Harvard Business School

Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. The school offers a large full time MBA program, doctoral programs, and many executive education programs.

HBS is consistently ranked among the foremost business school in the world, its rated #1 among the U.S. business schools by U.S. business schools by U.S. News & World Report, #1 by the QS Global 200 Business Schools Report, #2 by Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and #1 for Forbes.

According to the school, the new MBAs of 2012 are now enjoying median base salaries of $125,000, and three-quarters have also received signing bonuses of $20,000. A fifth of the class also benefits from what is graded referred to as “other guaranteed compensation” of more than $25,000. And some new graduates are doing substantially better. One joining a private equity firm, for example, had nailed a base starting salary of $200.000, and all this in a class where the average length of work experience was less than four years.

Wharton Business School

The Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania offers graduate programs in these departments and concentrations: accounting, actuarial science, e-commerce, entrepreneurship, finance, general management, health care administration, human resources management, insurance, international business, marketing, operations management, public policy, real estate, and quantitative analysis and operations research, Its tuition is full time: $57,026 per year. At graduation, 79.7 percent of graduates of the full time program are employed.

The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania was the U.S.’s first business school and now has the largest alumni network in the country.

Admission
The MBA program at University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) admits students who have an average GMAT score of 725, which is drastically higher than the average for all Graduate Business Schools.

In addition to graduate business degrees, students can pursue joint degrees, including an accelerated M.B.A/J.D. degree in three years in conjunction with the Penn Law School; an M.B.A. /M.A. degree in areas like Management and International Studies, Social Change, and Environmental Studies; and joint degree programs through the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Students can also earn a Ph.D. at Wharton, typically in four to five years, in nine areas including Ethics & Legal Studies, Statistics, and Applied Economics.

Tuck School of Business

Tuck School of Business, part of the prestigious Dartmouth College, is the oldest graduate school of business in the world (founded in 1900). It offers only one degree programme, the full-time MBA, and claims this gives it added focus. The school is noted for general management, teamwork, close student–faculty relations and the Tuck experience of a small residential programme in a beautiful, if slightly remote, semi-rural setting. Almost all work is done in assigned teams and the ability to succeed in collaborative working is essential.

Admission
The MBA program at Dartmouth College (Tuck) (NH) admits students who have an average GMAT score of 719, which is drastically higher than the average for all Graduate Business Schools, and an average incoming GPA of 3.5, which is far higher than the average for all Graduate Business Schools.

Student Body
The total enrollment at Dartmouth College (Tuck) (NH) is 280, which is slightly more than the average for all Graduate Business Schools. The average work experience of a Dartmouth College (Tuck) (NH) MBA student is 5 years.

Stanford University

Stanford University is a private institution that was founded in 1885. It has a total undergraduate enrollment of 7,063, its setting is suburban, and the campus size is 8,180 acres. It utilizes a quarter based academic calendar. Stanford University’s ranking in the 2014 edition of Best Colleges is National Universities, 5. Its tuition and fees are $43,245 (2013-14).

Stanford University’s pristine campus is located in California’s Bay Area, about 30 miles from San Francisco. Stanford offers a wide range of student organizations, including the Stanford Pre-Business Association and Stanford Solar Car Project, which designs, builds, and races a solar car every two years. The Stanford Cardinals are well known for the traditional “Big Game” against Cal, an annual football competition that awards the Stanford Axe- a sought after trophy- to the victor. Stanford also has successful programs in tennis and golf. Only freshman are required to live on campus, but students are guaranteed housing for all four years and most choose to remain on campus. Greek life at Stanford represents approximately 10 percent of the student body.

Columbia Business School

The Business School at Columbia University offers graduate programs in these departments and concentrations: accounting, consulting, economics, entrepreneurship, finance, general management, health care administration, human resources management, international business leadership, marketing, production/operations management, portfolio management, real estate, and quantitative analysis/statistics and operations research. Its tuition is full-time: $58,384 per year and executive: $2,688 per credit. At graduation, 77.0 percent of graduates of the full-time program are employed.

At Columbia Business School, graduate students can pursue a full-time M.B.A., executive M.B.A., Ph.D., and Master of Science in Marketing or Financial Economics. Regardless of their degree focus, students can take courses offered across Columbia University’s academic divisions as electives, which make up more than half the M.B.A. curriculum. For students who prefer a broader education, dual degrees are offered at 10 other schools at Columbia University, varying from a master’s in urban planning to a dental degree.

In the core M.B.A. classes, groups of about 60 students take all first-year classes together – an attempt by the school to foster a sense of community. Students can check out about 100 graduate organizations, catch frequent presentations by business leaders, and research in more than 20 centers on campus, like the Center for Decision Sciences and the Center on Japanese Economy and Business. Graduates students may live in university housing but are not guaranteed a spot.

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago Booth School of Business is ranked second by Economist. It was known as The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business before 2008, when it was renamed following the grant of an $300 million endowment by alumnus David G. Booth. The school has two additional campuses in Singapore and London, apart from two campuses in Chicago, USA.

Students in the Full-time MBA, Executive MBA, and Part-time MBA programs can concentrate in one or more areas, although some concentrations’ required coursework may necessitate schedule modifications for students enrolled in the part-time program. The areas are:

-          Accounting
-          Economics
-          Finance
-          General Management
-          Human resource management
-          International business
-          Marketing management
-          Operations management
-          Strategic management

Financial Education?

I've often wondered why financial education isn't taught in school just like math, English and science. In truth, I think it needs to be a core subject. It's certainly a skill that we'll all utilize throughout our lives, and without it we tend to suffer.

Perhaps that's the reason. If you subscribe to some of the theories out there, the modern education system was designed and funded by the elite over a century ago. At that time the globe was full into the industrial revolution, and there was a high demand for factory workers.

Why not create an "education system" that churns out obedient, well trained workers to man the factories. They'd be used to reporting in at a certain time, asking to use the washrooms, eating and taking breaks when the establishment permits.

Whether you buy into that theory completely or not, I believe there's certainly some truth there. When you follow the money through the system across the globe, it tends to all point back to the same handful of organizations owned by the same handful of wealthy families.