Choosing a B-School: How Do You Want to Learn?

By Jeremy Shinewald, mbaMission

Here we present part four of our nine-part series, Selecting Your Target MBA Program. This week, we discuss the importance of pedagogy—the method of instruction and approach to education—at a top MBA program and how this can influence your choice of schools. Next week: Professional Specializations.

The case method, which was pioneered at Harvard Business School and is used predominantly at Darden, IESE and the University of Western Ontario (and to a lesser extent at Tuck), reuqiress a specific way of learning. You are given a business case—which can often be more than 20 pages long—to read, and as you do, you try to metaphorically fill the shoes of the manager about whom you are reading and analyze the often incomplete data that he/she possesses, reaching your own conclusions about the problem that is presented. After you have completed your analysis, you meet with your learning team and share your conclusions (or perhaps your questions!), and then everyone discusses and debates each other’s position and helps one another learn. READ MORE