloan - 26
Michigan - 10</p>
<p>Stanford (and HBS) refused to participate in this survey, but trust me, it was a lot. McKinsey was the most popular destination for Stanford graduates, but I don’t know the number (but I’m quite certain it’s going to be easily more than 25).</p>
<p>In fact, Goldman Sachs, Honeywell, and Boeing didn’t even make the top 14 of recruiters at Michigan (GE did though). </p>
<p><a href=“Businessweek - Bloomberg”>Businessweek - Bloomberg;
<a href=“Businessweek - Bloomberg”>Businessweek - Bloomberg;
<a href=“Businessweek - Bloomberg”>Businessweek - Bloomberg;
<p>Neither the Michigan report nor the Goldman Sachs specific report specify much success of Michigan of getting grads into GS. Yet GS reports hiring significant numbers of Columbia and Sloan grads (and surely Stanford grads if Stanford had participated in the survey) </p>
<p><a href=“http://bwnt.businessweek.com/recruiting/index.asp?s=goldman+sachs[/url]”>http://bwnt.businessweek.com/recruiting/index.asp?s=goldman+sachs</a></p>
<p>So the point is, I still don’t see that Michigan has really entered the major leagues of consulting and banking in the way that Sloan, Columbia, and Stanford clearly have. This is not to say that Michigan is bad, as Michigan is clearly better than most B-schools are. But to say that Michigan is at the same level as the other M7 schools is a bit of a stretch. Keep in mind that Michigan is a rather large B-school (especially compared to the small minnows of MIT Sloan or Stanford). Yet you raised the point of McKinsey and Goldman Sachs, but that begs the question that if they really think that Michigan is that good, then why don’t they hire more Michigan grads? Specifically, why is it that MIT can get 2.5 times more grads into McKinsey than Michigan can? </p>
<p>Lest you think that the businessweek data is skewed, you can take a look at Michigan’s own employment profile of 2005 (the BW data is for 2004). As you can see, really, not that many Michigan grads went to McKinsey or Goldman Sachs. In fact, speaking of McKinsey, because McKinsey is the largest of the strategic management firms, you usually find that Mckinsey will hire a lot more grads out of a particular school than will the competing firms like Bain or Booz Allen Hamilton, often by 2 or 3 times. For example, more than twice as many MIT Sloan grads went to McKinsey as to any other strategy consulting firm. Yet in the case of Michigan, the ratio is 1:1. That’s an indication, like it or not, that McKinsey really doesn’t respect Michigan that much. If it did, it would hire more Michigan grads. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.bus.umich.edu/pdf/EmploymentProfile2005.pdf[/url]”>http://www.bus.umich.edu/pdf/EmploymentProfile2005.pdf</a></p>