Why is an MBA so expensive?!

Well, I’m not sure that I would agree that one should literally never get an MBA right after college. For example, if you’re going to eventually get an MBA anyway and you’re one of the admittedly few like Adam Flake (public profile shown below) who is admitted into HBS right after college (note, this is not the HBS 2+2 program, but rather being admitted to HBS literally right after undergrad), I struggle to think of good reasons why you wouldn’t take it. That’s especially true when you factor in the fact that admissions at the top programs are highly unpredictable; there’s no guarantee that you’ll ever get it back. For example, if Mr. Flake had turned down his HBS admission in favor of working for a few years and then applied to HBS again, there is a substantial chance that he would have been rejected.

https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/in/adam-flake-4123aa18/?locale=de_DE

One workaround would be to reserve your seat for potential future usage, either by deferring admission or by enrolling and then withdrawing. That’s essentially what Steve Ballmer did in withdrawing from Stanford GSB to join Microsoft and what Georgia Lee did in withdrawing from HBS to pursue a film career. If those careers don’t work out, oh well, they just return to Stanford/HBS which is not a bad fallback plan. {While Lee did ultimately return and eventually graduated, Ballmer never did, but I doubt that he regrets it. } Granted, schools do have a time limit before they will reclaim your reserved seat and force you to apply again, but nevertheless, the freedom to drop out of a top MBA program to pursue an opportunity with the fallback option of a reserved school seat is a true luxury.

{Note, lest anybody find this strategy to be unbecoming, I would note that it’s really not all that different from top undergrad programs such as Harvard College providing students like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Matt Damon, Elisabeth Shue, and the like with the freedom to drop out to pursue other opportunities with the fallback option to return. And indeed, Elisabeth Shue did eventually return to complete her Harvard degree at age 37. The same could be said about Stanford’s famously permissive PhD programs which have spawned numerous dropouts - Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Elon Musk, Andy Bechtolscheim just to name a few - who have fueled much of the modern tech industry. Indeed, Sergey and Larry technically might still to this very day be on leave at Stanford with right to return.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2009-10-26/mba-dropouts-business-school-interrupted

Well, the problem is that most of the top MBA programs - e.g. HBS, Stanford, MIT Sloan, Dartmouth Tuck, Yale SOM, LBS - simply don’t offer part-time MBA’s at all, and other schools such as Wharton only offer part-time programs in the format of an EMBA with quite different admissions criteria.

I would actually say that the business PhD program takes 5 (or even longer) if you plan on securing faculty placement at a top business school. On the other hand, if you have no intention of an academic career anyway - which you will likely determine within your first year or two of a PhD program - then you can probably finish the PhD in 3-4 years. Granted, your dissertation will be mediocre, but that doesn’t matter if you don’t care about placing and only just want to graduate.

Furthermore, I believe that nowadays most top business PhD programs offer some sort of research master’s degree, either as a consolation prize for those who do pass their qual’s but truly cannot finish the PhD, or as an interim degree towards obtaining the PhD. True, the research master’s is not an MBA, but it’s still free to obtain (indeed you’re being paid to obtain it via your PhD stipend) and allows you access to the school’s brand, network, and career office. One should readily be able to complete this degree in 2-3 years.

HBS no longer offers undergraduates the opportunity to begin an MBA immediately upon graduation. Similar to Stanford, they now offer a deferred admissions program that requires work experience before matriculating.

Regarding Stanford:

Work experience is not required for entry to the Stanford MBA Program.

https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/programs/mba/admission/application-materials/professional-experience

As far as HBS is concerned, both Adam Flake and Christopher Wilson-Byrne were both admitted to the HBS Class of 2009 with no full-time work experience. At best they had only summer internships.

https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/in/adam-flake-4123aa18/
https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/in/christopher-wilson-byrne-78613711

I strongly suspect that if I ask around, I can find some more recent students admitted to HBS with no full-time work experience.