Base Page:
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/fortune/0702/gallery.mba50.fortune/index.html

NCSU College of Management (tied for #25):
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/fortune/0702/gallery.mba50.fortune/26.html

2/21/2007 10:56:41 AM

MBA not Undergrad

2/21/2007 10:59:20 AM

Chapel Hill not even on the list?!

2/21/2007 11:07:17 AM

It looks like I had significantly higher GMAT scores, paid less tuition ($0), and spent much less time at the NCSU MBA program than most of my peers.

But I accepted my first job offer at significantly lower salary than the average. Mostly because it had nothing to do with the MBA degree I just earned because it took me going to business school to realize that being a business major sucks and engineering is better.

2/21/2007 11:10:03 AM

not bad for a school that's not even named yet -- once we get that $ from naming rights, we will be able to upfit facilities and hire the best profs in the land.

the average salary & bonus is lower than top 25 schools for now, but within a decade i expect I-banks to start recruiting here consistently.

2/21/2007 11:13:36 AM

Minimum salary on there is $65,000 after graduation ... not bad.

^^^
Chapel Hill isn't on there, nor is Virginia Tech, etc. etc. Be curious if there is a "complete" list somewhere. I read their description of how they did the rankings, but it referred to another "partner" agency, which I couldn't find any immediate information on. If somebody finds a link to how the rankings were done, plz post. I hope it isn't as ambiguous as how US News and World Report does theirs typically.

[Edited on February 21, 2007 at 11:42 AM. Reason : .]

2/21/2007 11:39:58 AM

oh my worthless warrington college of business degree. damn you florida, damn you.


[Edited on February 21, 2007 at 12:38 PM. Reason : though it is a specialized masters not an mba...and we are #1 in marketing...not that i took that]

2/21/2007 12:37:02 PM

Wake Forest, per that site, is sitting pretty money wise. Though they are 49th the base salary is ~75k and bonus is ~29k

funny because I bet most of the grads are at Bank of America, Wachovia, etc.

2/21/2007 2:03:33 PM

^ We should also mention that your grandchildren will still be paying back a WFU MBA. Prices are loco.

2/21/2007 2:25:15 PM

^^ or tile contractors

prices are reasonable and they give great scholarships, i went, got money, and had no student loans, i lived frugally and spent what i had saved up and had made on the sale of my condo.

[Edited on February 21, 2007 at 2:26 PM. Reason : ]

[Edited on February 21, 2007 at 2:26 PM. Reason : ]

2/21/2007 2:25:51 PM

I guess UNC's coffee shop management pipeline isn't high enough salary-wise to make the list.

2/21/2007 2:27:20 PM

i'm very surprised UNC isn't on there.

median starting salaries for UNC MBAs a couple years ago was close to $90k, and i doubt it's much different today.

2/21/2007 2:38:10 PM

well, this is best b-schools for "getting hired"

maybe their job placement rate isn't all that good.

2/21/2007 3:11:05 PM

ok, it looks like their job placement rate was only around 80%, whereas most other programs in that list are >90%.

2/21/2007 3:33:54 PM

what's funny is those two girls pictured on our page are MAC students. guess nobody has pictures of our mba students


[Edited on February 21, 2007 at 5:20 PM. Reason : s]

2/21/2007 5:19:47 PM

I find the list strange because, when I was in state engineering graduate school, I took a course in the business school from a supposed to be the best Prof in the whole school and the course was very easy. It was the easiest 'A' I made in Grad School. The course was lot of work, but very easy. It gave me a feeling that our MBA program was a mediocre program. Maybe I am wrong.

