Hello

I am in a little bit of bind trying to decide amongst the four admits in hand right now. While Owen, Georgetown and Fisher have offered the same amount of scholarship, the scholarship offer from Cox is slightly better. I am wondering if I should go with the higher ranked schools(Owen/Georgetown/Fisher) or the one with the location advantage(Cox). My goal is management consulting and I have an IT background. Any insights or inputs will be highly appreciated.

Choose Owen or Georgetown discard Cox or Fisher.
Fisher is weaker than Owen and Georgetown

Cox's location advantage is...? Better parking?

@Duncan: I might be very wrong about this one but I thought Texas might be a location advantage for job search....

Hello LoneRanger,

I am a 1st year MBA student at College of William & Mary in VA. Firstly congratulations on your admit. Given your admits, and all else equal, I'd recommend you to decide between Georgetown and Ohio State.

Georgetown has a good track for Management Consulting, and has good reputation in the DC/VA area. However, the flip side is that in and near DC area, most consulting firm have offices for Federal consulting. Usually, only american citizens are considered for Federal consulting. Having said that, you can always network through the contacts you make in Federal to go to Commercial consulting. International alumni from my college has done so - more in IT consulting than in Management (Strategy) Consulting. I am certain that Georgetown alumni presence in the DC area will be advantageous for this.

I have an undergrad friend who graduated from the MBA program at OSU - Fisher and is now working as Senior Consultant in Deloitte. According to him, OSU has a good overall MBA program and he is very happy with the program.

Please consider other factors while making this decision such as Temperature, cost of living, cost of transportation etc. Ultimately, as Duncan suggested in one of his posts, you can use LinkedIn to search alumni of your target schools working in your target (preferred) geography/company/industry/function etc.

Hope it helps!
P.S - try and find alumni / current students of these schools and talk to them.

Ayon
MBA 2015 | College of William & Mary

Those are excellent inputs. Thanks a ton Ayon!

Great advice here already - I would lean towards Georgetown, given its location and other factors. However...

Don't discount Vanderbilt - around the same percentage of grads go in to consulting as Georgetown, and with similar salaries. Especially if you have any interest in a career in healthcare consulting.)

Except from Georgetown, Owen send more people to investment banking than the rest combine