It depends on what you want and what you're starting with. I don't have a photo handy of the way my bike was before conversion, but here's one of the same type of bike:



Here's my bike:



The stem I'm using puts the bars at roughly the same height as they were but the reach is much shorter. That's because a mountain bike typically has a longer top tube than the equivalent sized road bike so I had to compensate. When you ride on the hoods, your hands are farther forward than they would be on a flat bar bike. Depending on the type of drop bars you have and how they are positioned, your hands maybe slightly lower on the hoods than the point where your bars are connected to the stem. Most "flat" bars aren't really flat. They often sweep back and up some.

If I wanted a really aggressive riding position like my road bike I could have used a stem with little or no rise but since I'm using this as a winter bike I didn't want as much weight over the front wheel. This is in order to minimize the chances of a front wheel skid.

The other thing I had to take into consideration is that the frame is a little on the small side for me.