MSEE, MBA or both?

I am currently studying BS Audio & Music Engineering (EE with a musical focus, you can guess what school am at). I am a second semester freshman (as of Jan 2016).

My school provides an option of a 4+1 program with MS in EE, of which I was considering, but my parents want me to get an MBA (father is BS CS + MBA from MIT and mom two years at MISiS and Business Administration at UIowa).

My dream is to work in building and designing audio equipment and also work on complex EE design and innovation. I have also thought about starting my own audio engineering company like Bose Corporation, but I don’t know how that will benefit society and improve life on earth (I think about that a lot when validating my life choices).

What do you suggest? What experiences have you had with either BS + MBA, BS/MS, or BS/MS + MBA?

I have a BS and MS in EE, and know a few people who have the BS/MBA option. Here are a few observations:

Getting an MBA generally means you are done being an engineer. When your highest degree is in business, why would anyone invest time and energy in you as an engineer? You might be able to work your way back, by coming into a company in an area like program management and then later convincing them to give you a shot at an engineering position, but that is extraordinarily difficult unless you already have some significant engineering chops before you get the MBA.

Get some engineering chops before you get the MBA. Seriously, outside of MIT and a couple of similarly elite schools, an immediate MBA is all but career suicide - no one wants to hire you as an engineer (see above), but you also lack the experience to be in the kind of job that really benefits from an MBA. Spending 4+ years in industry helps to ensure that you have a reasonable chance of making that degree pay off.

Don’t benchmark off of MIT. If someone says “I did XX academically/professionally, and this is what happened”, and they went to MIT and you didn’t, ignore it. Just ignore it. People in the tech world have serious beer goggles for MIT, and just assume that for anyone out of that school (and a few others like it in various fields, like Harvard and Stanford) conventional rules don’t apply. Not everyone, of course, but enough that MIT grads get a distorted view of the world.

An MS is almost always a good idea for a technical professional, but you need to be careful. With a BS you are presumed to be trainable in just about any area, but when you get your MS your set of employable areas shrinks. 4+1 programs are convenient, but you might be jumping in before you really know where you want to specialize and may be committing to the wrong school for graduate studies.

Remember that you can’t get the same degree twice from different schools. If you get an MSEE in your 4+1 program, you can’t just go get another one a few years later from a different school in a different area. So focus less on getting it fast, and more on getting it right.

If that’s your dream, then the MS in EE (in audio and music engineering) is the way to go. It’s more likely to lead to an entry level position and the type of basic work you want to do. You can always go back to school for your MBA (and working for a few years could help you get into a more selective MBA program).

Getting your BS and then going straight into a MBA program, typically (but not always) leads to consulting roles (you are viewed as a “MBA” with a technical background). It can make it harder to get some EE jobs as they may think you’re not committed to being an Engineer.

However, this discussion is a bit early. You really have another 1 and 1/2 years before you need to start thinking about the 4+1 program. In that time, you may even switch majors.

Anything that helps build and promotes culture, is a great thing. That aside, think about what type of career and work makes you happy; benefiting society can take many forms and doesn’t have to depend on your major.

I think this program sounds really interesting, if music and audio are your passion. Given the uniqueness of the program, if you like the program and can afford to stay another year and get the MS, I would do it. You will get a generic MS-EE degree (which is more bland if you need to work outside of music/audio) and will get to work more closely with this unique program and probably some very committed professors.

While you can get your MS at night paid by your employer, which is really thrifty, that is really a tough lifestyle, working 40 hours and then getting a difficult technical masters, and in this case, unless you get a job in Rochester, you may not find a program this well suited to your interests. Part-time masters drag on several years, and if you start a family or have a serious career, finding time becomes even more difficult.

If you are academically inclined, masters coursework will likely be more satisfying than your undergraduate work, since you will learn why as well as just plug these values into these equations. And with a masters you are much more likely to get the type of highly technical work you want and you will be more qualified to develop some unique product.

If your interests really veer toward starting your own business, you could take some entrepreneurship or other business type classes while an undergraduate, that may also make your parents happy.

The MBA typically does take people out of the technical part of engineering. If you end up working at a big company, the MBA can be invaluable at moving up the corporate ladder (with pay and other perks) … nowadays, I think more people are going entrepreneurial which is a different breed of MBA. You may also want to see where your career takes you, that first job may really change your path … by identifying what you love or even what you don’t.

What about working in an academic lab on engineering projects? I was recently introduced to Fei-Fei Li’s ImageNet project and have been interested in a while on working on projects like that in EE and or AME (assuming I find some).

Well, I have never met anyone in an academic engineering lab who had an MBA, so it is really hard to say that anything other than a straight technical or scientific job would be worthwhile.