And you don't think employers realize this? You don't think this pre-screening process impacts their judgement when looking at job candidates?

The top management consultancies, the top investment banks and private equity groups are full of HBS grads. You think they all would have got these jobs without going through the HBS process, networking with their peers and alumni who end up working for these same companies, interning, and getting the HBS seal of approval?

You refer to yourself as an engineer. That might be why HBS didn't help your employability. But if you don't think it helped others, you're dreaming.

Well yeah, absolutely. HBS is full of analysts and consultants from those firms and institutions taking a pit stop on their way to partner.

I find it fascinating how many people here are eager to tell me I don't know what I'm talking about when I'm the one with firsthand experience..

Let's get more general and rigorous. Kellogg Business School professor Lauren Rivera studies the effects of educational credentials on employment opportunity. Her research confirms that educational pedigree is the single most important factor for gaining employment in elite positions in finance, consulting, and law, with the implication that your education is an indication of your social class, and your comfort in the upper echelons of society. [Link to her work] (http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/directory/rivera...)

I would say it's bit ignorant to say that a Harvard MBA has no effect on employability or opportunity.

Regarding Prof. Rivera's study, I'm curious whether it attempts to separate causation & correlation. At HBS, the number of ex-MBB consultants in the program is roughly equal to the number who leave into MBB - many swap out and in, but the figures are in the same range. Does she account for that?

Also, any analysis which groups JDs & MBAs together is 100% flawed. Those two may have similar prestige, but wildly different career progressions.

I'm talking about other graduate students, and (at least in this example) the recruiting process is NOT the same. It didn't matter if you were getting a master's in basket weaving or a PhD in physics, you were required to take the test, again at least at this particular university. MBAs were spared the test and went straight to the normal interview process. Also, had you not done an elite MBA, what do you think your path to McKinsey would have consisted of?

> Regarding Prof. Rivera's study, I'm curious whether it attempts to separate causation & correlation. At HBS, the number of ex-MBB consultants in the program is roughly equal to the number who leave into MBB - many swap out and in, but the figures are in the same range. Does she account for that?

Prof. Rivera's research consists of multiple related studies whose findings confirm that, regardless of skills and relevant experience, the most important factor in hiring for elite firms in business and law are educational pedigree, creating a discrepancy in opportunity for those that get an elite education and those that don't. She accomplishes this through ethnographic research on the recruitment practices of the firms.

> Also, any analysis which groups JDs & MBAs together is 100% flawed. Those two may have similar prestige, but wildly different career progressions.

I disagree in this context. The point of her research is that careers which tend to lead to powerful positions in society are practically closed off to those that don't have elite educations. If you want get into high finance or MBB consulting or BigLaw, it behooves you to attend an elite university, and while you're there, do as the Romans do. Prof. Rivera's research is _really_ interesting, you should check it out.

Many get their MBA to help them move up from analyst to consultant. Most won't make partner, but many will spin into lucrative executive positions with Fortune 1000 companies. So yes, some already are on the inside track with top firms, and need HBS or another Ivy MBA to move up to the next level. For others, it will help them build credibility and get their foot in the door. In either case, HBS is acting as gatekeeper.

When you look at how much the banking and consulting industries focus their recruiting efforts on a handful of top schools, I don't think correlation or causation is even a question. Graduates from other schools are not getting the same attention (perhaps because HBS has done such a great job screening their applicants already), which further helps HBS grads.

I'm sorry HBS didn't help your career as an engineer/entrepreneur, but this doesn't negate the experience of the 50+% of students who go into banking and consulting positions, for whom an HBS MBA and the alumni connections will be a boon.

I just re-visited this thread a day later and didn't realize many of your points were not only shared by my comments in parallel, but also being re-requested by the same people.

Despite only referring to his experience, I think the extrapolation holds for most HBS grads( i.e. If they have the skills and early success trajectory to get into HBS, they could get similar offers and opportunities without an HBS stamp. Don't discount the two years' opportunity cost.)

These seem like employers who are all about credentials, since there's no real way to demonstrate a propensity for gutting companies or engineering IPOs a priori, and since these groups are run on autopilot by corporate drones instead of people with a real sense of ownership or entrepreneurship (and thus, a desire to acquire and retain good talent regardless of its pedigree). In such cases, the hiring seems to become 99% about the value placed on the institution that granted the degree, and 1% about showing up in an adequately expensive suit and car.

