Background: I think the most important part of the MBA program are the people, so I decided to reach out to people of the schools I am looking at and see how responsive they are. I reached out only to people I did not know, did not count talking to any of my friends at the respective MBA programs in this study.
My background: 4 years in corporate finance and M&A strategy at Fortune 100 company
Hope the research below helps people looking at the below schools. Feel free to reach out to me if any questions, this is an on-going study still in work, but results are as of July 21st.
Participating schools (I cold-emailed people that were on the school's admissions website, clubs, or outreach committee):
- Cornell Johnson - 28 emails sent
- Yale School of Management - 20 emails sent
- UC Berkeley Haas - 24 emails sent
- UVA Darden - 21 emails sent
- UT Austin McCombs - 23 emails sent
- Stanford GSB - 16 emails sent
Results:
- Cornell Johnson: 22 responded (79%); 14 calls completed (50%)
- Yale School of Management: 13 responded (65%); 5 calls completed (25%)
- UC Berkeley Haas: 15 responded (63%); 6 calls completed (25%)
- UVA Darden: 12 responded (57%); 3 calls completed (14%)
- UT Austin McCombs: 10 responded (43%); 2 calls completed (9%)
- Stanford GSB: 5 responded (31%); 1 call completed (6%)
I have commentary on my email exchanges and calls with each school here: http://www.sleeplessinmba.weebly.com/