During their application journey, MBA aspirants struggle with a fundamental but valid question: Should I leave my well-paying job for a career break and accumulate a significant financial burden to pursue an education that may not yield the career benefits I anticipate?
Before you apply, it’s necessary to figure out why you need an MBA and how it will help. Many MBA aspirants are initially attracted to the associated brand or prestige of a business school. However, when you’re spending upwards of $200K, the business school’s prestige alone should not be your primary reason for attending. A career pivot, knowledge gain, a business network, upskilling yourself, and a more global career are all valid reasons for doing an MBA. Usually, an applicant is drawn to the degree for a combination of these reasons.
We have done extensive research to gather insights from MBA graduates and current students about whether their MBA experience was of value and what they learned. Most stated that they gained substantial knowledge of business concepts and other skills necessary to succeed in business and life.
Here are the most common findings we came across:
1. An MBA launches you on a career trajectory that will enable you to grow at an accelerated pace. Corporations assume that MBAs have acquired a broader set of business and people management skills. With more expectations from the candidates to deliver value, they are given higher responsibilities sooner, which opens a broader range of opportunities for career growth.
2. Along with better jobs comes a significantly higher post-MBA salary, sometimes amounting to a >50% jump over pre-MBA figures.
3. The MBA will help you make a fast pivot that is otherwise difficult in a career. This is because, as a working professional, you will usually not have the chance to explore different industries or take up assignments in fields different from yours. Employers want new recruits to hit the ground running from day one and will not take that chance on you. However, an MBA program’s summer internship and other experiential learning components allow you to explore new business areas you have no prior exposure to. The b-school ecosystem, geared to help career changers, provides a safe environment to explore career options.
4. An MBA will provide you access to recruiters through the b-school’s connections and alumni network. Your MBA network is more likely to help you get a foot in the door at your target companies, or get response to cold call/email, which may be very difficult without an MBA. Moreover, mentoring from alumni from your desired field/profession/business will help better plan and execute your career strategy, further expand your network and improve your chances of success. This is more essential when one is trying to pivot career.
5. An MBA has a longer-term benefit is for graduates who eventually want to become entrepreneurs. While you may not get into entrepreneurship immediately after MBA, yet you will benefit from the platform provided by the b-school to network/intern with startups and investors
6. You may wonder whether you need to enrol in an MBA program in today’s knowledge-driven environment where business courses are commonly accessible through multiple delivery channels and give you the freedom to ‘build your own MBA’. However, you are likely to get lost about what to study or may not find the motivation to do this by yourself. On the other hand, an MBA provides a structured curriculum that has evolved over years of practice, feedback and tweaking, personal guidance from professors, and a study group of peer students. Besides, MOOC courses can’t replicate the intellectual stimulation and learning effectiveness of a classroom environment.
7. Academically, the multidisciplinary coursework will give you a well-rounded knowledge of business and teach you to look at the same problem through multiple lenses. This specifically helps students who come from non-business backgrounds such as engineering, liberal arts, law, medicine, etc. They learn to tackle problems from a business point of view, which they may not have done in their pre-MBA technical jobs.
8. You will also learn the language of business leaders and understand the fundamentals behind what they are talking about, which helps to communicate effectively. This becomes important as you grow up the corporate ladder and need to work through the corporate agenda using various frameworks and tools.
9. Core courses and electives will teach you the hard skills in accounting, finance, macroeconomics, microeconomics, marketing, strategy, and more. You can also specialize in a particular field of interest, such as M&A, investment management, analytics, real estate finance, healthcare, marketing, sports management, and more, to prepare for a specific career.
10. The valuable coursework aside, an MBA provides unparalleled peer learning. With students from multiple industries and countries, you hear differing views and perspectives from them, which can force you to challenge your thought process and biases to adapt and learn. This is particularly true for case studies, where students draw on their past experiences and thought process to discuss a problem from multiple angles.
10. A big part of your learning experience will occur outside the classroom via group work, club participation, events and other activities. You will pick up soft skills in negotiation, communication, persuasion and team building that will come in handy in your post-MBA career. You will also learn critical leadership skills like influencing high-performing people over whom you don’t have direct control and managing different attitudes. These soft skills have a long-term benefit and you will use them increasingly as you rise higher in your career.
11. Because global MBA programs attract people from across nations, they’re an excellent way to learn about various cultures, build your worldview, and prepare yourself to work in global teams (if you haven’t yet had the chance to).
12. B-schools are at the forefront of innovation and evolve their MBA curriculum to address current socio-economic trends. As a result, they quickly adopt newer fields like analytics and create specializations around them to prepare students for future challenges. Keeping a pulse on current global issues, many have introduced course modules around sustainability and DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion). In addition, they encourage and promote these values through multiple on-campus initiatives.
13. Overall, the vast exposure to endless topics will open your mind and make you knowledgeable about a wealth of information that you may not use in your daily life, but it will make your business and personal conversations more informed and interesting.