in@ Georgetown and USC - a tough choice

megachaoren

did my undergrad at SC, but i will vote for georgetown over marshall.

-- by 会员 megachaoren (2010/4/2 5:52:18)

Can you explain why? thanks

-- by 会员 mmscute (2010/4/2 23:22:19)

Don't quote me on this, but this is how I felt abt SC. SC is located in downtown, yet ghetto. Many students choose to commute and live far from school. Yes, students do mingle when they are in school, but not so much outside class hours. MBA students could be different, but people still scatter all over the town. USC does have a strong network, yet very local. I agree with others about LA is a good place depend on what you want to do post MBA. Although many companies have branches in LA, but they don't always recruit here. I will recommend to check out SC's career office website and look at the list of companies came to school for recruiting. Don't get impressed with some of the names because almost every company comes to school for a specific major (mostly engineering) and mostly required US citizenship or PR. Just because I experienced this and have been coming back to my alma mater for recruiting for the last few years, I think if you are looking to stay in technology, IT consulting (not Mck, BCG), and accounting, you wil have a shot with SC.  I will leave others to comment on Georgetown since I know nothing about it other than a couple of nice bars in town ;)

Magic_Yang

USC MBA have tons of parties held out of school hour. If you come to USC for party and event, you will never get bored.

You need to decide your goal after MBA and then come out criteria to choose school. You can go to Marshall MBA Career Resource Center website find out which company will come to USC for recruiting.  

Good luck!

mmscute

Hi megachaoren, since you did your undergraduate at USC, I guess you know USC pretty well. Although MBA might be pretty different from undergraduate programs, you ideas about the school as a whole should be still helpful for me. Can you talk more about cons and pros about USC? Thanks.

megachaoren

Hi megachaoren, since you did your undergraduate at USC, I guess you know USC pretty well. Although MBA might be pretty different from undergraduate programs, you ideas about the school as a whole should be still helpful for me. Can you talk more about cons and pros about USC? Thanks.

-- by 会员 mmscute (2010/4/3 12:07:40)

Sure. Also, you may want to check with Magic_Yang who seems to be a current MBA studen at Marshall. Am sure he/she could give a different perspective.

I think the school itself is alright. Am sure you've heard a lot of SC being a U of Spoiled Children or whatever. I think it's partly true. In fact, that's because it's  a private school and it's in LA. Since UCLA doesnt have an undergrad business school, leaving many kids with the option of going to SC. LA, or California in general, has a huge Asian population, and that's why you may see a lot Asians in school. For my undergrad, someone could correct me if i am wrong, I will say abt 40% of the class are Asians.  Most of them are from mainland, India, HK, TW and Korea. A big chunk of them ended up going back if they don't have citizenship or PR, especially for undergrad business major. There are a lot of jobs such as technology, IT, entertainment, and accounting. IT consulting and technology firms normally have no problem with h1b sponsorship. If you are in one of these fields, you may have a good chance. If you are into management consulting and investment banking, I am not very sure if LA/SC has much to offer. I know all banks come to recruit, but they end up hiring 2-5 people every year, and most of hires are from undergrad. I am not sure if this is true for MBA career center, I could never complement Marshall's undergrad career service. For the kind of money we pay to the school and the kind of help we get when we look for jobs, I gave them a thumb down.

I know most of people here will disagree with me on this. So. Cal is great because of its weather. But again it's a big melting pot. If I am going to study in the States, I want to go to a place that does look like America. The fact that there are so many Chinese students in school and you can hear people speaking Cantonese in class makes me wonder if I am in HK

Another aspect abt SC, and this is 100% my personal opinion, is that the quality of teaching is going south. Since the school put so much focus on ranking and make sure they could beat its rival across town, it sacrifices the quality education for researches and publications. We used to have one professor teaching 4 accounting classes with 200+ students in each class. You can imagine what kind of attention and care can each of us get from him. Nothing.

Going back to the career part, I am now in the entertainment industry and I will say more than half of my coworkers are from SC, UCLA and UCI. But everytime when we see people with a degree from East Coast, such as CMU, MIT, Georgetown, just to name a few, we almost always spend a little more time on them. Not because they are smarter (they could be), but because they are "different".

Anyhow, I think you will have a good time at SC, but MBA is nothing like undergrad. Learning is one thing, but networking is top priority. I think LA has the best Chinese food among all major US cities, so you won't miss home food that much. Its weather provides a wide variety of activities all year round. But LA is too big, and you have to drive, or you will end up going no where.

I love the football season, it's fun. The quality of education is under my expectation. The network is great, but you have to network right. It just because there are so many SC graduates are looking for jobs in the city, not everyone can be taken care of. This partly because most SC grads look for jobs in California. Make your call and I am sure either choice will help you get to where you want to be. Hit me up if you want to talk more offline. J

mmscute

我再详细阐述一下我的背景。毕业之后，我希望从事finance相关业务，偏向于commercial banking, 或者finance consulting。 到现在为止，我在湾区已经住了3年了， 虽然南加，北加有所不同，但是总体来说还是很一致的。从这一点来说location不是这么重要。所以就业机会超过了location成为我首要的目标。
   我仔细看了USC的就业数据， 08年， 09年都弱于Georgetown, 同时我也注意了到08， 09两年， UCLA甚至弱于USC，我不禁得出这样一个结论，洛杉矶地区就业机会总体落后于东部。