In other words, most HBS folks who choose this high finance route already have the credentials and pedigree for the job without needing an MBA.

For the rest, I recommend googling HBS job reports and re-thinking a few of your assumptions about where/how people create value at firms.

Many HBS students work as analysts at management consultancies prior to their MBA, and their employers send them to HBS before promoting them to consultant. What happens when the analyst refuses to get an MBA?

The banking sector also has a recruitment funnel at the top MBA schools. While I'm sure it's possible to get your foot in the door without an Ivy League pedigree, many recruiters are focusing their attention on a handful of schools.

I think you're referring to a subset of FinServ (i.e. banking) with homogeneous roles aimed at MBAs. Again, if you get into HBS, you're qualified/networked without needing the MBA. The banking cohort isn't as pedigree focused as other niches within FinServ.

If a Harvard MBA is essentially pointless like you describe - people go into it and come out the same - the only reason to pursue it is to buy into the network.

Hence, perhaps, the "Golden Passport" nomenclature. You'd also notice the author didn't write "Golden Ticket", which I dare say, is an interesting freudian slip.

It's also the lemming effect... HBS is a rung on the "success" positive reinforcement ladder, like a big funding round. Privileged kids do the "prep school -> ivy -> wall street (quants) / MBB consulting (arts) -> HBS -> PE" track in absence of any other inspiration.

As you allude, an outsider to this cohort crashing into the program should keep expectations in check. Barry Lyndon comes to mind.

I wish it was more socially acceptable to have two year gaps in ones resume and sail around the world or something.

At least in so far as what the words signify, tickets are bought but passports are earned. I think it's a pretty good distinction in this context.

Also: "her"

That is such a narrow world view. Nor does it change anything I wrote. Nor does you reply make sense, you wrote

> My MBA has had virtually no effect on my opportunities or employability.

That is inconsistent with what you just wrote, something completely different. I'm sure you are aware that humans come up with explanations after decisions? Shown in fMRI scan experiments. I'm not saying this explains what you just did, but it does seem to me that your brain came up with this "explanation" only after discovering my post.

I have to think that the "Harvard" name carries a lot of weight, but MBAs as a class of degrees have, at least over the last ~10 years, been accompanied with a little bit of a snicker, in my admittedly relatively shallow experience with MBA holders. At one point, I did hire a developer with an MBA, but his MBA was a point of concern rather than merit.

>What HBS does well, above all else, is act as a filter. They really do a remarkable job at admissions, putting together a group of folks who are likely (by nature or nurture) to go on to have an outsized impact on the world.

I have to ask. In your opinion, is access to this network really worth the cost of going through the program?

Not even close to worth it. Networking is pretty easy and the vaunted HBS network is very bloated.

I'd still do it again, but I was coming off an exit and mostly needed a way to keep busy for two years in Boston while my wife did her grad work.

1. It signals that one may not be interested in a development career long-term. This is probably the closest you get to the "overqualified" dismissal excuse more commonly given in other fields. The potential impact on the team could be either small or large, depending on the candidate's plan to move himself to a different position.

2. To me, it demonstrated a dependence on formalized schooling processes that may signal an inflexibility of mind that makes it difficult to adapt to the fast-moving world of software. He chose to go through this program not because he was programmed to believe it was the only way he could support himself, which is why most people pursue "higher education", but because he wanted to learn about the business perspective. A strategy that involves getting an MBA is highly inefficient, as discussed elsewhere in this thread.

Outsized impact has very little or nothing to do with personal abilities.

HBS is the ultimate networking opportunity. HBS is way for rich kids to network. On the side it provides networking opportunities for for others who get in. New blood so to speak.

Or hell, just the ones I knew well in my year, n=200 or so.

But even if you do know all these people that well and are right about them your conclusion is still not supported. You criticize the author by assuming they are confusing correlation with causation. I suggest you analyze your own reasoning. You are engaged in flawed statistical reasoning and are committing a famous fallacy.

Even if you are absolutely correct about your own experience and the 30000 or so graduates that you know your conclusion could still be wrong. You need much better statistics, or provide evidence that your experience has always been the case for HBS.

One of us needs to brush up on their stats...

To be clear, your original post was mostly reasoning along the lines, "My experience was different therefore the author is wrong." And your second post didn't specify why you think your experience was normative. Merely that you think in a band of a few years you know how others benefitted or didn't from HBS. This is especially bad reasoning as the article talked about HBS influence over a much broader range of years.