2/21/2007 5:24:21 PM

Quote :

"I took a course in the business school from a supposed to be the best Prof in the whole school and the course was very easy. It was the easiest 'A' I made in Grad School. The course was lot of work, but very easy. It gave me a feeling that our MBA program was a mediocre program"

take more business courses. ALOT of them are like that. I've taken like 4 of them for my minor and they were all kinds of easy. not knocking on you COM people, but your courses seem real easy. i guess theres a reason alot of athletes hang out there

2/21/2007 5:33:41 PM

Quote :

"ALOT of them are like that. I've taken like 4 of them for my minor"

nice representative sample. not to mention those courses for a bus minor are all introductory courses. they really shouldn't even offer a business minor.

there are plenty of business courses that are easy just like there are plenty of engineering courses that are easy. i've taken plenty of both. more than 1 or 4 courses to base my opinion on

dont know much about all the courses in the MBA program but there are plenty of challenging courses in the MAC program.

2/21/2007 6:46:20 PM

I did a cross-disciplinary MBA course last semester.

While the MBA's in there absolutely worked their asses off, they were some of the most dependent, sheeplike people I have ever seen. I honestly don't know how more than a handful of them will ever make it in any sort of management or administrative position.

It AMAZED me to see how little initiative or independent thought any of them exhibited, and these were MBA students.

2/21/2007 6:57:25 PM

^
Depends largely on the admissions criteria for that particular program as to what they are looking for ... and that can probably be said for most graduate programs.

Additional Link with EMBA drill-down per university ... will post regular if find: http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/05/emba_rank.htm

[Edited on February 21, 2007 at 10:37 PM. Reason : .]

2/21/2007 10:35:42 PM

Quote :

"nice representative sample. not to mention those courses for a bus minor are all introductory courses. they really shouldn't even offer a business minor. there are plenty of business courses that are easy just like there are plenty of engineering courses that are easy. i've taken plenty of both. more than 1 or 4 courses to base my opinion on"

plz tell me four classes in the ECE program that BUS majors would find easy. thx.


its pretty widely accepted that an engineering degree is more challenging. not to say that its better, just different. i bet you could look at average gpas to prove that.


and you can take whatever classes you want for the minor. you take bus200, acc220 and any three courses that are 3XX or 4XX. I took a 400 level last semester and it was the easiest class i've ever taken.

2/21/2007 11:10:45 PM

^ as another indication of engineering vs. business:

I did my BS in EE and CpE, then did the accelerated MBA at NCSU (i got in on the last semester they offered it). At this point, I had basically no business background. I got a Teaching Assistantship to pay for my first semester of my MBA, and what class did I TA? A 300 level BUS class I had never taken - IT Management or something. I asked if that would be a problem, and the director of the program said "nah, you're an engineer. you'll do fine." And he was right. That class was basically like a 101 Engineering Survey class, where they pack in a couple hundred students, throw some "hard" questions at them to weed out the ones who can't take it. Of course, in Engineering this takes place in the first or 2nd year at latest. These guys were Jrs and Srs and were struggling with the basics of Excel and basic IT terminology. I was helping people during office hours and these guys were like "wow, you must have aced this class as an undergrad", and all i could say was "ummm.... actually, this is the first business class i've ever sat in on. i've never taken a class to tell me how to use Excel and Powerpoint. that's kind of something that you 'just have to know' when you're an engineer".

There's no way a person without an engineering degree of some sorts could get into grad school in engineering, then pick and be a TA for a 300 level ECE class. The biggest difference was that in that the BUS class I TA'd, and most of the MBA classes (with the exception of some like Finance and Accounting and some of the project courses), they taught basically "general knowledge". Sure, it might not be "common knowledge", but it was all information that didn't necessarily need any prerequisite to understand, except critical thinking and interpretation skills. In engineering, however, everything is specialized, so you can't expect to go into a 500 level VLSI class without first mastering the 400 level ASIC class, after the 300 level Microelectronic class, which comes after the 200 level Logic and Circuits classes.

2/21/2007 11:31:55 PM

several points being that i'll have my mba in may and have already signed for my job without going to a career fair or anything like that this year...

1. a few mbas is not a representative sample. i know of many full time mba students including myself that take lots of initiative and work part time in addition to ta or ga positions.

