[Program Fitting]IU, OSU, MSU

http://forums.businessweek.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?msg=74702.10&nav=messages&webtag=bw-bschools
Q:

Hi Guys,
Its that time of making choices. I have been accepted at following schools
IU - Good ranking, great marketing program, waiting for schol info
OSU - great resources, strong ops and logistics, waiting for schol info
MSU- great supply chain and ops, bad location, full schol + stipend
Vandy - great finance, good location, 30k schol
I am an engineer and most likely want to do operations and finance...
Any suggestions are appreciated...
My profile 700/5yrs WE-Automotive/Operations & Finance major.

A:
Hi Harry
For some reasons, I believe your decision doesn't lie in these schools or which one has the best fin or ops or whatever it is. All 4 schools have totally different career paths for you. The main criteria is why and how do you need your fin and ops based on you 5 yr engineer background. It depends heavily on where exactly are you heading for, and what specific parts do you need from either fin or ops. How do you weight them and why.

Why would you like to go operation and finance as an engineer? these are totally 3 different planets. I believe the reason lies within your original rationale and it must be a good one, and it'll definitely be your criteria to choose these schools from. What's your goals and career paths look like?
IU has almost the best marketing strategy curriculum in the league, while it's really shining on this field that it's easy to overlook its strong finance. While Vandy does have almost 2 levels more sophisticated courses than Kelley, Vandy goes to experiencial and higher academic finance.

For the supply Chain and operations, OSU connects more completely toward the front end and market-oriented, and it's harder and tougher to balance through the value chain. But there's a weird part that MSU although has a better reputation on supply chain and ops, the courses seems smaller selection than Fisher.

But all these are only the school part. All that matter is where exactly are you going? what kind of combination or mixture do you need on fin and ops, and why that mix will help you achieve your career in which field? the school selection should be based more specifically on what elements do you need and why, not from any rank or vote.