There’s a school named Columbia College in Missouri that offers online degrees. It is not affiliated with Columbia University in Manhattan. I do not recommend you getting a degree from that school, LostStudent. Nor do I think you should get any other MBA at this point. If you think you want to pursue a career in business management, go out there and get a job in business.
edited to add: I can’t speak with authority about which schools are regarded as having top MBA programs, but I can state with confidence that Columbia College in Missouri is not one of them.
Lost- working in marketing for a consumer products company is a fundamentally different experience from being a portfolio manager for a wealth management company which is fundamentally different from developing risk management algorithms for a large bank- even though lots of people who do those jobs got there via an MBA.
I can’t think of a worse plan than getting a Master’s degree just to avoid having to figure out what you are interested in and what you want to do.
Figure out what you are interested in. Don’t randomly pick Master’s programs just because you happen to meet the entrance requirements. You are indeed lost if you don’t yet know the difference between different types of “management”. So go- start to read. The Wall Street Journal (couple of times a week). The Economist- once a month. The Financial Times- occasionally. AdAge if you like advertising and marketing. Before you know it- you will have a better idea of what type of management you are talking about. That’s why doing research before randomly picking a grad program is so important.
There’s a saying- a BS is, well we all know what bs is. An MS is more s. And a PhD is piled higher and deeper.
Seriously- in HS you had broad requirements for a well rounded education. In college you choose a major to narrow your focus plus have breadth requirements to round out your education. A masters will be more high level learning in your major. For anything in business you need to have working experience- as above usually at least two years before considering a masters. For other fields you need the minimum credits required for the specific major, and many more to be competitive.
Your degree is just a general one. There is no masters in “general studies” anywhere that I ever heard of. You need to get the specific knowledge and skills to be admitted to any decent graduate business program. All good business schools require the work experience as well- very logical when you consider that field. You will find that many students will have taken some grad level courses in their major as an undergrad. Taking more general courses will only be like getting another bachelor’s degree.
You will notice I did not even consider where you got your degree, the major determinant is WHAT you studied in depth.
@LostStudent12, if you don’t know what you want to do in the future, the best thing you can do is work for some years and figure out what you want to do. Then watch the people who do that, and learn what kinds of degrees they have. Then get that.
The worst thing you can do is get an MBA and find out it is useless for anything. Many are, especially when you have no work experience, you will be qualified for nothing and overqualified for everything. What year are you in, did you say?
After reviewing your previous threads, OP, I notice that you are at Azusa because you were thrown out of University of Georgia for being caught cheating three times. That is probably the kiss of death for any top tier master’s program.
Good luck at Azusa. Do your work honestly, get a job after you graduate, and maybe after a few years of success you will have rehabilitated yourself enough to be attractive to some MBA program, if that’s what you want at that time. Since you’re newly at Azusa, I suggest that you choose a real major instead of Applied Studies.
If that’s the case then that’s definitely an additional complication. But really, it doesn’t change as much as you might think; as other posters have said work experience is highly recommended here. Even if you could find an MBA program that would take you without it, there wouldn’t be much value to you in going. In general, going to grad school to figure out what you want out of your career only costs you money. You’re not going to get hired on an as executive because of that.
Will my past really haunt me for the rest of my college? Will there by any good school which will just consider my character at Azusa? If so, please advise.
Your past isn’t haunting you- your reluctance to figure out what you are going to do once you graduate WILL haunt you if you randomly pick a grad program to avoid deciding what you want to do with your life.
If you think you are interested in management- great. What kind of management? Get a summer job in consumer products marketing. Hate that? Fine- next stop is finance. Get an internship in finance. Etc.
But folks here are pointing out that you need work experience to get into a good MBA program. And frankly- if your work experience shows you that you don’t actually WANT an MBA, then a bunch of strangers on the internet just saved you 100K.
@blossom
Getting work experience is fine. I understand it is a prerequisite, and I will make sure I work for at least 2+ years. I have no objections to that.
I know what kind of management I prefer as well.
I am just wondering what good school will prefer me with an Applied Studies major from APU despite of the good GPA and 2+ years of work experience.
All colleges maintain databases of where their alumni have gone to grad school (and where they work). Seems to me that this is a good place for you to start your research.
I’m curious why you think a bunch of strangers will be able to predict “what good school” will admit you from APU if you don’t have a list in front of you of where recent APU grads have gone.
Go to the admissions website of a program you are interested in- let’s say U Michigan just to pick a very well known and highly credible MBA program. Look at the list of undergrad programs from which they’ve accepted kids in the last few years. Does APU show up there?
Etc. This is not rocket science, but will require a bit of detective work and some research.
I’ve heard of this university, but I really have no idea about its academics. Coupled with the fact that you seem to have earned what is essentially a General Studies degree, it’s tough to say how competitive you are for grad schools. I think that a couple years of relevant work experience under your belt as well as a high GMAT score will be important, so I’d get started on those now.
Actually, this student hasn’t gotten a degree…yet…unless I’m misreading this thread.
To the OP…since you have just started at this school…pick a major…a real one. And get a degree in it. Then work for a few years. After that, consider grad school.
All of this grad school talk is mighty premature considering you are years away from getting a bachelors.
What I meant by that is… I strongly recommend getting a few years of work experience; I would recommend that even if you didn’t have a prior history of academic dishonesty, since honestly pretty much any decent MBA program will require the work experience or value it strongly in admissions regardless of who the applicant is or what their background is. For you, the work experience would be even more helpful because you want to emphasize how you have changed and grown as a student between that dark time in your past and the time you are applying, but that’s an added bonus.
To be honest, I don’t really know if the ‘Applied Studies’ thing will help you or not. The discipline description is written in rather broad language so it’s hard to tell what you’re really learning just based on knowing the name of the major. That being said, I have to second blossom’s suggestion that you go ahead and talk to your career counselor at Azusa Pacific. Your situation is somewhat hard to predict since we don’t know why you want an MBA and we don’t know where your career path will take you in the future.
(And again, more honesty – I don’t think it makes sense to even consider an MBA program until and unless you are in a career path that requires one. Good programs are expensive, and if you can get some company to pay for it that’s great. And if not, I would really make sure that the MBA program is right for you before spending that kind of money. Your posts suggests that you’re putting a lot of emphasis on the fact that your school is APU as some kind of determinant and in my experience your GMAT and work after college matters much more than the name of your undergrad.)