Do you get to plaster Harvard all over your LinkedIn and CV after this graduate certificate?

https://extension.harvard.edu/academics/programs/biotechnology-management-graduate-certificate/#outcomes

I'm so willing to burn 12k$ if afterwards I get to call myself a Harvard graduate and can make people believe that I'm one of the bright Harvard alumni.

Please confirm if you are actually truly considered a Harvard student after this graduate certificate?

 

Yes, you can say you were a student at Harvard University. No, you can't say you were a student at Harvard College.

 

nah, you dont need 12k to make people believe you're a bright one.

just go paste "got accepted but rejected harvard" all over your linkedin and CV will do.

"I applied into Harvard, but i rejected them... even before the application outcome was released. They didn't meet my expectations."

 

Haha good one :-D
But I want the bragging rights.
So if I pay 12k for it I want to make people believe that the ground I walk on is holy from now on.
No, but in all seriousness: recruiters look for these words. So if they type in Harvard, would you be considered as much of a Harvard grad as the very smart students who actually went through a rigorous admission?
Or can lay people also tell the difference that you are not a real Harvard grad with one of these certs?

 

Do lay people know the difference though? I would think most people wouldn't know that Harvard isn't always Harvard College itself?

 

I’m not sure most would be able to distinguish a difference to be honest. Not to say the general public is dumb but more so, they are not caught up in higher education like those of us in the forum.

 

This is definitely the case here in Europe. I'm not even sure that those Europeans who know the difference would always give it great importance.

 

There are different levels of Harvard Extension alumni. If you graduate from a Graduate Certificate program, you are an "associate member" of the Harvard Extension Alumni Association and NOT a Harvard University alumni.

However, if you graduate with an Extension school degree (ALM, ALB) you become a regular Harvard University alumnus.

The benefits of each type of alumni status can be found here:
https://alumni.extension.harvard.edu/about-us/

 

To be honest, if all you want are bragging rights on alumni status from a Harvard school, the best value for your money is Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

If you take any executive program (5 day courses), you automatically get Harvard Kennedy alumni status and join a very powerful network (compared to Extension school graduates).

https://www.hks.harvard.edu/alumni/benefits/professional-and-lifelong-learning-alumni-benefits

Their programs cost only 3-4K. Consider that like a membership fee to a nice social club. That's actually a good deal since you are able to attend Harvard Kennedy school alumni events and join their local alumni clubs. You also get to attend free lectures for life.

 

Omg, that is so interesting.
I saw Harvard Kennedy mentioned quite a few times on a few of my connections' time-line.
One had APD written under it.
What is that exactly?

 

Haven't seen that qualification (APD) before.

Harvard Kennedy School is one of the few Harvard schools (such as Harvard Business School) that grant alumni status to their exec ed students. Other schools (e.g. HGSE, Harvard Design) don't recognize their exec ed students as alumni, only "program participants."
Wikipedia lists Kennedy Executive education alumni in the list of Harvard Kennedy graduates:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Kennedy_School


At HBS, alumni status is only granted for the most expensive programs such as the Advanced Management Program (that costs 84K).
https://www.exed.hbs.edu/hbs-experience/alumni-network

 

As a caveat, I don't think the content of these courses are any better than a Coursera or Udemy course. What differentiates them is the networking aspect. Like I said, it's like buying into an exclusive/prestige country club membership. Imagine attending regular local lunch gatherings of HKS or HBS alumni in your area. My guess is if you put in the effort, there are lots of potential to network and to be active in alumni activities.

 

Per Harvard University, it would be misleading if you graduate from "Harvard University"; you have to specify which college you graduate from.
Harvard College
Harvard Business School
Harvard Divinity School
Harvard Extension School
Harvard Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
Harvard Graduate School of Design
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering & Applied Sciences
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Harvard Kennedy School
Harvard Law School
Harvard Medical School
Radcliff Institute
Harvard School of Dental Medicine.

Sometimes my Master's degree from Georgetown University misleads people. I had someone contacted me via LinkedIn asked me for advice about the Georgetown University admission. The person was looking the information on how to get into Georgetown College, an underage school within Georgetown University with selective admission.

 

Somewhere here on DI, someone (maybe Neuhaus?) wrote about how you want to avoid "resume whiplash". That wasn't the term they used, but I think it captures the sentiment. Basically, if you attend a series of approximately equal schools (e.g. undergrad from Duke, Masters from UC-Berkeley and PhD from Rutgers), or progressively better schools (e.g. undergrad from University of Florida, MBA from UVA's Darden, DBA from Harvard) on your resume, nobody bats an eye. There appears to be a logical progression or the sense that you're attending schools of similar caliber.*

On the other hand, if you do your undergrad from Harvard and get an MBA from the University of Phoenix, the incongruence of those two things raises eyebrows. Ditto if you attended a University of Phoenix and then have a Harvard graduate certificate which features prominently on your resume. It sticks out in a not-good way.

