<p>So my school has a combined engineering / MBA program which one can finish in 5 years. My question is this: is it at all worth it if I'm not yet sure I want to get into the management side of things?</p>
<p>If instead I take the traditional BS engineering route, work for a few years, and THEN decide I want to do something more higher-up in management and whatnot, how long would getting an MBA take compared to taking an extra year getting the combined engineering / MBA degree?</p>
<p>I would appreciate it if you guys can help me weigh out the pros and cons.</p>
<p>No, an MBA is absolutely pointless without work experience, you should have at absolute minimum of two years of professional experience before considering an MBA, and typically 5 or more years is preferred.</p>
<p>An MBA qualifies you for two routes: management and finance/consulting. The second requires a prestigious degree (Harvard, Penn, etc) but no experience, the first requires experience but no prestige. If you are interested in engineering management, a combined program will hurt you in every way - companies will be reluctant to hire you as an engineer (since you so clearly want to be a manager) and unwilling to hire you as a manager (as you have no experience).</p>
<p>Finish your degree and get a job. After a few years you can either leave for a 2-year full-time MBA (as one co-worker did) or start a 3-4 year part-time program (as several others did). By the time you are done you will have the 5-8 years of experience most companies want before they are willing to make you a manager.</p>
<p>Contrarian view:Go ahead and get it. You won’t be able to afford to leave a full time job for 2 years later on and do you really want to spend 3-4 years working full time and going to school at night or devoting most of your Saturdays to school for several years?
You can be promoted into management anytime in the next four decades, but probably won’t be without an MBA. So once you have the credential, you have it forever and work experience will come over time. Sure there’s value in having some work experience under your belt while getting the MBA, but it is awfully hard to get the degree later unless you are financially well off not to mention well motivated to devote the time and energy to it.
Even though you won’t be in management til long after the MBA, you will still be able to experience the work with a management viewpoint which you will probably not have otherwise. Under the alternate strategy of delaying the MBA it would then still be a few more years after the MBA during which you would prepare yourself for management.</p>
<p>Ironic that some people think it is ok to go into consulting right after graduation in some fields without any real work experience, yet don’t think it is a good idea to pursue mere education without work experience.</p>
<p>I’m a business school professor. I echo others’ opinions that without work experience, the MBA doesn’t make a lot of sense. Then again its only a year so you can add it to your resume, it isn’t going to hurt either.</p>
<p>Completely and absolutely disagree that you ‘need prestige’ for finance and consulting. Not at all.</p>
<p>Don’t do the 5 year BS/MBA thing. The MBA is in someways a signalling mechanism to management that you are ready for the next step. Thus, if you aren’t ready than don’t do it… And, you aren’t ready for management if you have no experience.</p>
<p>@mrego - while I disagree with “just go for it”, I do highly agree that new graduates going into consulting seems more than a little dumb. I have never met such consultants personally - the only consultants I have ever seen at my company have been “graybeards” with decades of experience - but supposedly these inexperienced consultants do exist. I just cannot imagine why anyone would hire them, except to steamroller them and do what you wanted anyway.</p>
<p>@starbright - I will defer to your experience on the value of MBA prestige in finance. I was speaking from my own limited personal experience and the comments of others on these boards - I will trust that you have a far better perspective on this issue.</p>
<p>Can you clarify? If finance means front office at a bulge bracket investment bank and consulting means strategy consulting, than prestige really is needed. If your school is not recruited at, than you have to apply online. At that point if your school isn’t prestigious or if you don’t have connections, you have no chance. </p>
<p>Also, at least for undergrad, the list of “prestigious” schools for IB/consulting is way smaller than I used to think. Recruiting drops off very sharply once you leave the top 10 and is almost non-existant outside of the top 15 (with the exceptions of a few big public bschools, which arguably should be in the top 15).</p>