2. undergrad business courses are not the same as graduate level courses and it does depend on the course and professor. there are some very challenging courses, but some pretty easy "intro" type courses as well. try bus 590u if you want a very tough course, it's the supply chain management practicum and pairs you with a company donating $50,000+ per year to nc state with lofty expectations. it's very tough, but gives you real world experience and doesn't involve a classroom at all.

3. the salary numbers for all the schools aren't completely accurate...they factor in the financial value of benefits in many cases using a valuation formula and it is directly related to your concentration. the average salary is pulled up thanks to supply chain where many grads without years of experience are starting between $80,000 and $90,000 base (mostly with the big oil players in houston).

my salary is less than the average base, but it's a tradeoff for me because i'm working with a local startup with huge growth potential, well-rounded experience, people that i like, and my position falls into marketing and general management instead of supply chain (my concentration).

what sets the nc state mba apart is our ranking with recruiters. we interview as well as anyone in the country and were ranked 9th in the nation there. it's due to the career development classes, exposure to executives in the classroom, and a large number of well rounded students that aren't afraid to put themselves out there or carry a conversation.

Quote :

"Dear MBA students: Fortune announced on its website today its first set of MBA rankings "Fifty Best B-schools for Getting Hired 2007." The good news: NC State's MBA was ranked #25 in the US, tied with Babson, Notre Dame, Boston College, UC-Irvine, and Indiana. The top five were Wharton, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, and Kellogg. Of local interest, Duke was #8 and Wake Forest was #49. UNC-Chapel Hill was not listed. http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/ (Click once to see a link to the full list) Fortune partnered with QS's TopMBA Scorecard, an online database of 111 MBA programs designed to help students find the right program, to produce the rankings. Here is what the website says about the methodology: For this list, schools are ranked based equally on their reputation with recruiters and on their strength of career placement, based on a search by a student looking to study in a full-time MBA program in the United States. To determine schools' recruiter ratings, QS surveyed 445 HR managers responsible for MBA hiring at their company. Recruiters are asked to name the international business schools from which they would prefer to hire MBAs, and which they consider to be the most reputable. The schools' scores are then converted into an index number of 0 to 100, where 100 is the top-scoring MBA program. To determine schools' career placement strength, QS surveyed top MBA schools and asked them what percent of their students are employed within 3 months of graduation (accounting for 20% of their career-placement score), the average number of employment offers per student (another 20% of the career-placement score) and students' average salary on graduation (60% of the career-placement score). QS is one of the foremost providers of independent information on higher education around the world and also runs the QS World MBA Tour. For more information, go to http://www.topmba.com or e-mail topmba@qsnetwork.com. Not enough data were provided for an in-depth data analysis of why we did so well. We were #38 on the list in terms of salary, and we tied for #6 (with 18 other schools) in terms of offers per student. I presume we must have done very well with the recruiter's evaluations of our students (our strongest point in the US News survey last year) and the placement rate. I am extremely proud of the students, faculty and staff who have built an excellent program from scratch in such a short time. Five years ago we were still offering the MSM and did not even have a career center for our students. How things have changed! Let's not keep this a secret! Best wishes, -------------------------- Steven G. Allen Associate Dean for Graduate Programs & Research College of Management North Carolina State University Box 7229 Raleigh, NC 27695-7229 Phone: (919) 515-6941 Fax: (919) 515-5073 MBA page: http://www.mba.ncsu.edu Personal page: http://www4.ncsu.edu/~sgallen/index.htm "

2/21/2007 11:51:45 PM

gg NCSU

2/22/2007 12:06:46 AM

jesus christ - is the triangle hurting for MBA grads or something? no offense, but a 610 avg GMAT is a joke (and I mean a big fucking joke), and an average salary of $73k is a waste of $19k a year tuition

2/22/2007 12:07:57 AM

Hey I know...Let's all talk about how much harder Engineering is than Business instead of celebrating success for NCSU.

You people are fucking pathetic. Why engineers feel the need to assert themselves as better than everyone else is a leftover from the days when engineering was seen as a shitty blue collar job. Engineers move the economy in the Triangle area. Everyone thinks you are smart. There is no need for you as a group to continue to feel inadequate.