Of course everything else being equal it's better to attend a higher ranked school over a lower ranked school as far as degree programs go, but thinking that adding an expensive Executive Education program from Harvard onto your resume will wow employers in the same way as a degree program may lead you to disappointment. At best, they'll acknowledge that it was a good program but different from a Harvard degree. At worst, they'll think you're trying to pull a fast one and react negatively.

The other part of this is focus. You should spend some time thinking about what it is that you want to achieve with your career and focus educational programs that will bring you closer to that, rather than the other way around. I know you have a paralegal qualification, a postgraduate qualification in Tax, and an Associates in Law. You've also looked at MBA and other business programs. How would a Biotechnology Management Graduate Certificate fit in with the story of your education and the kinds of skills you want to bring employers or the kind of role you want to have?

* I'm guessing at the actual rankings here so if I got it wrong mea culpa!

 

Well, I know that I want an executive position in the company over a timespan of 10-20 years.

I'm now 25 and I would like to be a regular manager at 35 and a senior manager at 45.
At 55 I want to be in a director function.

I realise that 25 is late to have your first very serious job but I have had jobs in the past, just not as serious as this one because I was still studying at that time and didn't have a real degree yet back then.

I would like an MBA program with a focus in biotechnology because the legal department I work at requires me to read a lot of clinical research protocols on a daily basis to see if the language a clinical site proposes is legally '' dangerous '' for us to accept or not.
So I'm busy with law a lot.
But also with negotiation. Negotiation is the second big pilar of my job. I need to negotiate budgets a lot.
So in that regard I think that going further in my legal education wouldn't serve me an as lucrative purpose compared to when I would continue my business education.
I think the right MBA can be a catapult for your career once you have a few years of experience.
Since I'm now in an environment where I get to absorb knowledge a lot and at a fast pace, I think now is the time for me to go for a good quality MBA and confront them with the refined skills I bring to the job.
At this point they will say : '' listen, okay you have an MBA but it's from an unknown school in Spain, why would we pay you more if 10 graduates are waiting to take in your position? "
While if I confront them a year down the line and say :" Hey guys, I bring quite some sophisticated know-how to the job and can back it up with this credential'', they would be taken aback. They would have to face that I'm not as replaceable as they may think now.

I regularly see people who earn my salary pre-mba go 2 to 3 times up in salary post-mba.

I' m also a very dynamic person. I don't have a 9-5 mentality. If I have to stay up at night to fix an urgent issue, then I will be glad to do so.
I love responsibility. I love it when people turn to me for consultancy.
That's the kind of position that I want.
I don't want to follow the orders of others for the rest of my life.
I want to be the creative brain behind the designs.
I want to be the person people turn to when they need advice on a very complicated topic.

I know that someone in their 50s is rarely going to a late 20s person when they need advice. They will likely turn to another 50s person and think '' what does that kid know about it ''.
But with a genuine MBA from a top school it's easier to have them face they can't just bypass you and need to ask your input too.
Because you are the expert from that moment on.

So that's why I believe an MBA from a top quality school can help me.

Even if I were to earn 200k$ for a job where I had to follow other people's orders for the rest of my life, I couldn't.
I want to be the creative brain.
That has always been that way.
During group projects I was always the crisis manager who motivated others even when the project looked too far gone to be saved.

I'm not someone who is happy with the easiest tasks.
I love it when people think : '' I have something that is so challenging that no one else has been able to solve it yet. Can you please try? ''

During the first weeks in my job they came up with a terribly difficult task to negotiate an entire contract within a week. They thought it would be impossible.
I came up with inventive ways to have the negotiation sped up and bam, I did it. In 1 week I managed to negotiate it.

But the hunger for a real MBA (and not some facsimile) is so real. So overwhelming.

The feeling is difficult to explain.

But I hope I was able to provide some rational on why exactly that MBA is so important for me.

A master of laws to me is just not as impressive as an MBA.
So while I could say that I'm going to continue for a master of laws, I see lawyers who barely manage to get by here in Belgium.
I would just not be as happy with the letters '' LLM'' as I would be with the letters "MBA" from one of the triple crown accreditors (1 of the 3 is enough for me).

 

I appreciate you sharing that, it does help put it in context. In that case, since you do work with biotech there might be value in that certificate. And I can see why you want an MBA. Top-tier MBAs do end up in consulting roles (which sounds like a really good fit for you.) I don't think 25 is too old for your first real job. My first professional job started at 25. Before then was summer internships and working retail.

However it goes, good luck!

Edit: Coincidentally, I just found the post I was talking about. Neuhaus did not call it resume whiplash but the "gaudy resume add-on": https://www.degreeinfo.com/index.php?threads/university-of-arizona-certificate-in-leadership-readiness-for-turbulent-times-scholarships.57095/page-2#post-536782