Your opinion - Cheap MBA vs Top 10 MBA?
Hello my fellow type A friends,
I am new to Endurance Nation and loving it so far. I like that there is a social/non-tri thread on here as well. I am hoping to get some advice with my dilemma. I am looking to obtain a part-time MBA and have narrowed it down to two options.
1) Practical Option - Attend a local university MBA program that is fairly cheap (A $10,000 cost for me which would mean no student loans) and would take 18 months. The classes from what I hear are fairly easy (not trying to weed out/fail students). This option is more of a "just get an MBA on my resume" option.
2) Dream Option - Attend a top 10 University. This university has a fairly good acceptance rate for part-time students and I do think it is realistic that I will be admitted. I have always dreamed of going to school here. The kicker is that this program costs $100,000 which will require student loans and will take longer to graduate (probably 3-4 years).
I have always been more of a practical guy, but am having trouble letting go of the dream! Thoughts?
Comments
Curious to see what people say about this, as we have some very sharp business types on the team here
As an adult learner? with a job? unless you have unlimited funds, and you think it's worth it... less expensive is always better.
If you can afford your dream, then by all means do it.
10k or 100k, your name will still say...Jordan, MBA.
Age:25 years old
Past Job: External Auditor at Ernst & Young
Current Job: Economic Portfolio Analyst for a Fortune 500 Utility in my hometown (planning on staying with the company my whole career if possible)
Career Goals: To reach a high level of management (Director/Executive Director/VP)
Financial Situation - No Current Debt and enough to cover 30% of the Top 10 MBA if I applied today. Loans could be repaid over 5-8 years fairly easily.
My 2cents .. Given your goals, I'd go for the gold ." There's always room @ the top." Probably worth the investment over your lifetime.
Do it. It sounds to me like it's entirely doable, and you're young. You will regret it later if you don't. Enjoy it, I certainly enjoyed mine!
r/Paul BS, MS, MPA, PhD, CCEA, CGFM, CDFM
Some advice,
I have worked in the Fortune 50 for more than 20 years in Corporate roles. Yes I have a BBA, CIA, CPA and MBA. (blah, blah, blah....)
The Ivy league MBAs within the Fortune 50 start out making 15 - 20K more and have a faster promotion path in these environments.
It does not mean the people are smarter or have worked necessarily any harder than the non-ivy league MBAs. I have seen this trend to be consistent throughout all Fortune 50 environments in which I have worked.
Because I am now in a position to hire, I also see the resumes that flow through the process.
So, per below, define what you want to do, and make the choice that propels you in that direction.
Hope this is helpful.
SS
When I got my MBA, I was fortunate that my employer would pay for it and I had access to top 25 business schools that had evening MBA programs. I ended up going to USC in the evenings. Not only was having an MBA from a recognized program a big career booster, I made tons of friends, some of my best friends. The Trojan family is a rich resource. I've had many alumni help me and I've helped a number just because we are part of the same network. Most top tier programs will be similar.
My general advice is go to the best business school you can manage. You'll make friends and connections that will help you for the rest of your life. You also work in the consulting industry where the prestige of an MBA carries weight. That said, talent will always rise to the top -- I've worked with lots of folks who've been very successful going to local schools.
Hope that helps!
Part of the MBA value is the peer network created and the alumni network you have access to.
Any reasonably smart person can learn any and all the academic material on their own in their spare time without any need to pay tuition and learn in a formal setting.
If your goal is to learn technical content, buckle down and just do it on your own. Otherwise see it for what it is and go for the door opportunities that are materially more available through a top program.
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First..my background...undergrad business degree at Indiana...consistently ranked top 10-15 undergrad programs. MBA from U of Chicago which has been consistently top 5 with many years at #1. I spent 15 years in fortune 50 company (P&G) and am now at Sargento Foods. You may expect someone with my background to say 'Top Tier' MBA without a doubt but it really depends on what you are starting with and what your goals are.
Top tier MBA will open doors, no doubt. That said in most companies your performance once you are inside will determine how successful you are...not the name on your diploma. The days of the 'old boys club' are long gone. When I look to hire new folks on my teams I consider degree location and grades as a tiebreaker but in general I will take someone that has great results, performs well in the interview, and that has the right cultural fit components over someone that has a degree from a fancy school but otherwise doesn't have the same presence or results.