Why not be happy for everyone that does well from your undergraduate university?

Whether you believe it or not, their success is directly proportional to the value of an NCSU degree in the job market.

Fucking sad...

2/22/2007 12:12:36 AM

^^most students receive financial aid, if not full packages

$73,000 base + benefits and a signing bonus is a darn good start.

what's the average salary for undergrad business at state? $40,000 or something? most jobs that mba grads receive have opportunities for leadership within the company and expansion. my job for example has semi-annual performance reviews with up to a $5000 bonus every six months...that builds up quickly and at the age of 23, I'm happy with that.

[Edited on February 22, 2007 at 12:14 AM. Reason : .]

2/22/2007 12:14:31 AM

it's amazing how tight some of ya'lls assholes get when you feel the need to defend engineering. not once did i say engineering was less challenging. haha

for starters: the entire first two years of any engineering program is trivial (including ECE). in some cases that includes junior year. my background in is engineering although i only took a couple of ECE courses... when i say there are plenty of easy engineering courses i am speaking from my personal experiences and not what bus majors would find easy. i thought that was clear from my post.

i'm not a bus major but i can assure you the classes you took for that minor are bullshit. that's why i don't think there should even be a bus minor.

i'm not gonna defend bus majors or engineering majors although i could defend both. this thread isn't about that.


does NC State even have an ExecMBA program? either way, it's good that NCSU is getting recognized for yet another program.

[Edited on February 22, 2007 at 12:16 AM. Reason : *yet]

2/22/2007 12:14:42 AM

i do find it funny that there is this engineering uproar, especially since most of these grads will be your bosses. irony at its finest.

2/22/2007 12:15:43 AM

and a lot of them will end up being pointy-haired Dilbert style bosses.

The best managers at my company (come to think of it, all the managers that I know of) were engineers who worked their way up. They are people I can actually go to for technical advice, which is the type of manager that is unfortunately all too rare.
I'm not saying that going to B-school is bad, or that there's anything wrong with having an MBA (i have one). But i don't put a lot of trust in guys who come out of school with an undergrand in BUS or communications or something, then go on to get an MBA. Those MBAs can go work at a bank somewhere. For technical, R&D and IT management, you need trained engineers with good leadership skills, or ex-engineers who have gone back for business training.

2/22/2007 12:35:08 AM

Quote :

" the entire first two years of any engineering program is trivial (including ECE)."

so i assume that means you took the first two years of ece then..or at least one of the other eng programs?

3 semesters of calculus and then a semester in differential equations are standard issue for engineering...i doubt most would find that trivial.

i know of plenty of people who came in as engineering, couldnt hack it and went business. i don't know of anyone who came the other way. draw your own conclusions. and every ece student i've ever talked that has taken bus classes have considered them a holiday compared to their standard classes. hell some ece people would offer their first born for multiple choice questions on an exam. but what do i know, i'm sure all bus majors feel the same way about our classes.

2/22/2007 12:50:58 AM

i don't think that business is tougher than engineering by any means, it's a different beast entirely.

the engineering classes themselves are obviously more difficult, but it's the practice of business, not the classes that should be compared in my opinion. the classes that add the most value in the business curriculum are the ones that offer real world experience by working with companies. anyone who argues that the toughest business exam is more difficult than the toughest engineering exam is wrong. undoubtedly, there will be some general knowledge in any business class, it's the practice that sets those apart and boosts your salary.

hopefully that made sense, if not, i apologize...the practicum is frying my brain.

2/22/2007 1:03:28 AM

I'll assure some of you folks are knocking goalielax for his anti-business comments -- fact is, dude has an MBA.

but he also got it from a more prestigious place (Emory) and is raking in $100k/year, so $70k looks like chump change from way up there

and I consider myself a solid student and excellent employee, but only mustered a 590 on the GMAT. I've also seen complete dolts get 700+ that'll be totally worthless to any future employer.

