This is a ridiculous question. Do you want to practice law or do you want to do business? Are you a foreigner? If you're an American and you want an LLM, it's not going to change your prospects at all. Also, despite your objection it absolutely matters what school you are going to. There's a huge difference between an MBA from Stanford and an MBA from Boise State or an LLm from Oklahoma. If you can get an MBA from an M7 school (Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Chicago, Columbia, MIT, or Northwestern), do that over any LLM program.

Which degree do you guys think is better for career prospects leading to executive positions (whether it's CEO of Company X or partner of Law Firm Y)? And please don't go on a rant about BigLaw, your law school grades, the law school you attended, why furthering your education is a waste of money, etc...

If you had to choose...MBA or LLM? I could only find one previous thread: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=115634

This is a ridiculous question. Do you want to practice law or do you want to do business? Are you a foreigner? If you're an American and you want an LLM, it's not going to change your prospects at all. Also, despite your objection it absolutely matters what school you are going to. There's a huge difference between an MBA from Stanford and an MBA from Boise State or an LLm from Oklahoma. If you can get an MBA from an M7 school (Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Chicago, Columbia, MIT, or Northwestern), do that over any LLM program.

1) UG - Princeton
2) JD - Yale
3) MBA - Harvard
4) ?
5) Profit

Or you can find some guys with an idea for a website, screw them out of the company, and IPO for $38/share

it really is a waste of money. no executive ever got to where he was because of his degrees. He got to where he was because he made his name in the field while working. Unlikely anyone looks at the resume and says OH BUT HE HAS AN LLM/MBA so we should hire him over X. This is precisely why these degrees are to be avoided and you should just get work experience.

it really is a waste of money. no executive ever got to where he was because of his degrees. He got to where he was because he made his name in the field while working. Unlikely anyone looks at the resume and says OH BUT HE HAS AN LLM/MBA so we should hire him over X. This is precisely why these degrees are to be avoided and you should just get work experience.

While that used to be true, it's not so much anymore. In the old days, an employee could start at the ground floor and potentially one day become CEO. Now, most larger employers have two tier employment systems in which one group has a glass ceiling (i.e. bank tellers/consultants at bank branches) and the other group does not (i.e. risk analysts at the headquarters of the bank). In theory, high powered degrees will get you into the second group.

The M7 designation isn't really a thing in practice. All M7 means is that the deans at those schools meet every year; it would be rare for an employer to have an arbitrary cut off at that mark. I would say that the OP should probably consider the entire top 20 (according to Poets and Qants, which aggregates all of the MBA rankings), and then maybe a few outliers (like Rice, USC and maybe GTown).

Like law schools, there are distinct tiers (though not as distinct as among law schools) in business schools:
Tier 1: Harvard/Stanford
Tier 1b: Wharton
Tier 2: Chicago/MIT/Kellogg
Tier 3: Tuck/Columbia/Haas
Tier 4: Michigan/NYU/Duke/UVa/Cornell/Yale/UCLA

You would be taking on a lot of risk by paying to attend any business schools other than these.

This is ill informed.

This conforms generally to what I always thought. Though I would make the tiers bigger:
Tier 1: Harvard/Stanford
Tier 1b: Wharton
Tier 2: Chicago/MIT/Kellogg/Tuck/Columbia
Tier 3: Haas/Ross/Stern/Duke/Darden/Cornell/Yale/UCLA
Others

No, this way of looking at it doesn't make sense. Schools specialize in completely different things, so you can't easily line them up like you can with law schools. I believe that Harvard is a great all around choice, and should probably be at the top of the list. Beyond that, it depends completely on your interests. If you want to go into finance, you would be much better off going to Harvard, Wharton, Columbia, Chicago, or Stern than any of the rest. Even within this set, there are stark differences. For example, Columbia is the home of value investing, which is a much different approach to investing than you might find elsewhere. If you're into entrepreneurship, Stanford or Haas are the obvious choices over all others. If you want to go into marketing it would be totally foolish to go to Wharton over Kellogg. Also, Tuck is a rural school without much pull on Wall Street or well known specialization in anything in particular. Why you would put it in the same category as the others is beyond me.

Basically what you've assembled looks like a random smattering of names based on some arbitrary sense of prestige.

No, this way of looking at it doesn't make sense. Schools specialize in completely different things, so you can't easily line them up like you can with law schools. I believe that Harvard is a great all around choice, and should probably be at the top of the list. Beyond that, it depends completely on your interests. If you want to go into finance, you would be much better off going to Harvard, Wharton, Columbia, Chicago, or Stern than any of the rest. Even within this set, there are stark differences. For example, Columbia is the home of value investing, which is a much different approach to investing than you might find elsewhere. If you're into entrepreneurship, Stanford or Haas are the obvious choices over all others. If you want to go into marketing it would be totally foolish to go to Wharton over Kellogg. Also, Tuck is a rural school without much pull on Wall Street or well known specialization in anything in particular. Why you would put it in the same category as the others is beyond me.

Basically what you've assembled looks like a random smattering of names based on some arbitrary sense of prestige.

Your response makes it clear that you have never worked in finance/consulting or gone to business school. The situation on the business side mirrors the situation on the law side; academic specialty doesn't matter at the top. It doesn't matter that Vermont Law School has the #1 ranked environmental studies program; the fact that Columbia Law School is #2 is corporate law wouldn't cause admitted students to choose it over Stanford/Yale.
The most important criteria for prospective students in selecting business schools is employment. Most of the MBA students everywhere want the same thing - good jobs, and good jobs are fairly uniformly defined at the top business schools to include private equity, venture capital, investment banking, management consulting, start-up, and corporate management. The above rankings represents opportunities schools provide for their students. Private equity and venture capital firms focus mainly on Stanford, HBS, and Wharton. The Bulge Bracket banks and consulting firms recruit heavily from Chicago/MIT/Kellogg/Tuck/Columbia. The fact that Kellogg is an academic powerhouse in the area of management doesn't give its student much edge in consulting. Despite Booth's prowess in finance, PE and VC firms still prefer Stanford and Harvard grads. The fact that Columbia is known for value investing isn't going to be the overwhelming factor that gets its grads into PIMCO, for PIMCO still prefers Harvard grads. Tuck's location is more than compensated for by the loyalty of its alumni. Therefore, the specialization that you think sets business schools apart doesn't really affect the most important consideration when choosing a business school - employment.

No, this way of looking at it doesn't make sense. Schools specialize in completely different things, so you can't easily line them up like you can with law schools. I believe that Harvard is a great all around choice, and should probably be at the top of the list. Beyond that, it depends completely on your interests. If you want to go into finance, you would be much better off going to Harvard, Wharton, Columbia, Chicago, or Stern than any of the rest. Even within this set, there are stark differences. For example, Columbia is the home of value investing, which is a much different approach to investing than you might find elsewhere. If you're into entrepreneurship, Stanford or Haas are the obvious choices over all others. If you want to go into marketing it would be totally foolish to go to Wharton over Kellogg. Also, Tuck is a rural school without much pull on Wall Street or well known specialization in anything in particular. Why you would put it in the same category as the others is beyond me.

Basically what you've assembled looks like a random smattering of names based on some arbitrary sense of prestige.

Those schools have the best recruiting by and large, and they would be more valuable than any LLM if a business role is your goal. I'm not saying that NYU, Dartmouth, Berkeley etc. wouldn't be great choices too. I was just using it as a shorthand because the M7 are generally considered the very top tier schools.