Where was that you went to school?

I’ll admit that I have a bit of a complex about business schools. I never went (sorry – no “Seth J. Levine, MBA” on my business card . . . ) – probably because all of the schools I wanted to go to wouldn’t accept me for college, so I don’t see any reason to give them money for business school. Plus it was the rock and roll late 90’s and I still had dreams of getting rich in the internet bubble (which I did not, although I do continue to receive class action notices for various companies whose stock I owned at the time, much to my amusement).

So with that as my clear bias, I have a pet peeve to share with you.

I understand why many business schools are named after rich donors (in the same way that many cultural institutions have wings or buildings named after people who gave money in support of them), but why is it that someone tells you where they went to business school, they never actually tell you the name of the school the went to? I think it must be like a fraternity handshake – referring to schools in code. Personally, I think it's annoying.

No one went to Dartmouth – they went to “Tuck”; same is true for UVA (“Darden”); ditto Penn (“Wharton” – this one is even used by undergrads who studied business there); the list goes on.

Even schools whose name is in the name of their business school name have to use code (does anyone say they went to business school at Harvard? No – they went to “HBS”). My all time favorite is Stanford. No one goes to Stanford business school – they went to GSB (which is short for Graduate School of Business – said in a way to indicate that really, this is the only graduate school of business in the country worthy of having gone to, so why identify the actual school – everyone will understand).

I think I’m going to start telling people who ask that I went to BSOTDCB (business school of the dot com bubble), and then look at them with a blank stare when they ask me what that stands for (and in “DUH. Don’t you already know?”).

Comments

[Derek Scruggs]

Here's one way to get rid of the complex. I once saw Bill Gurley speak at Northwestern. As an aside he commented that if University of Chicago ever invites him to speak, he'll have spoken at every school that rejected him. ;)

[Jeb]

I, like Bill Gurley, attended b-school at the University of Texas at Austin. It's been called McCombs since 2000/2001 (thanks to $50M from Red McCombs), but nobody I know refers to it that way.

[George McQuilken]

Alas, I often hear graduates of the Harvard Business Schoool referring to it simply as "THE Business School."

[Josh King]

Right on, Seth - and since business schools don't have football teams you can root for, it's a little pathetic for anyone more than 1-2 years out of school to bring up in casual conversation where they got their MBA. Doing so in code is even worse.

Of course, an even more laughable display occurs when senior leaders of companies include in their bios the executive education sessions they've attended at top business schools.

[Chris Yeh]

The reason that HBS grads (like me) don't say that we went to Harvard Business School is because:

A) It's a long mouthful--just try saying it three times fast

B) HBS isn't really a part of Harvard. It has an entirely separate campus that is actually separated from the rest of Harvard by the Charles River. It has an entirely separate endowment.

Using HBS is actually the opposite of ostentatious because many people don't even know what HBS means (whereas everyone knows what Harvard Business School or Harvard MBA means).

That being said, I've never heard doctors say, "I went to HMS or SMS," so you may have a point!

[Dorrian]

I'll take your point about HBS and GSB, although in my experience Stanford students do say Stanford. However, if you ever donate $50 million to a business school, damn straight the students should refer to Levine the rest of their lives. That's just a good job by the administration living up to their end of the bargain and giving credit where credit is due.

[hunter]

Stanford did try a bit of rebranding a few years to "Stanford Business School." Never really took off.

I gotta agree with Dorrian's comment above - you say "stanford" - because no one outside of the MBA crowd knows what "GSB" is, and some who do might, gasp, think you were referring to University of Chicago. :-)

[james]

Never went to B-school, never wanted to, always preferred business experience over academic experience. Guy Kawasaki once said something to the effect of that when you value a startup, you add 100k for every engineer on board, and subtract 150k for every MBA on board. So even if you have that MBA, maybe you shouldn't market it...

By the way, there are a couple of places that are referred to by code in the field of medicine. MGH (Massachusetts General Hospital) and HSS (Hospital for Special Surgery). Coincidentally, those are legendary places to train that may be snooty in their own right. Otherwise I agree that there aren't many medical schools or hospitals that use such code.

[Charlie Kemper]

Some people are just not meant for business school. In fact, I would argue that, for many, business school has absolutely nothing to offer. You've probably heard this before, but at this point, there is very little that a business school could actually teach you. You're light years ahead of any business school grad. And, you've got $120,000 less debt than most of them (depending on how things actually panned out from the dot-com bubble).

Business school has its drawbacks... How many truly successful entrepreneurs went to business school? It could be argued that because of the peer pressure, group-think attitude, tuition costs, and employment signing bonuses, it's actually very hard to not go the route of a fairly conservative career.

In my opinion, if you're going to get a masters degree, get it in an area that can only be really learned at an institution. Business can be learned on the fly, but quantum physics can not; and marketing principles are ever-changing and vary by industry, but the basics of materials science or complex mathematics do not.

There is no better school than the BSOTDCB. Granted, I may biased in my opinion here too.

[shoelover]

MBA from the School of Hard Knocks......thank you very much.