Hi Sept 14. Using LinkedIn, the answer using my method is:

(244) London Business School
(159) INSEAD
(108) University of Cambridge
(97) University of Warwick - Warwick Business School
(86) Imperial College London

Those schools are the most direct and well-worn paths into Accenture for MBAs. For Brunel the number is 14 and for Westminster it is 17: many of those actually have MBAs from triple-crown schools, like Henley or Durham.

And, indeed, it's possible to find a good job in Germany without speaking German, but the odds are against it (if you look at the placement records of the top schools) and the openings for progression are much more limited.

I don't want you to miss my point. I am not saying that it's impossible to get to your goal without an MBA from the schools that your target employers traditionally recruit from; I am just saying that it's a highly ineffective route to your goal. If you could go in a straight line, then I don't understand why you would want to add in more risk and end up with a less valuable education, network and brand hampering your whole career.

shownmichel, your comparison doesn't work. This person wants to work in the auto industry. Unlike the UAE, where the business language is English, most of the auto industry works in the national language.

Duncan

I think you are missing the point. The MBA is a fairly alien degree in the UK, 95% of MBA students are non UK nationals and most go back home after completing it. Accenture has 20 000 employees in UK (I think) so if you have an MBA from any good school you stand a pretty good shot at getting in provided you have valuable work experience. Please don't forget work experience is king in UK.

I only have my own experience, as a member of the LBS alumni council, as an alumnus of five triple crown business schools, as someone who is a researcher at one of them and volunteers with two others, and as UCLA Alumni's career coach for Europe. "Pretty good" is a loose category, but if you think that the average Brunel or Westminster MBA who would like an MBA role at Accenture has a greater than 50% chance of getting one, then you are very much mistaken.

Duncan why are you doing a PhD at Edinburgh if you think there is a vast difference between the top 8 schools and Edinburgh?

Edinburgh came 16 in REF which is very poor.

I think the top 8 schools for MBA programmes are not the same as the best schools for PhDs, and the best schools are not always the largest schools. Also, I don't think that the volume of research being generated is a primary indicator of MBA quality; that will always be salary.

If you look at this chart: https://twitter.com/DuncanChapple/status/545982932503232512/photo/1 you'll see that the 13th, 14th, and 15th schools in terms of the volume of 4* research, the highest quality, are Oxford, Cambridge and Edinburgh. It would be ridiculous to suggest that such a ranking means that those schools are very poor: they are much, much smaller schools than the ones above them. Edinburgh has fewer than 100 academic staff: it is half the size of Loughborough Business School, for example, yet produces more 4* research. Obviously the volume of research that small schools produce is modest; the quality of the research is a better guide to the quality of their PhD programmes.

I'm at Edinburgh for many reasons. it's a research-centred school with a tiny and highly selective doctoral programme. It is the only business school in the world where there is a group of academics doing work on my research question. It's an ancient and beautiful university. Endowed in 1583, the wonders of compound interest and Scottish thrift make it Britain's third-richest university. The resulting resources (both human and material) are unimaginably better than I hoped. It is (unlike larger triple-crown schools like London Business School, Lancaster, Cass, Warwick and Manchester) deeply integrated into a broader university, and that is important for my research: I am a psychologist, supervised by professors in different departments (Indeed, in different schools: technology studies, in social science; and innovation, in the business school). I can thus be part of an interdisciplinary research cluster based in Europe's largest centre for informatics research. Another example: Much of my research focusses on the documents of life and, this semester, I am in a doctoral seminar developing exactly the tools needed for that with researchers from the Edinburgh Law School, from the schools of sociology, psychology, and education, colleagues from the business school, and our new Centre for Narrative & Auto/Biographical Studies. I don't think I can have that high-quality and interdisciplinary experience in English anywhere else outside the USA.

Above all else, of course, I am at Edinburgh because they want me. The business school admitted me, and put me forward for a scholarship. At my age, that is remarkable. There is no way that, for example, London Business School or City University would have admitted me to their PhD in management, even though I hold masters degrees from those schools. Even at Edinburgh, there were 500 applicants for 20 PhD places. I am lucky to be here.

[Edited by Duncan on Jan 16, 2015]

Hi Duncan.
Do you know any school in U.K. With good connections to the auto industry?

And what pros and cons do you see between the three schools I mentioned.
(Imperial, gsb Cape Town, Edinburgh)
Which would you recommend?

Or which other way would you suggest?
- having in mind that the super top schools are not a goal.

Kind regards.

Oh, I think you can answer that yourself by searching the board and following the steps at How to use LinkedIn to find the best school www.find-mba.com/board/33571 Those are three totally different schools.

There was a thread, or maybe more than one, on MBAs for automotive.

I did this before. Of course.
But I was interested in your personal opinion about these three schools - having a few background information from me in mind.

But I can absolutely understand if this is to time consuming.

It's a pity that here are so few current students sharing their experience.

Please read my profile page if you need a more considered and personal response from me. I am confident you will see that these three schools place alumni in very different places. If you are unsure about the choice between them, then perhaps it's also your career goals, and not only the schools, you could be researching.