Hi allI've been told that, given the choice of Oxbridge, Warwick or Cranfield for an MBA (don't want to do 2 years at London) I should definitely choose Oxbridge because in the next 10 years or so, their brand will carry them right to the top in employers' esteem. However, some elements of the other schools I mentioned appeal to me more (eg average age at Cranfield, etc)Do you think that what I've been told is true? I know I should choose the "course that is right for me" but it would be foolish to pass up the chance for Oxbridge "branding" all the same, would it not?Thanks

I'd definitely pick Oxbridge and Oxford in particular. They are strengthening rapidly and their brand is much stronger abroad. I have given lectures on careers in consulting at most of the UK MBA schools and I'd rank LBS first and Oxford second in terms of student quality. However Oxford's graduate milk round is much stronger and that can be very important if you don't want to go into investment banking.

Having spoken to students, faculty and recruiters - I would definately recommend MBA from Oxford. The brand alone is v powerful.make sure though you visit the school and speak to the faculty and former students before making this decisiongood luck

Oxford in particular. It is the 2nd best BS in the UK now, behind LBS.The brand is brilliant and it is propelling it skyward in the rankings - somewhat undeservedly. Because of the name and prestige associated with it, top-class students, faculty and investors are attracted to SBS. It has been racing up through the rankings in a short time and the director has said he wants it to be top-10 in 5 years. Either way, the MBA will only get stronger and more valuable in the future. Definitely go for Oxford, with Cambridge in second place. Note: It Oxford is also a lovely place to live and study - lots of great pubs, nice atmosphere and beautiful surroundings - esp. if you get the right college ;-)

Agree that Oxbridge has a brand that is unmatchable.However, brands such as Cranfield are still very strong, especially in the UK. Factor in that recruiters over 40 will respect Cranfield for its former glory (used to be undisputed number 2 after LBS for a long time) and that the educational experience (much more work exp amongst fellow students, for example) will be at least as good, possibly better. Then the difference boils down to the fact that in 10yrs time you'll be able to say you did your MBA at Oxford rather than Cranfield. Hopefully by then you'll be hired on your post MBA achievements anyway, so I'd go for the educational experience.

Top 10 of what? There's no way a one year 'Oxbridge' MBA will equal anything from the States. If you've got any sense go to US or LBS.You'll get the same standard of education from Said as you'll get at Cranfield, Warwick, Bradford or Manchester, all decent schools in their own right.

Why has Bradford crept into that list? It's like some sort of "spot the odd one out" exercise. If you really really must extend the list beyond the others, try Tanaka or Cass. There are others still to list before Bradford.As for the 1 yr / 2 yr thing, this is mirrored throughout the whole US educational system compared to Europe in regard to Masters degrees and is a larger debate. For the average European student, the RoI doesn't look too favourable on a 2 yr program... and you won't find many this side of the Atlantic who turn their nose up at an MBA from INSEAD, the shortest course of all!

I'll give you a reason for including Bradford - I've worked with a broad renage of graduates from MBA programmes, including Oxbridge and the Londoners, in the last 10 yrs, and been impressed by the Bradford graduates as well as Cranfield graduates -who don't tend to BS as much as the others. They get on with it and produce results. I've noticed that others, apart from Imperial, tend, to be very long winded...

Have to agree with JoeI prefer MBAs who had experience before the course and applied it to practical learning during the course. Much more useful than young hotshots who went on a course where they learned all about the theory and came out thinking how great they were.Schools like Cranfield that take people with more experience and offer them a highly practical education are more useful in my view. BTW I was at INSEAD myself.

In order to comment on the quality of a particular institution - you need to have either attended it or researched it thoroughly.Clearly LBS is no.1 but you would need to do a 2 year course - which in my opinion is a huge opportunity cost - having spoken to a number of LBS students.After LBS - Oxford is undoubtably no.2 followed by cambridge,the next tier of bus schools are manchester, cranfield, imperial and warwick. Check the FT, business week rankings!!Don;t know how Bradford can be counted in this list.

