When deciding where to do your MBA, one of the biggest factors is “location:” where, geographically speaking, is your MBA campus located?

For those that might be a bit unfamiliar with Toronto, Toronto is Canada’s business and financial capital. As North America’s fourth largest city, it is quite big. However, a vast majority of Toronto’s (and by extension, Canada’s) largest companies’ head offices are located in the downtown core of Toronto, which happens to also be where the Rotman campus is located.  This brings Rotman some huge advantages for both students and employers.

Rotman’s Location Advantages for our Students

To land one’s coveted MBA internship and post-MBA job, one of the most important things MBA students must do is network with industry professionals and/or the companies they are interested in working for.

As a Rotman student, regardless of your career interest, be it finance, consulting, marketing, health care, etc., you are around a 10-minute trip away from most of the country’s largest and most prominent employers. This means all it takes is an hour break between classes to get the time you need to head to a company and meet with a Rotman alum or executive working at one of such companies. For all of you McKinsey fans, their office is actually even on the University of Toronto campus making access even easier!

When you consider as well, that our first year students do not have class on Wednesdays, an entire free day means the opportunity to meet multiple companies every week.

Now let’s examine the scenario of attending another b-school: At best, the Toronto downtown core (i.e. where Canada’s largest and most prominent employers are) is about a 1 hour and 15 minute trip away- and this is a best case scenario. When you factor in traffic and/or coming from a b-school that is a bit farther away, this becomes an even lengthier trip.

The below comparison of time commitments on a student for an informational interview (i.e. networking with one employer) will hopefully add some clarity to why location is such a huge advantage for Rotman students:

One meeting with one company takes over 3x less time for Rotman students! This leaves more time for our students to meet with even more companies, get involved in extracurriculars, polish their interview skills, etc.

You might be wondering though, in our internet-connected age, couldn’t students just Skype an employer and meet with them that way? I can promise you that for networking and landing one’s post-MBA job, the importance of face-to-face, in-person interaction cannot be understated.

Rotman’s Location Advantages for Employers Looking to Hire MBAs

Employers are very busy people with limited time for out-of-office activities (i.e. meeting students on an MBA campus). Put yourself in their shoes and consider the following 2 questions to an employer:

Question A: Can you take 50 minutes out of your day (the time to meet students + commuting time) to come to Rotman?

Question B: Can you take 3 hours out of your day (the time to meet students + commuting time) to come to (non-Rotman) school?

All else being equal, I hope it is clear which request an employer would be more likely to say yes to. 🙂 – And as a result of this, this leads to some pretty fantastic guest speakers coming on campus, from Bill Downe, CEO of the Bank of Montreal, to former Coca-Cola CEO Neville Isdell!

Hopefully this blog post helps illustrate why “location, location, location” isn’t just for retail success but is also pivotal for picking the right MBA school!