MBA: worth it? where to get it?

What type of program are you looking for? What are your grades from undergrad? Have you taken the GMAT?

Finance, the best schools are as follows: Wharton, Columbia, NYU, Chicago, MIT.
General: Harvard, Darden, Tuck, Kellogg, Stanford, Michigan.
Marketing: Kellogg, Stanford.
Accounting: Illinois, UT-Austin
Entrepreneurial: Babson, Stanford.

As far as is it worth it?, it depends. If you are going to attend a sub top 20 school, might as well go part-time and have your company pay for it. But if attend one of the top 20 schools (WSJ and business Week have the most dependable rankings) it is worth it. It also depends on your career goals and what you want to do after you have the mba, and if you are using it to try and change careers. Drop me a pm and I'll explain more for you.

 

Where do you want to work? If you want to hit the big consulting firms, etc., find out which one has a higher placement rate there. If you want to work for a local company, find out which one has more alumni in the area you want to live. Biz school is a great education, no doubt, but the real value comes from the networks you can tap into.

Sachin

 

Here are the things I learned about MBAs when I was looking into one:

-- It makes more sense to get professional work experience (the number that my previous consulting firm employer always used was 2 years) in between undergrad and MBA than to go straight from one school to the other. Companies that are willing to pay top dollar to MBAs aren't going to pay top dollar to you if you don't have real-life experience.

-- If you like your present job and think you want to make a career there, do the evening / executive MBA and get them to pay for it. Sure it takes 1-2 more years, but financially you are better off sacrificing your time now than losing two full years of earning power plus saddling yourself with MBA-level debt.

-- Pick your school based not on the general rating, but the concentration rating. For example, if you want to be an entrepreneur, go to Babson, no questions asked, even though Babson overall scores worse than, say, Harvard. If you don't know what your specialty is yet, don't go to school. It's too much time and money for you to spend the first semester choosing a "major". Because...

-- ... If you're going full-time, your summer internship is absolutely critical. Ideally, you want a job offer in August before your second year begins. Make sure that your school has good internship opportunities, and get to know the placement people way early, like during your first weeks there.

As it turns out I didn't get an MBA because I have an MA in economics, and that + my work experience is basically a wash. Which just emphasizes the first point, which is that nothing beats work experience when interviewing. As a manager I don't care if you have a Ph.D. in everything; I want proof that you excel in a corporate environment.

 

Both Purdue and TAMU are solid programs. Both are going to provide you with more localized contacts. If you want to stay in the South, or more likely Texas, then TAMU is the better bet. If you want to live in the Midwest, or more likely Chicago, go to Purdue. Purdue is generally thought of as a place where engineers and other non-business workers go to get their MBA. The grads will be more likely to end up at, for example, Boeing as a project manager inside an engineering department.

But as for myself, I am high on a program in New England that combines an MBA at a school in NH and a Masters of Arts in Law&Diplomacy at a school in the suburbs of Boston. Three years and I'll have a background in law and business. What a combo.

 

LA's lovely this time of year. And just about every other one . We have a wonderful Entrepreneurship program here at 'SC, and some of the biggest names in organizational studies reside at our Center for Organizational Effectiveness. Oh, and this Bennis guy is on our faculty. He writes something about leadership...

Is it worth it? absolutely. From someone who decided not to go full time, though, three words of advice: GO FULL TIME. Part time, if you're in a good program, you'll get the exact same professors, the exact same homework, better grades than your full-time classmates, and no access to the above-mentioned all-important summer internships.

Nonetheless, it has been worth it. Without a doubt. The sheer breadth of business knowledge I've picked up in these last 3 years, an entirely different way of looking at business, companies, supermarket shelves... That's all come from B-school.

 

Absolutely. I manage people in an HR department in a Fortune 500 company, and someone who focused on HR in school is much, much higher up the scale than someone who didn't. Someone who loaded up on finance or marketing is not nearly as interesting to me -- I've interviewed quite a few of them, and the first ten minutes is almost always spent on why they now suddenly have an interest in HR if they only took the requisite single HR class while in school. The immediate impression is that they're just after a job in a F500 company, not an HR job. And I'd think that this issue is more defined in the more technical fields like finance or operations.

A few different majors stand out -- my boss adores people with math backgrounds because she was a math major, and coming in with a major in, say, music education is not a good start. Most liberal arts majors are the same as long as there's work experience. A CS degree looks good for most any quantitative jobs.

