Big decision time... I have admits from Johnson and Anderson. Johnson's a bit more money but have offered me a scholarship package which would essentially create cost parity.

UCLA is placed higher in the rankings but my research tells me that Columbia's probably better for the MBB consulting firms, which is what I want to get into.

As a UCLA alum I am biased, but try: How to use LinkedIn to find the best school www.find-mba.com/board/33571

Here's the LinkedIn data for the top business schools + Cornell and UCLA, with the search "MBA" filtered by Management Consulting and Bain/BCC/McKinsey specifically:

INSEAD (882)
Harvard Business School (709)
University of Pennsylvania - The Wharton School (578)
Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management (476)
Columbia University - Columbia Business School (98)
Cornell University - Johnson Graduate School of Management (66)
UCLA Anderson School of Management (63)

The numbers for Cornell and Anderson people at the MBB firms looks similar, but what do they represent as a percentage of all alumni of those schools? If the numbers are the same even then, then I would look at the parent university. I would suspect that Johnson would have the edge.

True, I would assume that as well. Although Linkedin is clumsy for this kind of searching, in that it would also include people with bachelor's degrees from the respective schools.

Both are graduate schools, as is normally the case with top MBA schools. There are no undergrad alumni of Anderson or Johnson.

Oh I see, I thought you that by "parent university" you were suggesting to suggesting to search for UCLA and Cornell alumni.

Yes, what I meant this: this person has firms compared the network of Johnson and Anderson alumni at the school: this gives a good idea of how well these schools can place into those firms, especially as a ratio of the total.

However, if this still places the two schools on equal footing, then it might be effective to look at the networks of all UCLA and Cornell alumni. Indeed, that would include people from outside the business school, and that is the intention of broadening the search. If one of these universities has a better network in a firm, then it will be an asset in finding work there.

Thank you both for all your advice, you've been extremeley helpful.

I've compared these networks, and I've gone and done some outreach through my own personal networks, and it looks like Cornell is the way to go. It's not a clean-cut decision, but there's enough there so that I am confident in making it my choice. Thanks again!