Put succinctly there are really too many variables to say definitively one way or the other. Judging by your profile you must have an undergrad degree in finance or accounting. Do you want to stay in the same company? Same industry? Same functional path? Those will have a bearing on the value of each type of degree that you can then assess to determine the roi of each option.
During that time I had also applied to be a Special Agent with the FBI. The FBI thing caught traction first so I ended up pursuing that career path instead.
Jeremy's last paragraph posed the same questions I would ask. What do you want out of it? What are your expectations? Is it a career reboot or is it to enhance your current situation? If you're looking to really open doors, change things up and do something different (or even slightly different) with a different company and all that then a top-20 school is, IMO, the only way to go. You mentioned staying with that one company though. Sounds like just getting the degree would be sufficient to achieve your goals of climbing the ladder within your current company. You're already in the company and a known entity (<----- most important piece of the puzzle here) so I think "Jordan Marchewka, MBA" more than serves it's purpose. "Jordan Marchewka, MBA from Harvard or Wharton or Duke or Chicago or MIT" sounds great but I'm not sure it means much in your situation.<br />
Personally, getting a gun and a badge and putting people in prison while still making $100,000-$150,000 per year beats any of the above but I'm biased. The Bureau loves us accounting boys.
I did my undergrad business degree at USC. Considered a top program nationally and certainly very well connected in Southern California. I went to work in bottling and at that time a college background of any sort was very rare. I moved up the ladder really quickly because I styled myself as a guy with a blue collar work ethic in a blue collar industry with a white collar education.
As the pyramid began to narrow, my college background started becoming more common, although USC still had a lot of cache. To separate myself, I went down the MBA route. Since I already had a USC background I wanted to diversify. UCLA was obviously NOT an option. So, I went to Pepperdine University. It's a small private school, but it has a very strong brand in So Cal and the West. Since I have lived and worked in SoCal my whole life and want to continue that way, a regionally strong school made the most sense. I had to google it, but Bloomberg ranked Pepperdine #50 nationally (out of 2,000) and #12 in the West. So, not top 10, but not too shabby. In L.A., they have a very well respected brand. The Princeton Review ranked them #3 nationally in the category of "campus environment". It's right on the beach in Malibu. Our sports teams are called "The Waves".
Cost for my MBA was about $75k 10 years ago. Coke, my employer at the time, paid about $16k in tuition and the rest I financed with student loans. I have been paying $268 per month for 11 years and will be paying for 9 more. I have considered paying it off, but the rate is 1.5%.
Long story short, I think you need a school with brand/badge value. If you get an MBA from a school that one one ever heard of, it's hard for people to relate and understand the value. Worse is if you get a degree from a school that advertises on bus benches and match books. If the place has negative brand value, it will negatively impact your personal brand, in my opinion.
Coming from an Engineering education as an undergrad, I kept going to school part time and got my MBA about 10 years ago. For me it was more of a decision of locality. I went to a smaller school cause it was within about 30 minutes of where I was living at the time. For me, by going part time I continued to work and was able to manage paying for the program as I went along. Also at the time I was working towards getting my professional engineering license, which I finished about the same time.
Overall the expectations were that it would help me in the long run should I want to do more than just from the engineering & construction side of things. In the long run, I am still in the same career path 10 years later so it is difficult to honestly say how much it has helped having that degree.I totally agree with what several have mentioned above...what would you like to do with it? How will the outcome of each choice change how you market yourself, in the short term and in the long term? and....If there is a projected economical impact, what would it be? and what is the difference in the Net Present Value of each, and what is the ROI of each?
Sorry if that sounds like homework?
Good luck with your decisions.
That whole time, my company helped pay for the program, but I did take some additional loans.
If I were to do it again, I'd make sure to do it where I don't have any loans. But there's a trade-off with the program quality, for sure.
In all reality, just getting an advanced degree won't increase your salary. For me, I would've had to jump ship to another company in order to realize those financial "improvements" (NOTE: I've been with my company 17+ years now, so that hasn't happened). I find this is especially true if your company pays for it, they have no incentive to increase your pay then.
I was doing my MBA for personal achievement reasons, and I knew that going in. So I don't regret it at all, but definitely would've done it slightly different looking back.
Just my $.02.