Ok, so as I have explained in another post I am an US citizen who under some weird circumstances ended up studying at a 4-year Brazilian college for undergrad. I applied to this school, knowing close to elementary school Portuguese, just for the heck of it because I didn’t want to do nothing after high school and by some miracle, plus some intense language learning on my part, I got in! Long story short, I always thought “this is temporary, I’ll transfer to a US school later” Well, it’s been 3 years and now I have 1 year left before graduation. I wouldn’t say it has been extremely difficult but there have been many times where being a foreigner definitely asked more effort on my part than it would for other native-speakers of Portuguese. I am now at a place where I can say my Portuguese is fluent, however I feel as if that’s the only skill I have obtained during these 3 years. Now, as I plan to apply for Graduate schools I suddenly face the reality that I have not had a single internship, work experience during my college years. Hence my question: is it possible/ even worth the time to apply to a school with no work experience?
I studied/ study advertising so I do have a pretty varied portfolio of print and audio-visual pieces, plus I don’t know if my moving from country to country counts as relevant experience or is just an interesting challenge, and I’m fluent in 4 languages. So is it a good idea to apply nonetheless? My programs of interest include International Business/Advertising/ Marketing.
Excuse any unnecessary details,
Thanks 
Perhaps business schools are different, but in my experience, it is nearly impossible to get into grad school without some relevant work or research experience outside of your classes. Personally, I think it’s a good idea to work after undergrad for a few years anyway to know for sure if you want to pursue a higher degree, which can be very time consuming, costly, or both. There is no shame in actually working after undergrad before going to grad school.
My D applied to a joint JD/MBA program. She had to get accepted to each program independently. Her MBA interview occurred after she had been accepted to the law school. The Business School interviewer had misplaced an entire page of D’s resume. She asked her (with an irritated tone in her voice, according to D), “WHY IN THE WORLD should we consider you as an MBA candidate with absolutely ZERO work experience?!”
Work experience seems to be a requirement for most business oriented grad school programs.
Part of the reason for requiring work experience before getting an MBA is that placing the students into good positions would be tough if they don’t have the work experience before hand. MBA positions may involve management or leadership of others and interacting with other business professionals in senior positions and how credible would you be in these roles when you yourself have not worked.
There is a separate forum for MBA questions, this forum is for research degrees where research experience is generally required but work experience generally isn’t.
MBA programs are generally meant to build upon things learned in the workplace, and so usually require 2+ years of professional experience. An MA or MS degree would be much more forgiving for a lack of work experience. Research experience and other related activities will matter as much or more in admissions to these programs.