Recently, I’ve decided to leave Depaul Kellstadt MBA program (ranked 6th on US New & World Report part-time MBA) and transfer over to University of Illinois UIC Liautaud MBA program (ranked 24th out of 300 US News & Report part-time MBA). I firmly believe that I’m one of only a handful of students that have ever done this. In addition, Crain’s Chicago (Chicago top authority in business news) recently ranked Depaul 3rd in Chicago and UIC 6th in Chicago.
Now why would I want to leave Depaul MBA (ranked 6th) which has a massive alumni network in Chicago and transfer over to UIC (ranked 24th) with a much smaller alumni network? Sit down, sit down.. let me explain my madness.
- I was paying out of pocket for my MBA with which Depaul cost around $50k for the whole program while UIC MBA cost around $36K if finished within two years.
- UIC offers Graduate Assistant Position in which you’re paid a monthly stipend and basically half your tuition is waived (will go into more detail about this on next post)
- I wanted to go back for my MBA to actually learn and apply the principles to businesses. In which case:
Depaul VS UIC
Case study: 11 % Case study: 31 %
Distance Learning: 5 % Distance Learning: 9 %
Experiential Learning: 10 % Experiential Learning: 4 %
Lecture: 50 % Lecture: 20 %
Simulations: 3 % Simulations: 6 %
Team Project: 11 % Team Project: 30 %
Other: 10 %
- This was a HUGE deciding factor for me. Almost 30% less lectures and more attention on case studies, team projects, and distance learning. I find it hard to justify paying $3000 a class if I’m going to be only reading from a book and listening to a teacher lecture about it.
- While test scores do not really prove anything: Depaul (Average GMAT 573 and accepted 88% of applicants) while UIC MBA (Average GMAT 610 and accepted 45% of applicants). This tells me that UIC is trying hard to bring in quality students while Depaul is relaxing their admissions.
Although I have not started at UIC yet, I feel confident that I made a right choice. My goal from an MBA program was to take the principles I learned to apply to my future businesses. Don’t get me wrong, Depaul is a great school also. I met some really great people there. I believe that given the time and money constraint, UIC Liautaud Graduate School of Business was the better decision of the two.
Posted under UIC MBA Liautaud
This post was written by Jay on September 8, 2008
