When my S was applying to some M7 deferred MBA programs in 2023 (during his senior year), I believe they all said at least 3 years work experience.
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If they pay for it, he’ll be bound (I’m assuming) to them - so that might impact his ability to start or run his business.
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No, it is the opposite.
Harvard Business School average work experience in the late 1980s was just 1 to 2 years;
in the 1990s HBS’ average work experience was 3 to 4 years;
in the 2010s it averaged 4.5 years (54 months);
today it is 4.9 years.
Harvard & Stanford have long been known for admitting the youngest, least experienced among the M-7 to their MBA programs.
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Heck, when I went thirty years ago, they wanted work experience. I can only recall one who came in from undergrad - and he was from Stanford.
Of course, some were engineers, some may have worked in a Barnes & Noble bookstore - so earnings or job type weren’t necessarily the same.
At the time, my school was #40 in Business Week - which was the main ranking at the time. But needing work experience was definitely a thing.
Admitted AND attended that next year?
My executive training program (first job out of undergrad) had two handfuls of employees who already had been admitted to B-school (Wharton, Harvard and a few others I don’t recall) BUT who had to complete at least two years of work before matriculating.
There’s a difference between admitting an undergrad, and filling your sections with 22 year old’s with no work experience.
This group was counting down the clock!
late 1970’s in NYC, just for perspective.
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“Wanting” or “expecting” post undergraduate work experience is not the same as “requiring”.
As the case study method became more prominent in MBA programs,work experience became more valuable.
Today, 2+2 programs open to college seniors do require 2 years of work experience before matriculation.
Executive MBA programs (EMBA) usually have a minimum number of expected years of work experience with a stated preference of a number of years in management. How strictly these desires are enforced is not clear as MBA programs wane in and out of popularity based on the current economy.
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Yes. And some companies can claim ownership rights to certain start-ups created by their employees. Definitely advise anyone considering this to know the rules and how accepting tuition reimbursement could impact things.
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Yes, many colleges - even undergrad - recommend, not require. It gives any organization flexibility.
The thought with work experience is based on the value people can provide to the discussions, etc.
My friend went to U Michigan for an EMBA - no managerial experience. He came back to his job with the pat on the back, but one of his classmates recruited him and he went there til laid off 5 or 6 years later, then another at a director level (much higher than he was before UM) so it paid off.
He did this all - not in Michigan, except for the times he had to go up there (maybe a weekend a month or a few days a semester, I forget).
Yes that’s good to keep in mind. S was working abroad for the past year (within his company) Now that he’s back, I’m hoping he’ll be able to have a variety of conversations with colleagues this year about the pros and cons of pursuing the MBA next fall.
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I find this to be an exceedingly narrow viewpoint. Darden, McCombs, Fuqua and Ross, to name a few, are well worth someone’s time and money if it otherwise makes sense.
In other circumstances, schools further down the rankings chain might also be helpful to a person’s career.
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This is my perspective. It is a function of the context of the kids I was giving advice to. I am sure the schools you listed are all good.
I told both my kids that an MBA is not worth the trouble, whatever the school be.
Wow.
One of your kids is “blocked” professionally. No fault of his own. Got a lousy manager who for whatever reason has not rated your kid “promotion eligible”. Choices are to stay- and be blocked, fall behind, keep trying for a lateral transfer which could be out of the fat and into the frying pan… or leave. Kid interviews. Gets the job he wants. But will be assigned to the Tulsa operation for the first 18 months before getting a choice of London, NY or Chicago.
But your kid’s spouse is a medical resident. Can’t go to Tulsa mid-residency.
MBA is the answer. Kid could continue to interview, spin wheels. Or just take the obvious off-ramp and pivot.
I’ve seen dozens of young professionals who get blocked for various reasons. Organizational politics. Company is acquired and the “sterling” reputation the kid built doesn’t travel with him or her. Or the young employees division is sold off and the new management has zero interest in the project the young employee has worked on for a year so the young employee is now at the top of the “if we have to cut” list. Or just the Black Swan type recession where their sector IS NOT HIRING AT ALL.