By the way, Oxford is only one place above Cranfield in the EIU rankings. But the disparity in rankings depending on which newspaper you choose just goes to show that you should beware of their various methodologies. Points are given, for example, for the number of international students a schools has, and the number of faculty that have doctorates. Well, having a doctorate doesn't always make you a business genius...some schools have faculty that were busy making a name for themselves in business instead of spending their time with books. And it's not true to say that the number of international students makes a BS better. Indeed, in the case of boarding schools and undergraduate universities, it is often those that struggle to attract UK talent that market most aggressively abroad. Finally, a big area of importance for rankings is ore course salary compared to post course. Obviously if you take a lot of very young and inexperienced people from India and China and they get jobs in the UK afterwards, you are going to be on to a winner.

Like you say NR, in order to appreciate or understand the quality of any MBA programme, you should have either been on it or researched it thoroughly. If you did do research on Bradford School of Management, you would find that it is held in very high regard amongst academics from other leading business schools. As for alumni, check out DR. Tony O'Reilly, Paul Donavan, the CEO of One Vodafone, the VP of Shell Marketing International, just to mention a few. As well as that companies like Bayer, ASDA, the BBC, Coca-Cola, Emirates Airlines put their fast-trackers on the MBA programme at Bradford. I think the city of Bradford somewhat unfairly taints the brand (perception) of the school. I got places on Manchester, Warwick and INSEAD, and chose Bradford for the ROI. Granted, one thing the School is very poor at is building stronger external relationships with industry. The careers service could do more to change get the message out there like other schools do. By the way, you will find that a large amount of lecturers at the 'better' schools either got their doctorates or MBAs at Bradford. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?

You posted: By the way, you will find that a large amount of lecturers at the 'better' schools either got their doctorates or MBAs at Bradford. Makes you wonder, doesn't it?Well, even if that could be shown to be true, there is a shortage of business lecturers at the moment. Presumably grads from "better" schools got jobs in industry?

thanks for the note...

From a recruiting perspective, it is certainly London, Oxford, Cambridge; it used to be London, Cranfield.Recruiters go where the bright students go. And Said killed Cranfield, certainly for consulting.Personally I never liked Cranfield because it seemed to be inward looking, over-reliant on the text books of its non-world famous faculty, and encouraged formula following rather than thinking. But that is just my experience recruiting there. Anyway, we stopped recruiting there and now go to Said and Judge instead.

check out the latest eiu rankingscranfield is above lbs, insead and said

And doesn't that just discredit the rankings? Is there *really* any dispute as to the leading school?

Judging by this thread, yes, there are different opinions on which rankings stand.Bearing in mind Interested's original question, the EIU rankings are the most relevant because they are 100% based on which b-schools employers actually like to hire from.Other league tables take into account things like student satisfaction, faculty rep, publications, quality of teaching, diversity of the student cohort, internationalism of the curriculum, entry standards, salaries on entering and leaving the course, or subjective prestige measures. These are all very useful things to bear in mind and for many people are crucial factors in choosing where they will get the MBA experience that best suits their needs.Less well-known schools often rank higher in employers' eyes because they know they can get more for their money when they hire there. For example, a poor candidate from LBS may have higher salary demands than a top candidate from Cranfield.

Hmm, well I was at LBS myself, but I must say my cousin (who was at Cranfield) had to work much harder than me, as he had to cram it all in to 12 months. Taking two years without pay and paying the extra fees is really only an option for people who are sponsored or who come from a certain type of family in my view. LBS has an average age of about 27 and I can't believe many of them could have saved up enought through their own toil in such a brief time.I've just taken a look at the most recent rankings to be published, which are the EIU and the FT European Business School rankings, and in both of those Cranfield is way above Said and Judge. As regards Cranfield vs LBS, it's 1 a piece in those two rankings.Oxford and Cambridge obviously have the brand names, but don't forget that Cranfield has been going for a long time, has many, many alumni in a broad range of top positions, and will be using all its energies to stay near the top.

I'm currently studying for my MBA at Cranfield so I'm bound to be a little biased. But I would have to say the following to the person who said his or her consulting firm has ditched Cranfield in favour of Said and Judge: Cranfield has just won the European final of the AT Kearney consulting competition for the second year in a row. This is a competition entered by all the top European business schools. I don't think this indicates that Cranfield has somehow fallen down in its ability to prvide quality for the consulting industry. Plenty of good consulting firms would seem to agree, judging by the number that has already been here to recruit us. Finally, Cranfield was already well placed and is currently on the up in all the rankings that matter...it's a vibrant, dynamic business school and I'd recommend it to anyone.

