<p>So I've heard of many people that get a bachelor's degree in Engineering then move on to get their MBA at a graduate school? Can anyone explain to me how that works and why people do it?</p>
<p>its actually pretty good combination…i think i saw a stat that like the most represented undergrad degree at mba schools was engineering NOT biz…go figure lol…um i think its cause they want to maybe make more salary and go for a big job…if it doesn’t work out then they have a steady guaranteed 90K job out of that engineering degree job they earned…just ccause u go to engineering doesnt mean u will end up engineer for the rest of ur life…my friends dad did engineering as undergrad…then got MBA…and he got like some nice engineering exec job of 500K…its a good idea to do it.prolly the best, safest gurantee of getting paid well in life…just make sure u get a high gpa in engineering</p>
<p>You can go into an MBA with any major. Business undergrads feel less compelled to get a MBA. Engineering students would be looking for a serious career change. Personally, I would advise against this route because Engineers often have low GPAs and you’re competing people with liberal arts majors. You may not get into your choice grad school.</p>
<p>Hm … Okay wait so if I were to get my MBA after my engineering degree, do I apply to just any graduate school or are there specified MBA schools? In other words, is MBA a PROGRAM that most graduate schools have, or is it a specialized school (Like Medical School)?</p>
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You can find a lot of info if you look up mba programs online. </p>
<p>In a nutshell, it is a specialized Masters program offered by only some schools. Furthermore your income will probably not rise by enough to make it worth the cost plus 2 years of lost income if you don’t go to a top MBA program. Top programs require you to have 3-5 years good work experience before they admit you.</p>
<p>On Wall Street, a lot of firms like to hire engineers as analysts because they’re not scared of math and have shown they can work hard. However being an analyst is a dead-end job; you need to get your ticket punched with an MBA to get promoted. Also a fair number of the leaders in the tech industry have an engineering degree and then went back for their MBA.</p>
<p>Most universities have a separate Business school. Examples include Anderson at UCLA, Haas at Berkeley, Kellogg at Northwestern, Sloan at MIT, etc. Their admissions requirements are usually more rigorous than the general college but less rigorous than other speciality colleges, such as Engineering, Law, or Medicine. MBAs are offered by a variety of colleges, however. Some of the less renowned ones (and online universities) do not have a special school for their MBA program. MBAs are often the only (or one of the few) graduate degrees many less prestigious universities offer.</p>
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Most MBAs awarded by a respectable university will yield similar results. (This is true for practically every major. That you will earn a lot more from going to a more prestigious university is pretty much a myth. The only thing offered by “top programs” is networking and you will likely know whether you’re going to earn an average MBA salary or more by the time you graduate.) The MBAs worth the piece of paper they’re printed on are generally ones awarded by trades schools such as ITT Tech. Of course, if you mean that your salary won’t increase sharply from engineering, that’s because engineers are paid a lot.</p>
<p>Agree some with both of you. If applying for top programs, you need at least ~5 years of industry experience. This is not a requirement but highly recommended because you need some references and recommendations, in which good ones come from successful work experience.</p>
<p>However, you don’t learn too much in a MBA program even at some top programs. Most so socializing, reinforcing some economic knowledge, and networking. </p>
<p>Still, an MBA degree only presents you leadership position opportunities. I don’t think you can 90K to 500K until you receive a few more promotions. As a Manager 1, your salary will probably be 120K-150K.</p>
<p>There’s been a shift in some of the top schools (Harvard, Stanford, another one) taking people straight out of college if they’re excellent, or after 1 year of work experience. But, you have to be a rockstar.</p>
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Academic research into the Return on Investment to getting an MBA is pretty much in agreement that the benefit is primarily seen at top schools. Here is an excerpt from one such paper:
As</a> to your 2nd point about the only benefit of top programs being networking opportunities, you ignore the entire body of economic research into the area of “signaling”. In fact the Nobel Prize in 2001 went for the research in this area. There is debate about what education actually provides, and one camp argues that it is primarily a signal. Being able to wave a dioploma from a top college is, to this point of view, primarily a stamp of approval that you were good enough to get in over all the others that applied.</p>
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I think the keyword to this statement is lifetime. How much money do you think a person makes in a lifetime? $113,000 averaged out over 40 years of work is just $2825 a year. The figure is really marginal in that respect.</p>
<p>It’s also quite unfair that the researcher chose to pit all programs past the top-25 into one category. While I will not attest to the strength of such programs, its unfair to associate an MBA program from a respectable university, such as UCI or USC, with the hundreds and hundreds of borderline programs offered by trade schools and internet colleges. This study provides no reflection of the financial gains of top-100 programs past the 25th.</p>