Waiting it out in B-school, whether top five or not- is not a question of “worth the trouble”. It’s better than two years of under-employment, or a year of unemployment followed by moving to a place your spouse or SO cannot find a job, or calling yourself a “consultant” and clearing $45K with no health insurance during your first year.
I know when your kids are successful it is easy to believe that they will NEVER hit a brick wall, and I hope for their sakes that’s true. But some of the most talented people in the workforce DO hit the wall. Recession, merger, acquisition, org politics, a nasty boss, an industry which faces a total restructuring. I can’t imagine ever telling a young person that investing in their own intellectual capital is not worth the trouble. You never know when the market forces that destroyed the buggy whip will come for all of us.
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Regardless of whose perspective it is, I think it’s exceedingly narrow.
Yes, I am acquainted with scope of your perspective. I understand that your children are wildly well educated STEM people who are making goblets of money and you live in an incredibly affluent part of the world. That’s all really great. But that experience is one experience and you are writing on a message board with readers who live and operate outside of your/that world.
My perspective is that circumstances vary and I think for a great many people attending a place like McCombs, Fuqua, Ross, Tuck, Stern, Columbia and several others to earn an MBA could lead to meaningful career uplift.
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Not to mention that, for some/many people, smart as they may be, there is actual content in MBA program coursework that will represent new information.
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I have an MBA. I know how this works :-). Isn’t the received wisdom above that it depends on the particular circumstance?
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In all the cases of someone asking me for an opinion, an MBA was a very difficult decision, and very hard to justify. This is an ongoing discussion with or about a variety of kids.
For example, I have a friend’s kid who is an accomplished engineer from Purdue, worked at JPM after being an engineer for a while, and then just finished an MBA from a southern California school, with the intent of changing careers. It has been exceedingly hard. There is a lot of debate as to whether you can really change careers – it is hit and miss. It is unclear whether you can really pivot completely out of a previous industry into something brand new – for example, into private equity, banking, or in this case into tech product management. To say that it has been exceedingly hard is an understatement. I am witness to many attempts, some successful, and some not. A lot of other personality factors are also at play – whether you can actually pivot, and if you can’t what the whole effort is worth in terms of lost seniority etc.
I concede that perhaps, if a kid is a natural salesperson, then an MBA might not hurt, whether the kid ends up in sales or not.
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Roles in tech product management are tough for everyone right now. Hiring targets are down. That’s reality. I would assume that your young friend has Plan B…any b-school teaches the need for contingency planning whether in business or planning one’s life …
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I am sure he is looking at a wide range of plan Bs. He doesn’t have a job yet, some 5 months after graduation.
Oh, please. Don’t be so dramatic. People do it all the time with MBAs from places you’ve never even heard of. If it was ok to dox, I’d fill up the rest of this dialogue box with examples from my own circles. No, if a kid can go into PE with nothing more than a BA in History from Dartmouth, and they do, then a kid who majored in math or computer science can get an MBA from Tuck or Ross and do the same thing.
Well, that’s life. Sometimes you hit, sometimes you don’t. Who knows what was at play there.
Again, an exceedingly narrow perspective. My goodness. I don’t think a kid with an MBA from a T20 program has to be some kind of Slick Eddie to get a good placement. Mercy me.
I am a corporate finance attorney from Big Law and I’ve been doing it for a long time. I know piles and piles of people from all the places and career tracks. Sorry, I think your dystopian view here is overstated.
I certainly agree that the conversation about whether the MBA is as necessary a credential as it once was to do this or that is an interesting one. But, there again, you need to some nuance and some context. Sweeping categoricals, like “Top 5 or nothing, and preferably nothing” is just not very thought provoking to me. Others may view it differently.
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I told my kids it doesn’t make sense because I know their context fully. An MBA is not some cure all for all job ills.