i was planning to do an msc in finance and had acceptances from imperial/ cranfield/ warwick/ HSG and copenhagen business school and got a rejection from bocconi/ lbs and hec. My aim is to work in europe after graduation, however i dont know any of the continental european languages. What would be the best option for me, keeping in mind the employment prospects/ international mobility/ university experience. I have heard that cranfield's mba is much more prestegious than the other programs it offers and i should disregard it. Imperial, on the other hand doent have a well known business school and from the comments on this forum, it seems that it is operating out of a few classrooms only. Warwick seems to be the better option, along with st gallen. I havent really heard much about CBS. Are all these schools in the same tier?

No, these schools are not the same, and even the ones that are similarly ranked are different. I think you can easily disregard CBS, but the others are serious schools with good prospects. HSG would not have admitted you if it did not think that it could place you, but you would need to make a major commitment to get to intermediate German rapidly. The UK schools are more straightforward. Considering your need for strong career services, and assuming that your HSG admission means you are high potential, then Imperial can also be put to one side.

I think the choice is thus between Warwick and Cranfield. I think Warwick now has slightly better career services, gets students into work a bit more quickly (partly because it has more international students going home to great jobs outside the UK), and has a slightly more high energy cohort than Cranfield, although that can change from year to year. If your goal is specifically on finding work in the UK, then Cranfield remains the safer bet: it has great international mobility and the educational experience is better.

i was wondering why hec and bocconi rejected me though. Are these schools much better than the ones i have already been admitted to? I can understand that lbs is on a different level but could i have expected better outcomes by going to the schools i have been rejected by?I am also leaning towards cranfield because warwick from what i have heard has a huge indian student body and as an indian, i am looking for diversity. However, i can imagine that most of these indians want to head back to india after their graduation. Btw, is CBS that bad of a school?

No, these schools are not the same, and even the ones that are similarly ranked are different. I think you can easily disregard CBS, but the others are serious schools with good prospects. HSG would not have admitted you if it did not think that it could place you, but you would need to make a major commitment to get to intermediate German rapidly. The UK schools are more straightforward. Considering your need for strong career services, and assuming that your HSG admission means you are high potential, then Imperial can also be put to one side.

I think the choice is thus between Warwick and Cranfield. I think Warwick now has slightly better career services, gets students into work a bit more quickly (partly because it has more international students going home to great jobs outside the UK), and has a slightly more high energy cohort than Cranfield, although that can change from year to year. If your goal is specifically on finding work in the UK, then Cranfield remains the safer bet: it has great international mobility and the educational experience is better.

It's often not a question of how good or bad the school is, but rather how well the applicant meets the needs of the employers that the school has the strongest relationship with. It's much harder to place you in France or Italy if you don't speak French or Italian so perhaps this is why HEC and the SDA declined your application.

CBS doesn't have to be bad to be worse than these schools, but it is obviously not a world-class MBA.