I think "ditched" means not visiting the campus for a specific presentation, rather than discounting applications form there. Which makes sense if a company has limited time and resources to visit campuses - put Said & Judge together and there must be more MBA candidates in total than at Cranfield. Since the exercise is about touching as many "good enough" people as possible for a given marketing budget, it's a natural decision but not a judgement on quality of candidates or qualifications.

Hi INTERESTED!!First of all- AS IF IT WAS SO EASY TO GET INTO OXBRIDGE?secondly- I WENT TO ONE OF THE OXBRIDGE COLLEGES- AND BELIEVE ME ALL THE TOP MC FIRM AND IBs LOOK ONLY FOR THE OXBRIDGE STAMP- they could care less even if you did music at Oxbridge- they will still pick you up instaed of that brilliant guy from Warwick or whatever for the initial screening- YES, they make no bones about it.and finally- AS IF IT WAS SO EASY TO GET INTO OXBRIDGE...ALL THE BEST ANYWAYTOM

Tom,Why are you shouting? Why is your syntax and punctuation so pikey? Hardly Oxbridge calibre!

You can tell from the way tom writes that he's only a kid so go easy on him.

Oh yeah, because your course (Land Economy) is so tough to get onto and has such a great reputation Tom. BCC offers anyone?

Hi Anon-I am a post doc student at the Cambridge Brain Repair Centre- & my girlfriend works for Mckinsey- and hence an ocassional cruise at this forum- because I think it is an interesting job- though I wouldnt trade it for anything that i am into, at the moment-Land Economy- who ever told you I was into Land economy- anyway try even to get into the 'weakest dept' at one of the oxbridge colleges....ta,Tom

I guess you're the "before" at the Brain Repair Centre then Tom

"my girlfriend works for Mckinsey"Hmm, you sure? Does anybody at Mckinsey have a partner? Or a social life?

The colleges don't have departments... and it is clear that neither university would accept you.If you have no chin but a bag of half-decent A-Levels (hard to get anything else nowadays, no matter what your ability, if you go to a decent school) then Land Economy or similar will have you.Equally it really isn't so hard to get into an obscure course and / or unfashionable college.

ATTENTION TOM:(End of shouting - just wanted to make sure I got your attention).A while back - probably around the time you stopped pi$$ing in your nappy - I got accepted to do a PhD at Oxford. It wasn't in basket-weaving either; marketing psychology.Anyway, you're wrong. It wasn't hard to get in, contrary to what you suggest. And, as it happens, I turned them down.Moral of story: Oxford and Cambridge universities (and there are two of them, not one called Oxbridge as you seem to believe) are extremely good but not the be-all-and-end-all.If you are really at one of them (I have my doubts) you must be something of an anomally, and you won't last. Calibre AND class are base requirements there.You are missing at least one...

Hi Tom, I got offered a place at Oxbridge at MSc, Phd and post-doc level. I rejected them all. I chose to go to a better uni that does that kind of thing - neuroscience if you're interested (Tom? You must know the Godless place on Gower Street that lets people in on the basis of ability?) Did you get rejected from there? Too competitive for you? If not, why did you not apply to Queen's Square? Not have the balls to go to the States? What are the research ratings for Cambridge physiology these days (Tom)? Worse than most (all) Russell group Unis where I did my undergrad? I'm now off to a top tier MC firm.Come on - hide your head in the sand in a dire little place behind the times and the Cam. And why the hell are you on a forum for MC when you're a researcher - where's your life?JT - bring it on Tom - I know where you're coming from: knowhere!

ha..ha..Looks like I have set a lot of barking dogs loose..sour grapes..sour grapes..insecurity insecurity sigh! no more wasting time!Back to my Oxbridge coocon- let the lesser mortals bark ;)Tom( hope this won't spark of another barrage of barking)

BTW JTAMERICA????I was at Harvard- undergrad-Currently a Gates scholar- so don't be surprised if I told you we receive unsolicited mails from so called top tier firms to work for them...so its "Been there.. Done that" ;)ta ta