Quote:
Originally Posted by doubtful
can I ask you why? I mean you could go to wharton or ucla...
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Eventually what swung it for me were in favor of Michigan International Business-Business Economics over Wharton Management were:
1) The presence of a large number of faculty members in the Michigan IB-BE department whose work I was interested in (4-5 maybe) as compared to just 1 at the Wharton Management department (My admit from Wharton was in their Management department);
2) The chance to be a part of a program at Michigan which is solely focused on Economics rather than trying to combine bits and pieces of the Applied Economics program with the Management program requirements at Wharton and trying to be too many things to too many people. With the current structure at Michigan, I am free to decide on a "field" in my second year, whether that be corporate strategy or finance from within the business school or any of the economics sub fields such as trade/ industrial organization/ labor and I view that as a big positive.
3) Greater levels of interaction between the program and the other schools/ departments on campus such as Economics, Public Policy & Law. The fact that Michigan has a well-respected full-fledged department in Public Policy was also one of those things which made a difference on the margins. In addition a number of faculty members in the IB-BE department to which I am being admitted hold dual appointments in the Econ department or the School of Public Policy.
4) Last but not the least, the charm of staying in a Mid-west university town was also not lost on me.
UCLA Global Economics & Management was lesser of a consideration because it is in LA and as per point 4 above, I like staying in the Mid-west. Besides it is a much smaller department from the number of core faculty members in that department (2 till 2007;3 since 2007 & 5 from 2008 onwards) as compared to 10 at Michigan.