 

The free factor is a great bonus. But one has to look at it in other ways as well. The social atmoshpere of a full time program is the closest thing you'll get to undergrad again. The internship aspect isn't that important if you're continuing on in a position while going part-time. But generally, if you go full time, you'll experience a rise in debt, but you wages should jump after you've finished your degree, where as a part-timer you generally won't see a jump.

And as far as specialization, it truly doesn't matter. I know plenty of history majors who have gone into consulting. English majors into HR. If you are smart and can think, you can be taught anything. Some of the highest earners on Wall St are those carrying PhD's in Physics.

 

It really depends on the job you've got now, I think. If you love it and the company has a generous reimbursement / MBA Development program, to me it would be near impossible to pass up the free tuition, even if it tied me to the company for 3-5 years. I know people who have been on both sides of this. The full-timers are split between those for whom the $50K debt is a pittance compared to what they earn, and others who didn't get the megajob after graduation and feel like the debt is a burden. It's a risk / reward decision, I suppose.

The undergrad major -- absolutely, for 95% of the majors. Most companies are enthralled with scientific or quantitative majors since it shows you have a strong analytical ability, even if it has nothing to do with their business -- hedge funds, for example, love math / comp sci / engineering degrees since those people are best-equipped to understand their trading models. I'm not as sure with the MBA. Certain schools have better connections with certain types of work.

 

I think this is a great time to get an MBA. I heard that the latest economic report is seeing upswings in employment for both young and older workers. Hopefully, by the time you graduate, it will even be better.

I completed my MBA last year, but so far no advancement. I work as a design engineer and was hoping to make the jump to product manager in marketing. Marketing was my concentration.

One of the product managers at our company had an MBA for three years before he was picked up by marketing. So, I don't think an MBA is a be all and end all. Still, it distinguishes you from someone who doesn't have it.

 

i just received a top 40 mba from Thunderbird and am a career changer. i realize now that I will need to build up a lot of experience before I get the MBA salary. I am going to give myself 3 years of work experience in a mid-level position before I am either promoted or I move somewhere else. I must admit that I am having mixed feelings on it now.

 

Full time and I just graduated and am on the job hunt now. I don't think the % change will be that much until I build up more experience. When that happens, I should be pretty well off.

 

I'm going to start an MBA program in the fall as well. I already have a Master of Public Administration, which is the low-paying, government equiv to an MBA. I was going to start a doctorate degree in the same field this fall but I have come to the conclusion that I'm not nearly disciplined enough for doctoral work yet (I hate to read).

I really hate school but I find that I can't quit taking classes. So...I'll get an MBA and concentrate in Finance. The reason I've decided to do this is that I plan on being my own boss very soon and I think a finance MBA will really prepare me for some of the bumps along the way.

Unlike most folks going for an MBA (assuming), I don't care about the school ranking. Since I plan on starting my own business it doesn't really matter which school has a higher placement ratio or higher starting salaries. What I looked for in a b-school was convenience, cost, and flexibility.

Looking in magazines and school guides isn't nearly as effective in finding a school as is doing a bit of self-reflecting and determining why it is that you want the MBA. If you look in the mirror and don't see a future CEO staring back at you, save your money and go to the local U. Most of us will never climb our way to the top of a F500 company so it's kinda silly to go into debt and work our ass off for two years pretending that we will.

If you do see a future F500 CEO when you look in the mirror...beg, steal and borrow your way to a top tier b-school, as it will most certainly make a difference. The difference will be the reputation and the networking that results from attending a top school and not necessarily the intrinsic value of the program itself, which is why most of us are better off at CCU (Cheap and Cheerful University).

Just my $0.02

 

The most important thing to know before you pursue an MBA is what you want to do with it. An MBA is very different from any other graduate program. At least for a full-time MBA, half of the learning is done in the classroom, the other half is done building social networks and building those sets of skills.

There has already been good advice in this thread. The two programs you are looking at are regional. It will be difficult to take those degrees outside their respective regions. Likewise for the people that you are going to get to know.

I really wouldn't worry about going into debt to get a top 20 MBA. All programs typically publish their average starting salaries by concentration. It shouldn't be difficult to determine yours and calculate your own payback schedule. A great seperator of schools is which employers have formalized interviewing with them.

Concentrations absolutely matter at the MBA level. When you interview you are trying to persuade an employer that you are a recognized expert in that particular field. That is why they will typically pay you as such.