2/22/2007 1:05:41 AM

^ i don't anyone has commented towards goalielax. most of the posts are towards others.

Quote :

"so i assume that means you took the first two years of ece then..or at least one of the other eng programs? 3 semesters of calculus and then a semester in differential equations are standard issue for engineering...i doubt most would find that trivial."

yes, but only a couple of ece classes. my focus was on a different eng. program. and i found calc 1, 2, 3, and diff EQ to be trivial. not to mention the other courses like multiple chemistry or physics, or statics, dynamics, hydraulics, thermodynamics or the other courses i took under a particular concentration. unlike you, i'm not trying to project my personal experiences over an entire college.
maybe i'm one of the few that could hack it but chose otherwise. i find that hard to believe.

Quote :

"it's amazing how tight some of ya'lls assholes get when you feel the need to defend engineering"

[Edited on February 22, 2007 at 1:35 AM. Reason : *]

2/22/2007 1:27:56 AM

Quote :

"MBA not Undergrad"

Restricted

That's because nobody calls undergraduate programs in business "business school."

From Dictionary.com:

Quote :

"business school: a graduate school offering study leading to a degree of Master in Business Administration"

This latest list is why everyone should view these types of rankings with skepticism. I'm not one to defend UNC, but the Kenan-Flagler Business School is in the top 20 BusinessWeek rankings and it scores very high in various types of ranking by other publications.

http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/About/rankings.cfm

2/22/2007 2:19:01 AM

Most of the management in my organization were former engineers. Managers without a technical background are worthless to us. Maybe they are good at walmart or applebees, but to manage any kind of real enterprise, you have to know the field. It's much easier to turn an engineer into a manager than to do the reverse.

[Edited on February 22, 2007 at 2:22 AM. Reason : sdf]

2/22/2007 2:21:01 AM

^ I tend to agree. And there are even "MBA Toolkit" courses for professionals such as MDs and JDs that can quickly bring intelligent, educated people up to speed.

2/22/2007 2:31:31 AM

You guys are forgetting that these MBA grads usually have 4-5 years experience before the MBA program, so comparing these salaries to starting engineering salaries isn't exactly apples to apples. I would guess most engineers with 5 years experience that went back and got their masters in engineering would be hitting about the same range as most MBA grads (i-banking and PE being the exception).

2/22/2007 8:16:07 AM

If i could go back and do college again, i'd be doing I-banking now instead of something technical.

and be making at least 3X what I'm making now.

Engineering is awesome to get you that 50-120k a year job, but the real money is on Wall Street.

2/22/2007 8:25:47 AM

or you could use your mad engineering skillz and be an entrepreneur

2/22/2007 9:41:00 AM

I did that back in the late 90's and made a shitload of money preying on y2k fear.

but I'm more of an opportunist than a creative type. Or I would have thought of Youtube first.

2/22/2007 9:46:02 AM

engineering was way too fucking boring soph. year. I did pre-med instead, much more stimulating and better variety (especially the women) I have a pretty high tech 'level' and I know probably more than most other bio majors (when it comes to human and molecular stuff) about technical details. Shit, I know some engineers that are fucking idiots still, then again those are everywhere... and it's nice to see them flop pretty hard in the "real" world

2/22/2007 11:13:41 AM

i'm not sure what some of you guys are arguing about, but most of the people in our MBA program are engineers -- atleast that was the case when i graduated in 2005. many of the engineers were State undergrads.

i was a Biochem major, and I worked almost 3 years in biotech before coming back to State for an MBA. i turned down an i-banking internship for one in corporate venture capital. that internship turned into a job. i currently earn a living by analysing pharma and biotech investments.

there were a handful of nontechnical people, but not many. one of my classmates was from UNC journalism, one had some kind of liberal arts masters from Duke, and one guy from Cornell -- but he worked for SAS. and there was a Russian chick who had an undergrad in business too. there may have been a few others, but most folks were technical from what i can remember.

