Schools who don't insist on work experience.

[sakky]

<p>

I think they increase the overall odds of getting options they want by taking a good-but-not-fantastic job opportunity for 2 years and then getting their MBA.

</p>

<p>And that’s where the battle is joined, because that’s where we also disagree. After all, you are basically talking about a tradeoff of better options vs. faster progression. I suspect that the faster progression is better . Specifically, consider what is better - to be 26 years old, and having 2 years of pre-MBA experience and then an MBA, or to be 26 and having gotten your MBA and then gotten 2 years of post-MBA experience. I strongly suspect that the latter is better. Either way, you’re still 26 years old, but your post-MBA experience is almost certainly more valuable than whatever your pre-MBA experience might have been. </p>

<p>

If you’re the kind of superstar who can get into HBS straight out of undergrad, it’s unlikely that any of us have any meaningful advice to offer such a person. So we might as well pretend that they don’t exist - and if you’re that special, god bless ya. Nobody posting for advice on a message board on the interwebs is going to be in that category, so we should stop talking about that group as a meaningful part of the discussion. Continuing to argue about it is just intellectual masturbation.</p>

<p>Of course, this thread asks about schools which don’t insist on work experience. I still stand by my statement, that no school worth going to would accept anyone but the most obvious superstar coming straight out of undergrad.

</p>

<p>Well, having met a few of these zero-experience HBS people myself, I, frankly, am not any more impressed by them than by the other students at HBS. They’re good, but they’re not THAT good. </p>

<p>But secondly, I’m not just talking about HBS. I am talking about ANY of the top 15-20 MBA programs out there. You get into any of them right out of undergrad, and I think it’s usually difficult to justify your not taking it.</p>

[sakky]

<p>

I think that is true for a large number of firms, but not for ours. At the risk of allowing you to guess my former employer (and please don’t try), they used to be a very big name, right up there with McK, BCG & Bain, and shut their doors after poor cashflow management in 2001. They’re now reconstituted with many of the original key partners, and have pretty amazing profitability. Several students at HBS, CBS, Wharton, etc accepted our offer because, as a small firm, it’s clear that they can make partner in only a couple of years, and achieve “Fah-Q” money much faster than the stately progression at a Booz Allen. Our firm offers a more attractive risk/reward profile. So while your characterization may be partly true, I don’t think it’s completely true - we still have a decent selling point and aren’t merely picking up leftovers

</p>

<p>Hey, I’m not saying that you don’t have opportunities that can interest some people. I’m sure you do have them.</p>

<p>What I am saying is that there are plenty of people who will choose to ONLY interview at the very top consulting firms. It could be that they’re looking just for prestige, it could be that they have another strong competing offer on the table (i.e. Ibanking or similar finance job, or maybe with Google), it could be for a variety of reasons. Going back to the example of LFM - I know quite a few people at LFM who said that the only consulting firm they will interview with is McKinsey, as that is the only one they will consider working for, and if they can’t get the offer, they’ll take a job with one of the LFM partners (which is incidentally why the partner companies have such ire for McKinsey). Similarly at HBS, I know quite a few people who came from Ibanking who said that they would consider working for consulting, but only for one of the very top consulting firms, otherwise they’ll just go back to their former banking employer. </p>

<p>So you have the problem of many people not even bothering to apply with your firm because they already know they don’t want to work there. </p>

<p>

The question is, how to get the most out of your MBA. And for most people, the biggest boost to their careers comes from using it as a stepping-stone in their previous industry, typically consulting or finance. I’m not just saying that it’s “helpful”, but that it is a major determinant in the value question of whether to get your MBA or not. </p>

<p>I think a lot of posters on this forum assume that, if you can, by hook or by crook, gain admission to a top MBA school, everything is all roses from that point forward. My whole point with my post is that, aside from the superstars who can get in without work exp after college, the value you get from getting your MBA increases with a few more years’ experience. And furthermore, the closer you can get to your target industry with those years’ experience, the better odds you will have of making it into that industry.

</p>

<p>Actually, I would say that the relevant question is not really how to get the most out of your MBA, but rather how to get the most * out of your career as a whole *. And the simple fact is, a large chunk (in fact, almost certainly the majority) of people who are geting top MBA’s are using it to change careers. As a case in point, at all of the top schools, anywhere from 25-40% of the entering class consists of former engineers (and in LFM, it’s close to 100%). Yet I think we can all agree that practically nobody is going to get a top MBA and then go back to being an engineer, and many aren’t even going to go back to the same industry as tech managers. Instead, many of them head off to consulting or banking. Similarly, you have plenty of other people who are switching from consulting to banking or vice versa. </p>

<p>I can tell you that of the roughly 20 or so Sloan MBA’s who will head off to McKinsey this year, at most a third of them have actual prior full-time consulting experience. A big chunk of them are former investment bankers/investment managers. Another big chunk of them are LFM graduates (who count as Sloan graduates because they are getting Sloan MBA’s), none of whom from this year’s LFM graduating class have any prior consulting experience whatsoever (not even a summer internship).</p>

<p>The bottom line is this. Nobody disputes that prior experience in your target industry is valuable. The question is, how much value, and specifically, is it really worth it for you to delay getting an elite MBA to get that experience. The truth is, most cases, it probably isn’t valuable enough to delay getting that elite MBA (if you can get in). I said it before, I’ll say it again - most of the kinds of jobs that people can get right out of undergrad are, frankly, not that good. You don’t get to see that much, you don’t get to learn that much.</p>

[Denzera]

<p>entertaining discussion as always, sakky. I think we agree on most of the fundamentals, despite the back-and-forth here.</p>

<p>My advice to the OP was based on the idea that he shouldn’t make a plan based on an attempt to get into an elite MBA program right out of undergrad. Instead, he should choose post-undergrad work experience based on what he wanted to do following an MBA. That strategy would cover more of his bases and be a better percentage play - and furthermore, if he does end up getting into an elite MBA program, he will get more value out of it at the time by virtue of getting taken more seriously by his target industry. That’s all it was.</p>

<p>I’m really not sitting here and arguing the other side of the idea that McKinsey doesn’t hire people without consulting experience. I know they do. I’m making a very different point that’s very tailored to the OP’s question.</p>

[MarkSK]

<p>My brother, accounting major, was accepted into Miami-Ohio (Farmer) w. just a 6 month internship at Deloitte and Touche during the spring semester of his senior year. Since then he got his degree, is working at Deloitte, passed the CPA test, built a house straight out of college, and gotten married. Not sure if Miami is up to Denzera’s standards of being a school woth going to… but I dont know what better position he could be in right now</p>

[Denzera]

<p>being a CPA at deloitte&touche is different than being in deloitte consulting. we were discussing the latter. I certainly don’t dispute that it is possible both to get into SOME mba program straight out of undergrad, and then to lead a happy and fulfilling life. I just think it’s unlikely that any top consulting employer would come calling.</p>

[UCLAri]

<p>

I certainly don’t dispute that it is possible both to get into SOME mba program straight out of undergrad, and then to lead a happy and fulfilling life.

</p>

<p>Heck…it’s even possible to lead a happy and fulfilling life WITHOUT an MBA.</p>

<p>I know, I know, I speak of heresy. Sorry.</p>