MA improve chances of getting into MBA?

Calcruzer
Thu, 18 Dec 2008 12:13:58 +0000

Going back to the OPs original question (MA improve chance of getting into MBA?), the answer used to be yes, but there are two things working against this nowadays–

(1) in today’s economy, due to overcrowding and a shortage of spaces, the public schools (UCs and Cal States) are being encouraged not to admit people who already have degrees, so those with bachelors degrees are being prevented from getting new bachelors degrees, and those with masters degrees are being prevented from getting new masters degrees. In fact, the UCs and Cal State deans have already said this will be their policy for next year; and

(2) the schools used to play this game (admitting people into MBA programs who already had masters degrees in an effort to boost their prestige), but they soon discovered that the dropout rate from such people is over twice as high as from those without the degrees. As a result, they started to rethink this policy back in the 1980s and 1990s when they realized that they couldn’t continue to run the programs with people (many of whom weren’t that serious about finishing the program). This was particularly true for admissions of such people into the part-time programs (where one worked full-time and attended evenings for three-years to get the two-year MBA degree).

In my own case, it also frustrated the hell out of those of us without previous masters degrees who did get in–first because such people quite often would consider themselves “superior” to the others in the programs and expect us to do their work for them while they handled their “important” work duties (many of these were masters in engineering who were already in top jobs), and secondly because we knew these “prima-donnas” being admitted prevented other serious applicants (who were similar to those of us without masters degrees) from being admitted. Many of us “non-masters-degree” admits made our feelings on this subject quite clear with the UCLA Anderson school administration --both on how we didn’t intend to do others’ work for them–and on how the administration had a disfunctional admission policy.