<p>I'm currently a undergraduate majoring in chemical engineering. My college, RPI, has a program where I can get a MBA and a BS in five years. Is an MBA helpful if I want a job that pays well? How much increase in salary is it? Will it be worth the extra cost of the degree along with the opportunity cost?</p>
<p>Oh, yes, indeed, take advantage of the MBA in five years. I live in Louisiana, and chemical engineers with MBA get big bucks. If you’re female, you’ve got it made. You can pretty much write your ticket. As for how much you’ll make, at least an extra 30K a year, just to start. More opportunities for advancement, so you’ll pull in major bucks after a few years, like an extra 100K/year. You’ll also have more job security, ie, less likely to be laid off. You’ve got to be willing to travel, though, and possibly relocate when new positions open up within the company. This is the case in engineering whether BS or MBA, though. But if you get an MBA and are willing to travel for work, even going out of town for a few days for meetings, you’ll do very well. Good luck!</p>
<p>I’m afraid I won’t get hired, due to my lack of experience. I’m have one semester of research in chemical engineering, one summer internship in process control, and hoping to get an internship in business before I graduated the five year program. It was either taking the RPI MBA program or taking two years to work in the industry and apply to a top MBA program. As others have suggested, the RPI is not well known for it’s MBA. I might come out of the program making less than an entry level chemical engineer without an MBA.</p>