Editor's Note: BusinessWeek collected graduate comments in 2000 during its ranking of full-time MBA programs. The next ranking is scheduled for fall, 2002.
The whole MBA program was a truely wonderful experience for me. I would like to share one specific experience that I believe is relatively unique to the MBA program here at Tulane. We have a equity analysis program (called the Burkenroad Reports) where a small team of students actually follows a company, and then publishes a report which is distributed to a plethra of investment banks. I followed an oil company, met with senior management, and made leaps and bounds in understanding the accounting and modeling necessary to producing a report. You can't beat this kind of experience. Also, I'd like to say that my peers were extremely high-quality, bright students with a great amount of international background and experience. --Finance
This school, like others has its problems. However, unlike others it is working very hard to correct them. I feel that this school is underrated because it is a smaller school and located in an out-of-the-way city. In my estimation, and it is qualified by conversations that I have had with other students at 'prestigious schools', the A.B. Freeman School is a top 20 school. --Information Technology
I thought the A.B. Freeman school at Tulane was great. I had a wonderful experience. --Anonymous
The Big Easy is an excellent place to meet the challenges of an MBA program and create a network of friends. --Entrepreneurship
I had a great experience studying with students from all over the world (over 40% of the total number of MBA students are international), learning to work long hours in teams, working as a group, meeting dead lines, and practicing presentation skills in all classes. --Consulting
Overall, the A.B. Freeman school is a very good choice for people who are focusing on finance and/or who are interested in working in the South. The smaller size of the full-time MBA class is both a boon and a curse. It is great for smaller class sizes and more personal teaching, but it hurts the school in its efforts to attract larger recruiters to the school. The school's efforts to move to a seven-week based schedule and to add more information and technology classes improved the program immediately and will continue to do so as the curriculum adapts to the new schedule.
As in the past, the program still is suffering from an ineffective career development program, but again, steps have been taken that are showing some signs of improvement and are likely to help things in this area in the long term. The environment of the school is relatively noncompetitive and the student body is much closer than in other programs with which I have had experience. The teacher-student interaction is very good, and the school has good financing to develop/support expansion and improvement plans that will improve the program in the future. The school needs to increase its size by about 50% to be truly effective in offering more electives and in attracting more recruiters. --Anonymous
B-school was well worth it, and I was very satisfied with everything except the Career Development Center at Tulane. --Information Technology
Tulane can become a great B-school with a little more effort. Tulane charges a premium rate, which leads you to believe that you will be getting a high-quality education. However, after you go through the program, you have a feeling of let down because the cost does not match your level of satisfaction. Tulane is a great school for finanace majors, however it fails students in other concentrations. This leads to most students either switching to a finance concentration or doing a dual concentration that includes finance.
Also, the B-school as a whole lacks community, there is no communication among departments or even among the faculty and administration which leads to a lot of miscommunciation and confusion. But the Freeman School does not view this as a problem. Improving the caliber of students is not a rememdy for what is lacking in the internal structure at the Freeman School.
Lastly, the CDC is a major source of disappointment. This should be one of the chief areas of any B-school that should shine, but at Tulane it is antiquated. Although the school just hired a new director for the CDC, the CDC director cannot do the job alone. The other members of the staff in the CDC never leave their office. They do networking from a desk chair instead of going out in the world and meeting people in the industry. An example of how poor their efforts are -- the staff will continually send out e-mails of Web sites students can go to, to find work. Other than this you never hear from the CDC staff until it is time to report stats. The office itself is not conducive to students entering and discussing their employment needs.
Further, when you do make an appointment the assistance provided is nothing beyond what you could have done yourself. Because the CDC staff does not see a problem with the way they currently operate, the companies that visit Tulane never change from year to year. There is no industry diversity or expansion of the current firms that recruit yearly. The majority of students find employment through their own personal networking efforts. I do not want to down the university where I received my degree, because I paid a hefty sum for my MBA and want it to retain its value. However, I do wish the Freeman School would wake up and realize that turning a blind eye to problems, does not make them go away. --Information Technology
Tulane really needs to improve their career development center. It is very disappointing to see that in the tightest job market in the last several decades, we had many students who still did not have jobs at graduation. The CDC needs to recruit more national companies to come to campus, but more importantly needs to strengthen the business ties that the school has in the local areas of New Orleans, Memphis, Dallas, and Houston.
Simply put, the technology at the Freeman School was terrible. Many times it was impossible to find a computer to use and often in a lab of 20 computers, five would be broken. Improve the technology soon or get left behind.
Finally, the return on tuition paid is nowhere close to that of other schools. When I look at the rankings at see that Tulane student's are paying only about $3,000 per year less than Stanford or Harvard students, but are about $30,000 short in starting salaries, there is something amiss. The school should cut tuition or rebate some portion to the recently graduating classes to assist in making up for this shortfall. Once the quality of the salaries begins to increase, then the school could return to charging its outrageous tuition rates. -- Investment Banking
Tulane is an excellent school for students who are bright, self-motivated, and not interested in following traditional paths, but rather charting their own courses in life. Students who need excessive direction and external motivation will not benefit from the Freeman School of Business as much as those who are more mature and responsible for themselves. -- Finance
Tulane is an outstanding program. Of course, the level of achievement also depends on how far each student wants to go themselves. For diversity and cutting-edge e-business, the Freeman School pulls no punches. It's been the fulfillment of a dream for me, and my fellow classmates are friends for life. --Anonymous
Tulane has an excellent finance department and a very strong accounting department. The finance department is so strong, in fact, that many students who had not planned on being finance majors often switch due to the number of electives and quality of teaching available in the department. One of the major benefits of Tulane is the small size of the program which offers the average student more leadership opportunities than they might have in a larger program, as well as the opportunity to develop close relationships with the faculty outside the classroom.
The leadership opportunities in the program are particulary meaningful not only because the small size of the program means that one individual's impact can be significant, but also because their work is highly visible to the student body, faculty, and staff. This can make for a particularly rewarding experience, but it also places a premium on one's ability to work with a range personalities since you may not have a large selection of people to choose from in any one activity.
In short, although I came to Tulane to develop my finance and accounting skills, I learned much more about leadership, teamwork, and general people skills than I could have ever imagined. The principal challenge that Tulane faces is that it needs to help recruiters make the leap from viewing it as a regional school to an up-and-coming finance program that can compete with any in the nation. Supporting this is the fact that Tulane was just listed as one of the top ten finance programs in the country by Princeton Review. The recruiters haven't yet caught up with this change in rankings however. There also tends to be an implicit prejudice against schools in the Deep South, even though not one professor I had ever had a Southern accent! -- Finance
I would not trade my experience at Tulane for any other MBA program. Tulane and the City of New Orleans offer opportunities and an education that no other program and city in the world could have provided. The classwork at Tulane is not much different from any other program, but the life experiences are what made Tulane memorable and different for me. --Anonymous
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