Ashford University - Finishing my bachelors ready for an MBA!

Hello everybody,

I am on my way to finishing up my bachelors degree in business administration in about 10 months time. I am very excited to finish since I will be applying for an MBA afterwards. I have decided to attend a brick & mortar school here in Canada for my MBA. My only question, which no one seems to be able to answer, is if a university here will accept my bachelor’s degree. Since Ashford is a for-profit school will they disregard my degree? I can truly say I have worked hard for this degree. I am not getting a degree to get a job since my job is secured in a fairly large company. I am getting my education for my personal goals & benefits.

Will the Canadian universities reject me because I am graduating from Ashford University?

Will they reject me since Ashford University is not AACSB accredited or does that accreditation only apply to master’s degree’s?

I just hope I am going to get accepted since it has been my dream to attend this school since I can remember. I do not want to be held back, does anyone have experience in attending a graduate brick & mortar University after graduating from Ashford?

I am truly excited to finish my degree since I have doubled up as much as I can to finish it!

 

The profit/non-profit status should not matter. It is the accreditation that is key. If you have a non AACSB undergraduate degree and you apply to an AACSB graduate program they may require some leveling classes. I suggest you contact the school to be certain.

 

Randell pretty much nailed it. By the way I just posted my own little "success story" and I'm an Ashford MBA grad. The big thing to note is that your MBA, any MBA is only part of your overall qualifications, so try to keep whatever program you choose in the "big picture" if possible.

 

Since the MBA program I am applying to does that mean that they will reject me since I am applying from Ashford (not AACSB accredited)? Does anyone have experience going from a non AACSB accredited bachelor's degree to a AACSB accredited master's degree? I would like to know how important this accreditation is to some schools? I have emailed the university a week ago with no reply, I will call them next week.

 

Honestly outside of working within academia I have seen little to no evidence that going to an AACSB or ACBSP or even an IACBE accredited business program adds any value to a resume and even if it should, it would be so minute in nature compared to the totality of hiring factors that go into a decision as to not even be worth mildly strong consideration. But that's my sole opinion.

 

Some school's, at least in the US, do care about profit status as well. Such as my experience with St. Joes University. I was looking at doing their MHA or Masters in Human resources program. I was feverently told by multiple people at the school that they would NOT accept my Undergrad from AMU because AMU is a For-Profit school.

 

Who are the "people" that told you this? That just seems outragous.

 

St. Joe's is a goofy place. They wanted me to sign a contract with them stating that I would not accept financial aid and employer reimbursement when I was in their MBA program. I appealed it to the Dean of (I think) Admissions and no dice. They didn't care that I didn't have the money out of pocket by which to be reimbursed and said it was to help keep students out of debt. I was like, "so let me get this straight, I can take a loan if I do not get reimbursed by my employer, or I can take the reimbursement but not have the loan and I cannot take the loan and use the reimbursement to pay it back...and this is so I don't get into debt?" The concept seemed lost on them. I love their MBA program but their administrative personnel have serious issues in policy.

As for the for profit thing, sounds like protectionism to me.

 

The lady who was their dean of admissions for the Business School. Its all good though I found a program that better suited my needs and a different degree path.

I actually miss-spoke it was not an MHA it was an MBA with Healthcare Management as a concentration.

Here is the post I made when this happened to me. though it became a flame war over weather or not my degree was anything more than a scrap of junk from a degree mill and ended up being locked and a member being temp banned because of his statements.

http://www.degreeinfo.com/general-distance-learning-discussions/36995-yet-another-case-school-discriminating-against-profit-school.html

 

The problem is that there aren't very many B&M MBA programs in Canada (at least compared to the US), and they all get more applicants than they can handle. So they all have to reject many candidates, even if they are qualified -- they just don't have room for everybody who wants to enroll. The acceptance rate may be as low as 25-30%, or it may be as high as 70-75%, but they all have to weed out their applicant pool to some extent.

A degree from a school like Ashford is legitimate, but it's not going to stand out in a crowded field. An Ashford degree won't automatically disqualify you, but on the other hand, it's not going to be a big asset either. If they have a choice, graduate schools will typically prefer students with undergraduate degrees from better known schools with reputations for higher admission standards. And since Canadian MBA programs get more applicants than they can handle, they do have that choice.

But remember that grad school admissions are not made just on the basis of your degree. For example, Canadian business schools will probably expect you to take the GMAT exam as part of the application process. If you get a high GMAT score, your chances of admission will go way up, regardless of your degree. If you have some unique or interesting experience, that can also increase your chances for admission.

You should start looking at specific Canadian MBA programs, and review their acceptance rates and GMAT scores. You might also take some GMAT sample exams, to see what kind of score you are likely to get. Based on this info, you should be able to figure out which schools are the most likely to accept you.