<p>What exactly do the MBA schools mean by work experience?</p>
<p>Can business related interns/part time jobs count during your undergraduate studies as work experience? </p>
<p>So if I intern every summer of my college career would that count as a years worth of work experience?</p>
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Can business related interns/part time jobs count during your undergraduate studies as work experience?
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<p>No.</p>
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So if I intern every summer of my college career would that count as a years worth of work experience?
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<p>No. </p>
<p>The general rule is that only full-time, post-undergraduate work experience is considered. </p>
<p>More importantly, learn to use the search function. Also, there is a thread at the top of this section that deals directly with this issue, go read that before posting a question that has been answered many times. There's a reason why it's pinned at the top.</p>
<p>SKY's answer is sweepingly wrong. Each school has its own view on this. I recently email Yale with this very question and was told that internship do count as valid work experience. </p>
<p>Some MBA programs don't require any work experience, Carnegie Mellon's Tepper school, MIT's Sloane, and I'm sure others, too.</p>
<p>You just have to ask each school you are interested in.</p>
<p>Mimsey Tove,</p>
<p>First, the OP's question was not "is work experience required for all MBA programs?" </p>
<p>The OP asked what MBA programs consider "work experience," in that context, work experience is almost always post-undergraduate full-time positions. When you start to quote how much work experience you have towards MBA admissions, that is exactly what they are looking for. </p>
<p>The schools you mentioned do not have hard requirements for years of work experience. However, to say that you do not need work experience to have a shot at admissions is foolish. CM's own website says "Candidates with post-undergraduate professional experience have, everything else equal, a better chance for admission." Over 90% of their full-time MBA students come in with significant work experience (average of over 4 years), and the percentage increases by a percentage point or two every year. </p>
<p>Was my answer short and simplified? Yes, of course it was. But I have to take issue with you calling my answer "sweepingly wrong." In general, my answer is correct, and certainly applies to the spirit of "work experience" that B-schools are looking for.</p>
<p>In general is fine, but individuals not generalities apply to B-school, and each case is evaluated individually. </p>
<p>Someone with three summers of solid work, 3.8+ GPA from a top 10 school, and 760 GMAT might have a better shot at a place in a good MBA program than someone with 3.1 from a Tier 2 school 620 GMAT and two years of ho-hum work experience.</p>
<p>"Some MBA programs don't require any work experience"</p>
<p>That is so they can place the children of top donors into their program straight from undergrad. If you don't fit into a special interest group such as that then you don't have much of a chance of getting into a top 20 program with no work experience. And LMAO @ any school that counts internships as "work experience"</p>
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So if I intern every summer of my college career would that count as a years worth of work experience?
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Vast majority of summer internship experience, even some "great ones", simply are not competitive against any 2-5 years of solid business experience. </p>
<p>In my encouters, some straight-from-college MBA students lack the emotional maturity compared to their older peers. So, a few years of "aging" can really help one maximize the benefits of an MBA.</p>
<p>As I just mentioned in another thread, due to the nature of the educational process in business school, the intelligence and experience that your classmates bring to the table is a very significant factor in how much you will learn in business school. Internships and summer jobs just don't cut it.</p>
<p>Attending business school straight from college or without significant post-college work experience (if you can get in) is a huge mistake, in my opinion, because, among other things, you will likely be pushed to the sidelines by your classmates and discounted as someone who doesn't have much to add. That is definitely not a place you want to be, particularly since your business school classmates hopefully will be some of your greatest business contacts. There is also a lot to be said for how steep the learning curve is out there in the "real world" whether that learning comes on the job, from having personal financial responsibility (paying bills, etc.) or from other sources. You cannot possibly discount how much you learn in addition to simple job skills while working full time (for example, team building, balancing multiple roles, leadership, thinking "out of the box", etc.). Those skills, and the experiences that you have while working full time, whether good or bad, in addition to your native intelligence, inform your judgment and are the basis of what you, as an individual, have to offer when you attend business school. </p>
<p>It has also been my experience that business school students, even at top MBA programs, without prior full time work experience are hurt fairly dramatically in the interviewing and hiring process.</p>
<p>"you will likely be pushed to the sidelines by your classmates and discounted as someone who doesn't have much to add. " </p>
<p>I think that would depend a lot more on personalities than work experience.</p>
<p>"from having personal financial responsibility (paying bills, etc.) or from other sources"</p>
<p>Many kids get this experience while in college, especially if they live off campus. Rent, groceries, utilities, etc. all have to get paid.</p>
<p>"team building, balancing multiple roles, leadership, thinking "out of the box""</p>
<p>This seems to be the jargon du jour in the business world. Assuming there is any substance to this, these are things someone experiences after significantly more years of work than most people have entering MBA programs. Most people go after 2 years of working at the bottom of the ladder. </p>
<p>A very strong argument can be made for going for the MBA straight out of undergrad school. Opportunity cost can be huge even just 2 years later. If someone is making $75,000/yr that's $150,000 lost income. Going immediatly after graduating the lost income would be around $40,000/yr. or total $80,000. That's a $70,000 savings. The longer someone works before getting an MBA the bigger this opportunity cost will be. Then there is the annual increase in tuition, usually much more than salaries increase and inflation.</p>
<p>A person would still be in "school" mode going directly into an MBA program, and on completion would be better prepared for the business world than with out the MBA.</p>
<p>People aren't told they should work in law and the medical fields for a few years before law school or medical school, or any other professional schools, for that matter. In fact a person is less likely to get into those schools if they work a few years after undergrad school.</p>
