Warren Buffet, Wharton, Harvard and Columbia

On my trip to Philly and the visit to the Penn Campus, I had a lot of time to think. One of the things that crept into my mind while walking past Franklin Field on the way to the Penn Museum of Archeology and Anthropology (excellent museum by the way) was that Warren Buffet had attended Wharton as an undergrad. That thought entered my mind because in Roger Lowenstein's book, "Buffet, The Making of an American Capitalist", there is a picture of Buffett at Franklin Field when he was Penn student. So walking past Franklin field, triggered that recollection.

Anyway, when I got home from my trip, I pulled the book out, and reread the excerpts from that part of his life. Warren Buffett did attend Wharton, however, he transferred to and graduated from the University of Nebraska. Although Warren attended Wharton from 1947-1949, he left according to the book because he felt he knew more than the professors. After Nebaska, Buffett applied to and was turned down by the Harvard Business School. He then applied to Columbia Business School where he met Ben Graham of Graham and Dodd fame, and the rest is history.

I wanted to write about this because I feel there are somethings to gleam from this tidbit of Warren's life as it pertains to business schools and the admissions process in general. First of all, I find it amusing that as good as a reputation that Wharton has, Mr. Buffett decided to finish his undergraduate education elsewhere. At first glance, this apparent snub does not reflect too well on Wharton. What did the "the oracle of omaha" not like about Wharton that made him dropout? More to the point, is one foolish to disagree with Warren here and go to Wharton anyway? Oh the horror! Maybe Wharton wasnt right for Warren to begin with. How could the admissions office miss that?

And whats this about Harvard turning Warren down? What was the admission committee thinking? The fact that Warren made it big, even without Harvard, should be inspiration to the thousands that get turned away by the HBS or any business school for that matter.

One more observation that I want to point out is that in the book, Lowenstein alludes to Buffett's dissatisfacotry experience at Penn as forerunner to his generall dissatisfaction with business schools. I have heard of this being true of other business leaders as well, notably Jack Welch. In fact, there are some prominent thought leaders that hold the MBA in disdain. The two that I know of are Pfeffer at Stanford GSB and Mintzberg at McGill. Not surprisingly, many legendary CEOs and other executives do not hold MBA degrees at all but Ph.Ds (Think Grove at Intel, Welch at GE, Schmidt at Google ) . Moreover, many of the richest CEOs are college dropouts. Look who's running Dell, Oracle, Apple, Microsoft (Gates not Baldmer) etc. So should aspiring CEOs head for doctorates or the exits instead of an MBA? Is the MBA an overrated degree?

I pondered many of these questions when I was contemplating the MBA. In my opinion, its a worthwhile thought experiment to go through, but don't fret though. Alls well that ends well. Wharton and Warren's relationship has withstood the early rough going. Harvard's endowment is doing just fine thank you, even without Warren's money. Columbia can lay claim to having one of the world's richest men as a distinguished alum. And last time I checked, companies continue to value and look for the brightest and best MBA students by the bucket load each year.