and listed the salary + bonus is low compared to the top schools, but its not low when you compare it to the other schools ranked in the 20s. part of it is that you have to twist peoples' arms to leave the Raleigh area. people often choose lower salaries so that they can stay and enjoy the quality of life (and lower cost of living) here. it sounds insane, but even the guys that took the 90k + moving expenses + signing bonus package to move to Houston to work for oil companies, complain about missing Raleigh.

and the amount is certainly not low when you compare it to the cost of tuition. i think the 38k is the max/out of state tuition. my whole mba cost 12k. the average ROI from a State MBA kills that of any other school ranked in the 20s, and fares fairly well when compared to any other MBA on the list.

as for the 610 GMAT, yeah that sounds low, but the average was about 640 for my entering class. GMATs have gone down accross the board in the last decade. its cyclical -- the last recession made good jobs scarce for newly minted MBAs and that led to fewer overall applicants. its on its way back up, led by current increases in MBA salaries.

all in all, this is a pleasant surprise for a program so young. i never expected to be ranked higher than the Purdues and Vanderbilts of the world.

2/22/2007 12:10:23 PM

Quote :

"and listed the salary + bonus is low compared to the top schools, but its not low when you compare it to the other schools ranked in the 20s. part of it is that you have to twist peoples' arms to leave the Raleigh area. people often choose lower salaries so that they can stay and enjoy the quality of life (and lower cost of living) here. it sounds insane, but even the guys that took the 90k + moving expenses + signing bonus package to move to Houston to work for oil companies, complain about missing Raleigh. and the amount is certainly not low when you compare it to the cost of tuition. i think the 38k is the max/out of state tuition. my whole mba cost 12k. the average ROI from a State MBA kills that of any other school ranked in the 20s, and fares fairly well when compared to any other MBA on the list. as for the 610 GMAT, yeah that sounds low, but the average was about 640 for my entering class. GMATs have gone down accross the board in the last decade. its cyclical -- the last recession made good jobs scarce for newly minted MBAs and that led to fewer overall applicants. its on its way back up, led by current increases in MBA salaries. all in all, this is a pleasant surprise for a program so young. i never expected to be ranked higher than the Purdues and Vanderbilts of the world."

ding, ding, ding...my thoughts exactly.

the incoming class is a 600 average gmat and not quite as culturally diverse as my graduating class. i'm one of the people who took less money to stay in raleigh and several of my friends have taken $20,000 less to live in raleigh instead of houston.

[Edited on February 22, 2007 at 4:21 PM. Reason : .]

2/22/2007 4:20:24 PM

a question for NCSU MBA current students/alumni:

what was your concentration?

2/22/2007 4:49:00 PM

mine is supply chain management and most of us have had 3 job offers each it's in such demand.

2/22/2007 5:29:23 PM

Quote :

"Thunderbird School of Global Management"

WTF is this? Sounds like one of those online schools.

2/22/2007 5:58:50 PM

Quote :

"especially since most of these grads will be your bosses"

No they won't. Of the 50 or so MBA's in our class, more than half were just getting their degree for a pay bonus at their current jobs, to move into a middle-management position.

And all but 2 or 3 were the typical kiss-ass, land a corporate whore job and buy a BMW types. It AMAZED me how much they kissed ass to the faculty, during the "job fair" setups and all that.

Maybe that's how corporate america works now, but it made me want to stomp people in the mouth.

Now I will say for the couple of REAL business guys in there, they will quickly make a lot of damn money and are going to be amazing out in industry. But 2 out of 50? I mean in an INNOVATION MANAGEMENT specialization, that's fucking ridiculous.

2/22/2007 6:37:33 PM

i also lowered the average for NCSU MBAs because I took an entry level engineering position with no managerial aspects to it. I was in the Product Development concentration.

and ^ is exactly right. The amount of sucking up and schmoozing that goes on in those classes is nauseating

2/22/2007 7:07:05 PM

unless you freaking own the world or do it all yourself

you'll end up kissing some amount of rear in your workdays as well...sucks, but it's the only way up the ladder in 98% of the cases

2/22/2007 7:19:12 PM