How do you decide what is and isn't a safety school? One person told me it was a school where your "weakest link" (ie. GPA or GMAT) falls within range. Is that true?

Alex

Safety schools for MBA seem a bit different than safety schools for undergraduate studies. Lesser schools don't reject people in undergrad because they figure the person will choose a better school. You see this in MBA admissions, where someone will get rejected from a 30-50 school but accepted to several top 10-20.

I don't think you can have a true safety MBA school.

A safety school is one in which you have a high probability of being accepted. Generally, that means your GMAT is greater than the 80% range and your GPA is higher than the mean. Of course, the rest of your application (work exp., LORs, essays, interviews) should also be very strong. Also, you should make sure the school you select as your safety is one that you would actually attend if accepted (and your top choices rejected you).

Agree in a way with Omne, while you might be a very competitive applicant it is important to still treat these safety schools as your #1 choice. Even if you are more competitive than the average applicant to the school, you might be rejected if the adcoms feel their school is just your safety school. So show them some love :-) through researching the school well. Also, as mentioned, you should be happy about attending your safety school if you get dinged by your top choices in the end.

MBAvolunteers - Application feedback in exchange for a donation to a non-profit.

The idea of safety is warranted when there is an objective base of evaluation and when a hierarchy exists as a result of that evaluation. The US News rankings are based on the prestige of the school from the perspective of the overall market, but in no way, honestly, speak to one school's ease of acceptance over another (when comparing the top 25 schools on the rankings). I use myself as an example, a Booth admit with $$, and a reject without interview from UCLA. Now, UCLA is in no way comparable to Chicago, and most would consider UCLA a safety to a Booth admit. However, this is not reality.

MBA admissions is not an objective evaluation of one's academic and career accomplishments prior to matriculation. Rather, it is a subjective persuasive effort to convince 4-5 strangers of your "fit" with the school. With the latter, the idea of safety school does not exist.

Good luck!
Sam

Hi, first time poster here. I'm interested in eventually settling in DC or the Southeast (e.g. Atlanta, Raleigh-Durham) and am trying to narrow down the list of schools beyond H/S/W Fuqau and KFBS at N. Carolina are on my list, but I'm debating on MIT Sloan and Haas. Both have great science/tech and entrepreneurial focus, which are my areas of interest, but how hard is it to place outside of the Northeast or West Coast from those schools? Obviously, one has to do more legwork in the career search, but is there enough of a network in the South?

I have considered Goizueta and Smith, but Goizueta really doesn't seem to have very much focus on entrepreneurship, and I think I can do a lot better than Smith. Darden is just too remote for me taste. Thanks

I would like to stay between Charlotte, RDU, and Atlanta my self...so I have given this quite a bit of thought...

Consider Vanderbilt, Wake Forest, Southern Methodist (??), and i would give Darden another look. Darden may be remote, but it is heavily recruited by southern companies. As someone who has lived in the South my entire life I can tell you Darden and Fuqua are the "gold standard" in the South. And UNC and Emory are not far behind Wake Forest may be regional, but it has strong placement and a great network in the RDU, Charlotte, Atlanta triangle.

Vanderbilt is on the cusp of regional school and national presence. Strong name and strong finance program...

Don't know anything about Southern Methodist but it was ranked fairly high in the new BW ranking so it must have something going for it...

Just my humble opinion.

Thanks for the reply, HR. I guess one of my issues is that I want to have some brand "portability" should I end up leaving the region--so I'm trying to steer clear of regional schools. I realize brand isn't everything, but in my experience it is not insignificant, even several years into work.

I'm above 700 and 3.3 undergrad with a Ph.D., so I'm really looking to get in to as "top shelf" a school I can get into while still having some sort of inroad down South. I guess Duke and UNC fit the bill best, but that's why I was curious about tier 2's like MIT and Berkeley. Probably worth a post on those threads.

Thanks...and not to sound like a hypocrite but I did not apply to Darden, SMU or Vanderbilt... To me Darden is not for everybody...although I have heard its an exceptional school..and I had never heard of SMU until the recent BW rankings...Vandy was on my "if I don't get into Duke, I'll apply late round" list Its funny because I just don't believe "branding" is as important in the Southeast...some may disagree but i believe you can actually brand yourself out of some opportunities...... Still have to hear back from UNC and Emory who I am equally excited about PS...a PhD? Wow...you definitely have a prime opportunity for an exceptional "story" in your essays.

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A long time ago my dad made a wise comment to me about business. He said; 'Son if you owe the bank $100,000 you're in trouble. If you owe them $100 million, they're in trouble. The message I got was clear; If you're going to gamble sometimes it makes sense to think BIG!!

The Economy sucks - I just got laid off my job as an analyst at Bank of America. They took a large relatively unquantifiable gamble on acquiring Merrill Lynch (They only had a week to do due dilligence on this $50bn deal) & a lot of employees had to go to justify cost-reducing 'synergies'. I was one of them. But look they just got a $25 bn bailout, so dad was right after all! Bernanke is betting that quantitative easing will work - right now the banks would rather spend all their $700 bn government bailout on 2% yielding treasury bonds than take the risk of lending it to anyone in this uncertain economy.

Bernanke is hoping that if the Fed buys up all the treasury bonds, this will reduce the yield & so make this strategy less effective; then the banks will have to lend to business again & that will get the economy going again, right? well fingers crossed on that one buddy? Maybe they'll prefer 100% of 1% to 0% of 10.

My friend John Hynes of the Gale Corp was just quoted in the New York Times business section about how he is $100 million short of the $400 m needed to revamp Filene's basement in Boston. This is what's going on in businesses all over the US & the globe right now.

Back to me - well I took my own gamble a few years ago (nothing in comparison those just mentioned though)...