Go Dartmouth!
I’m tucked away in the wilds of New Hampshire, the little state that could. Having grown up in California, I used to have a superiority complex about the state, but after four years in NH, I find new reasons to be proud of my newly adopted home state.
One of the most recent ones – and yes, it’s career-related – was this interview in the Wall Street Journal with Paul Danos. He’s the dean of NH’s own Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, the oldest graduate business school in the world. Not just the US, the whole wide world.
While MBA programs globally are seeing high turnover rates at the top of the management chain, Danos is a rarity, having been approved for a nearly-unheard-of fourth term. He also co-edits the BizDeansTalk blog, recently rated the #1 business-related blog in the world by the Times of London.
For you, this may be important because it informs your choice of school when you decide to pursue your MBA. No, I’m not starting a Dartmouth recruiting drive (though if the Tuck folks are reading, I’ll happily take a tuition commission on any new student referrals). What I am starting is the discussion about what to consider when you look at an MBA program.
You can see the list of top business schools as ranked by US News and World Report here, how they arrived at the rankings here, and their advice on how to use the rankings here. The Forte Foundation, in collaboration with the Graduate Management Admission Council, also puts on a series of free forums every fall for people interested in pursuing an MBA.
Having read the Danos interview and looked at the rankings, I think the Tuck school is pretty impressive. But ultimately, the choice of a school has to start with your own career goals and ambitions. Only then can you evaluate a school properly, and ask the right questions to assure yourself that you’re making the right decision.
Oftentimes, that’s the step people avoid taking – instead, they know an MBA school is geographically nearby, and they just fill out an application. I got my own MBA nine years ago, and may I just say, I’m speaking from personal experience? Thankfully, I’ve made my peace with that decision, but I might have made a much different one if I’d stopped to consider the old Stephen Covey mantra of “Begin with the end in mind.”
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