   不知道大家怎么看这些问题？ 再次感谢楼上各位发言，希望大家再次不吝给我意见。谢谢

megachaoren

就像LZ说的，就业其实很大一部分还是看LOCATION，所以LOCATION还是挺重要的。您在BAY AREA呆了一段时间应该不难发现其实北加的机会比南加多，特别是你说的几个行业。还有我认为如果你在加州已经有了一定基础，可以去东部扩展你的NETWORK，毕业以后东西两你都可以作为选择。如果选择了LA，对于你的背景，很大一部分就说明了你想要留在加州（也不绝对）。
建议可以去LINKEDIN上面查查USC的MBA毕业出来的和GEORGETOWN现在毕业出来的都在干啥。比较之下也许对你的决定会有帮助。个人觉得似乎你还是喜欢留在加州，南加欢迎你。

Magic_Yang

相对于东部，西部整体上Finance比东部弱。Finance 在西部的中心是SF，然后是ＬＡ。

Banking industry 现在比较trick的是很多不hire international student. 当然最近经济回来一些之后有好一些。不知道你是什么情况的Visa，如果是H1B转F1想留在美国，实话说，现在在哪里都不容易。当然你如果回亚洲没问题，而且最新的消息是finance industry 慢慢开始招人了，一些Finance强校情况也比去年好很多了。

不知道你之前的background是什么，如果是想Career Switch。这个更多是要靠自己，学校给你搭好平台，你要靠自己去network。我们08、09都有人去Banking的，10的只有一个同学在找commercial banking的，目前还没有定。基本同意LS的观点吧，如果你想留在加州，就来USC。如果你想考虑去东部，去GT。

我对GT中国同学的Placement情况不了解，建议你和GT的中国同学联系下再做决定。

Good Luck!

bolococo

Thanks to megachaoren and Magic, your kind sharing really give us many update info about USC.

happyjd

Hi megachaoren, since you did your undergraduate at USC, I guess you know USC pretty well. Although MBA might be pretty different from undergraduate programs, you ideas about the school as a whole should be still helpful for me. Can you talk more about cons and pros about USC? Thanks.

-- by 会员 mmscute (2010/4/3 12:07:40)

Sure. Also, you may want to check with Magic_Yang who seems to be a current MBA studen at Marshall. Am sure he/she could give a different perspective.

I think the school itself is alright. Am sure you've heard a lot of SC being a U of Spoiled Children or whatever. I think it's partly true. In fact, that's because it's  a private school and it's in LA. Since UCLA doesnt have an undergrad business school, leaving many kids with the option of going to SC. LA, or California in general, has a huge Asian population, and that's why you may see a lot Asians in school. For my undergrad, someone could correct me if i am wrong, I will say abt 40% of the class are Asians.  Most of them are from mainland, India, HK, TW and Korea. A big chunk of them ended up going back if they don't have citizenship or PR, especially for undergrad business major. There are a lot of jobs such as technology, IT, entertainment, and accounting. IT consulting and technology firms normally have no problem with h1b sponsorship. If you are in one of these fields, you may have a good chance. If you are into management consulting and investment banking, I am not very sure if LA/SC has much to offer. I know all banks come to recruit, but they end up hiring 2-5 people every year, and most of hires are from undergrad. I am not sure if this is true for MBA career center, I could never complement Marshall's undergrad career service. For the kind of money we pay to the school and the kind of help we get when we look for jobs, I gave them a thumb down.

I know most of people here will disagree with me on this. So. Cal is great because of its weather. But again it's a big melting pot. If I am going to study in the States, I want to go to a place that does look like America. The fact that there are so many Chinese students in school and you can hear people speaking Cantonese in class makes me wonder if I am in HK

Another aspect abt SC, and this is 100% my personal opinion, is that the quality of teaching is going south. Since the school put so much focus on ranking and make sure they could beat its rival across town, it sacrifices the quality education for researches and publications. We used to have one professor teaching 4 accounting classes with 200+ students in each class. You can imagine what kind of attention and care can each of us get from him. Nothing.

Going back to the career part, I am now in the entertainment industry and I will say more than half of my coworkers are from SC, UCLA and UCI. But everytime when we see people with a degree from East Coast, such as CMU, MIT, Georgetown, just to name a few, we almost always spend a little more time on them. Not because they are smarter (they could be), but because they are "different".

Anyhow, I think you will have a good time at SC, but MBA is nothing like undergrad. Learning is one thing, but networking is top priority. I think LA has the best Chinese food among all major US cities, so you won't miss home food that much. Its weather provides a wide variety of activities all year round. But LA is too big, and you have to drive, or you will end up going no where.

I love the football season, it's fun. The quality of education is under my expectation. The network is great, but you have to network right. It just because there are so many SC graduates are looking for jobs in the city, not everyone can be taken care of. This partly because most SC grads look for jobs in California. Make your call and I am sure either choice will help you get to where you want to be. Hit me up if you want to talk more offline. J

-- by 会员 megachaoren (2010/4/3 14:52:37)

去过mba class visit，当时很惊讶真的看到约40%的亚洲面孔。

cathiejxj

quote from mitbbs

"Georgetown.

In the future, your children get into Georgetown relatively easily for law."