Good place to find a spouse apparently:
Our neighbors met at Stanford GSB…
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you may meet mostly type A people.
there are some drawbacks.
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D got her MBA a few years ago and the cost was closer to $100K. In her case, though she chose a program rated about #30 over a top ten program because the lower (but still well) ranked program offered her a full tuition merit scholarship. So no grad school debt. No regrets, she loved her program and has a great job as a marketing manager in a Fortune 500 company.
FWIW - her undergrad major was Dramatic Literature. Worked in publishing for several years before going for her MBA full time.
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Sometimes it works out. That’s great!
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I’d like to concur with the comments above about the prior work experience and ROI even on an MBA from a top school. When I applied to HBS in ‘89, the school wanted five years of experience. I left an executive role to attend but didn’t complete the program partly because the payback wasn’t there. Many don’t consider the delta between wages going in and coming out. The cost of the program plus two years of my lost income were, most likely, about a ten-year breakeven. Plus, the program was more about the network than anything I was learning (800 cases, 800 times answering the question, “You’re the CEO, whaddya gonna do?” It got tedious.)
The top programs are looking for people who are already successful and who will be successful without the MBA. Admissions is about bringing those future changemakers together. During an admissions tour, the rep said that applying to HBS was like applying to a bank for a loan—the more you could prove you didn’t need the loan, the more likely you were to get it. Most of my section mates weren’t there for better compensation. They were there to bring caché to their companies or ventures and for the power and reach of the network.
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It’s funny you say that about networks. A lot of jobs post MBA are either direct or indirect sales jobs. Even many of the finance jobs are sales jobs. So you absolutely need the network. Certainly the consulting jobs are sales jobs. A VC job is a sales job of a kind.
My kid is going into a non-sales job after undergrad, and he is seriously considering deleting his linkedin account. That is the other extreme. Whatever network he has is a personal network. There is no intention of using it for the job. Unless for the occasional job change.
That’s not always the case. Not all post-MBA jobs are either direct or indirect sales job. Mine hasn’t ever involved any sales whatsoever since I got my MBA.
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I am using the term sales broadly.
I am sure some aren’t – but a lot of roles involve business development after the first 5-7 years if not sooner.
Curious what you do …
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DS has had some interest in the Engineering Management Masters. He is a bit hesitant about online and yet logistically that seems like the only fit. Where did your DD go, what were her impressions of the quality and benefits of the degree?
Actually a DNP is a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree - the terminal “clinical” doctorate degree for nurses. They can be nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists, etc.
A DNP is not necessarily always a nurse practitioner.
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I do project management, Agile SCRUM master stuff, and senior business analyst stuff for complex IT integration/multi-application implementations in the healthcare industry. Did the same for a loooong time in financial services sector as well.
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Here is the Harvard MBA placement data:
https://www.hbs.edu/recruiting/employment-data/Pages/default.aspx
Of the 70% that took jobs:
I would think that Business Development, Consulting, Finance (i doubt much of this is corporate finance), and Marketing to be Sales jobs or will become Sales jobs in some form. These total about 78%.
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Framing it this way is not useful. It makes it sound like a straight line. Do this and you will end up with that. No.
The major doesn’t lead you to your career. Who you are informs the major and the career you discover for yourself. Your higher education and your major area of study form you as a person who has 50+ more years of life.
Of course, vocation-dedicated majors* are a different ball of wax altogether. If you want to major in these, be darn sure that this is the career you want. Otherwise, the opportunity cost is great.
*nursing, hospitality, supply chain management, finance, speech therapy, education, culinary arts, event planning, pharmacy science, ASL translation, and engineering, just to name a few.
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I think we have a good sample of paths that are linear, and a good sample of paths that are not linear – meaning you discover your interests later in life.
If you are not in a vocation dedicated major, you will need to spend extra time on education later in life to gain more vocational skills whenever you decide. This is also not free.
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Depends. If you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, yes, of course. But it’s not a rule that if you major in English or Philosophy or Political Science you are up the creek unless you go to grad school. This thought is one of my pet peeves.
We cannot conjure up the vast universe of potential careers and jobs. Any one of us probably can only name 10% of the types of jobs and careers that exist. Careers unfold. (Unless you are a doctor, in which case it’s all laid out.) I truly believe that career development is like driving a thousand-mile trip. You can see a little bit of pavement ahead of you, but not the entire road ahead. But as you move forward, more road becomes uncovered.
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Sure that’s a point of view some people hold. Good if it works for them.
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Oh, and to answer the OP. My recent grad majored in international relations and works as a journalist at one of the most well known newspapers in the world. Never studied journalism.
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Just as some students who pursue PhDs to change their career trajectories are much less likely to be successful than those whose career trajectories require them, the ones who pursue MBAs for the same reason are less likely to have successful outcomes than those whose current career trajectories require them. I agree with @ChoatieMom that MBA is more about networking than figuring out how to solve problems faced by businesses, which you can learn in other ways.
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All companies derive their revenues from sales. However, direct sales and indirect sales (creation of a product, for example) are vastly different.
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Kid 1: degrees in architectural engineering and structural engineering-licensed structural engineer with a forensics firm-does condition assessments, repair design, expert witness testimony. Interesting work. She spends a fair bit of time on a swing stage.
Kid 2: bachelors in economics, math minor-worked a couple of years at the Federal Reserve and is currently working on a PhD in Econ. She loves research. Not sure where she will end up just yet.
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