Thanks Josh for commenting - I'm certainly happy t...

2006-08-09T08:10:00.000-06:00

Thanks Josh for commenting - I'm certainly happy to have people defending BYU. I appreciate what a great place it is and how lucky I was to attend. And you're right, the people there are very smart and very hard-working.

When I graduated from BYU with my undergrad in 2000 I went to work for a company that recruited heavily from MIT, CalTech, and other expensive schools. As I recall, during that year this company recruited more engineering grads from MIT than any other company - including Microsoft.

They also recruited heavily from BYU. I suppose I had an inferiority complex for the first few months because I was surprised to find that BYU students consistently outperformed rivals from more prestigious schools. For instance, during training we were put into teams to compete against each other on some difficult projects - almost without exception (in my team, in fact) it was somebody from BYU that was named team MVP.

I agree that BYU students are very smart, very hardworking, and generally deserving of great grades. However, since grades are meant to put students in a ranking, it sort of defeats the purpose to let everyone get high grades (I've heard that Stanford has the same problem, by the way).

Whether deserved or not, that BYU students have higher GPAs is perceived as grade inflation. That is a problem when you are applying for MBA schools. I've heard an AdCom at Wharton once suggest that they have a table to adjust GPAs from schools where the grades are comparatively too high. If a table in fact exists, I'm doubtful they factor in qualitative data such the Mormons work ethic.

I didn't understand your comment about Brent - are you taking the ace class?

you mention or rather charge (without much support...

2006-08-09T00:01:00.000-06:00

you mention or rather charge (without much support) that BYU has a "bad case of grade inflation." I have heard this many times, however, BYU students also have higher standardized test scores both entrance (ACT) and exit (GRE,GMAT,LSAT,etc). Since these are standardized for the country it is safe to assume that BYU students are just smart and hardworking and deserve their grades. Afterall, how many of your graduate school bound classmates at BYU regularly skip class because they are half drunk? BYU is a whole other world of academic seriousness unparallelled anywhere else and rightfully it should show on our grade reports. (This is partially inspired by Brent Dunn of ace by the way)

Comments on BYU MBA: Getting In

Thanks Josh for commenting - I'm certainly happy t...

you mention or rather charge (without much support...