<p>Okay, so what if I said that in my MBA class at a top business school, the very few students there who came straight through from college were completely written off by the entire class as naive, immature and foolish. I've heard similar stories from my colleagues from many different MBA programs. Why? These straight-from-college students had nothing to add to the conversations that form the heart of every class and every discussion in business school. Experiences paying rent on a college apartment shared with four fraternity brothers or working at a summer internship or staying up all night in a chem lab are hardly the fodder for good conversations with folks who have closed multimillion dollar deals, who have started and run businesses themselves and who have lived through corporate change. </p>
<p>These same students often struggled terribly in the on campus interview process and did not often get the jobs they would have chosen for themselves. MBA interviewers don't want to talk to you about your cost accounting class or your managerial methods class. Instead, they want to talk to you about how you have enhanced the skills you developed out there in the real working world. They want to talk to you about why you want to continue your career in one field or industry, or how your proven skills are transferrable to a new field or industry. No one wants to hear how much their undergrad calculus professor loved you and thought you were brilliant. Now, your former employer, on the other hand, who is begging you to return to their management training program -- well, now that would be something to talk about. </p>
<p>So much for your "opportunity costs" of working before attending business school. If you risk difficulties in finding a job post-MBA because you have no experience, then you have created opportunity costs by missing out on gaining that experience by working.</p>
<p>Sure, my statements are purely anecdotal, so you can choose to ignore my advice or you can take a moment to consider that your assumptions may not be good ones. Go ahead and apply! I wish you the best of luck.</p>
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In fact a person is less likely to get into those schools if they work a few years after undergrad school.
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<p>That is actually patently false.</p>
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In fact a person is less likely to get into those schools if they work a few years after undergrad school. </p>
<p>"That is actually patently false."</p>
<p>No it is patently true. It was straight from the mouth of someone on the admissions commmitee at at top medical school and from a Law professor on the admission committee at a top law school. They want kids straight from undergraduate school. A 25 year old is considered too old.</p>
<p>"Okay, so what if I said that in my MBA class at a top business school, the very few students there who came straight through from college were completely written off by the entire class as naive, immature and foolish."</p>
<p>If these kids were naive immature and foolish why are they sitting beside you in a top MBA program? Are you saying the student body isn't as stellar as it is made out to be? I suspect there is a bit of arrogance on your part that you would be well served to reign in. Your superior attitude seems immature to me. These kids must have something special to get admitted to a top MBA program with no work experience.</p>
<p>How do you know how they did in interviews? Were you sitting in the room with them?</p>
<p>People always has difficulty trying to find their first job. An MBA would only help, not hurt. Clearly someone who got their MBA directly after undergraduate school would be interviewing for a different set of jobs than someone who has a few years work experience.</p>
<p>So, Mimsey, considering that you don't even realize that work experience is looked upon quite favorably by law schools (and, in fact, is highly recommended by law schools such as Northwestern and Penn), I really have nothing left to say here. If a 25-year old is "too old" for law school, than that would certainly be news to the classes of most of the top law schools in this country. I was simply trying to offer another perspective -- the perspective of someone who actually has a JD/MBA and who has interviewed a tremendous number of students for my company on campus over the years. As I said, please feel free to disregard my advice. Best of luck to you.</p>
<p>Well, thank you Sally. Best of luck to you, too. Those naive foolish immature fellow MBA students will likely not want to interview with you. Feel free to disregard my advice.</p>
<p>Oh, and btw, if this ("who has interviewed a tremendous number of students for my company on campus over the years.") is true what on earth are you doing here? Don't you have better things to do?</p>
<p>1.) The average age for an incoming medical student is 25, according to the AAMC. So 25 can't be too old. (About) half of medical students are older than that. This is a pre-business forum, anyway, so why we're talking about law and medicine is beyond me, but that's incorrect even for medicine.</p>
<p>2.) An MBA with no work experience has an edge over a BS with no work experience. Eh. This I suppose makes sense, assuming that the MBA is still a candidate for the same jobs he would have been looking at for a BS. But the problem is that at that job, the usual track of kids is going to stay for a few years, go get an MBA, and then move on. What's our once-young candidate going to do, get a second MBA?</p>
<p>I do find most, if not all, of sallyawp's points are right on mark. Let's show some appreciation for those taking the time to help out in this forum.</p>
<p>Mimsey, do you plan to apply to the MBA program at your alma mater this year? I hope I will get the chance to read your file.</p>
<p>" Let's show some appreciation for those taking the time to help out in this forum."</p>
<p>I do appreciate people trying to help out, but I don't find it helpful for more experienced people to call recent college grads "naive foolish and immature", or telling people that going to a regional or local MBA program is a waste of time when other options aren't realistically open to them.</p>
<p>My alma mater does not have an MBA program.</p>
<p>Okay, I will jump back in here because I don't appreciate my statements being mangled. </p>
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I do appreciate people trying to help out, but I don't find it helpful for more experienced people to call recent college grads "naive foolish and immature"
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<p>I was describing the general perception of the very few students in my MBA class who came straight to business school from college. I'm sure that these students had something very special in their resumes in order to be accepted in the first place, and I never said that they were actually naive or foolish or immature. I said merely that that was the general feeling among my classmates (based on a combination of assumption and actual statements made by these students), and these students were largely discounted because of that perception. There is a reason why so few students are admitted to MBA programs straight from college.</p>