MBA Candidate Applies To 18 Business Schools

This is ridiculous LOL.


MBA Candidate Applies To 18 Business Schools In 3 Months

Benjamin Bush wrote 38 essays, submitted 36 recommendation letters, and spent $1,900 in MBA application fees, applying to 18 business schools! Here’s what he learned from the MBA application process

https://www.businessbecause.com/news/mba-degree/7719/mba-application-business-schools

 

I applied for only two MBA schools, one was the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and was rejected. The second one was Imperial College London, and where is now I am halfway through the program. Honestly, not much value in an MBA; especially, for someone from a technical background.

 

I had been considering an MBA and was accepted to Quantic's EMBA but did not attend as they only gave me a roughly 20% scholarship and I already have a Masters. Usually, if you already have experience in any field with an already earned Masters, an MBA likely won't help. A MBA is good to build on but not really top off with if you already have good experience and graduate level degrees.

 

Would love to hear your thoughts, if you were to elaborate on that. One of the golden pathways for decades was a STEM degree (engineering, finance, etc.) from a well-regarded state university, a few years of corporate experience, followed by a well-regarded MBA program. Historically, that was an almost a guaranteed pathway for high performers to reach executive track positions. Certainly has been changing in recent years though.

 

Finally read through the Click Bait article... sigh, they didn't even share which of the schools he applied to sent offer letters.

 

Based on his eventual school choice (Notre Dame), he probably didn't get into any of the top tier ones he applied to like Harvard, etc
Notre Dame is still a pretty good school but given the effort he put in, not sure if it was worth it.

How's it going with Imperial College? Has it met your expectations/goals? How is the networking/career aspect?

 

The idea of an MBA is for mid-career and networking, which is focusing on Business and Management. As someone more on the technical side of the field, an MBA is not helpful; properly, my degree at Georgetown University on Technology Management was on the proper career supports. As far as the C-level corporate path is slim, you cannot compete with people with MBA from top business schools like Stanford, UPenn, MIT, Harvard, INSEAD, LBS, Columbia, HEC Paris, Booth, IESE, ESADE, Northwestern, UCLA, Oxford, and Cambridge. Especially those programs on campus, where networking is the key to career success.

The program is alright because of the COVID-19 pandemic travel restriction leading to no on-campus interaction with staff, faculty, and other students. I find the program is quite challenging of no use for my career. Especially Financial Management Accounting and Corporate Finance; because exams closed books and notes, I cannot memorize all the formulas. Maybe it is good to have an MBA when seeking a Management level, but I have found it unnecessary. I wish I could reverse my decision to use $50,000.00 to start a business instead of going for an MBA.

Whether networking is a little or not there, the program now seems to be online isolated with live classes and tutor/office hours via ZOOM. The program does not meet my expectation and goals. But it does give me pride that someone who has never been to school until almost 13 years old can now attend one of the top colleges in the world.

 

I attended the full-time MBA at UT Dallas. It isn't elite like the schools you mentioned, but it was perfect for a person like me transitioning to North America. I came from a poor country and had very little means to study in the US or Canada. I am really thankful to the State of Texas and the UT system for giving me a full ride scholarship. I will always be indebted to Texas and the wonderful Texan people! UT Dallas also has very good career services for the full-time program (there were roughly only 40 of us in my cohort). The DFW location really helps too. I could not have possibly gotten my internships and full-time jobs in Dallas if not for UTD's help arranging interviews, matching me with employers etc. The work experience in Dallas also helped me get my dream job in Toronto and eventually Canadian citizenship.

Maybe my case is unusual, but I really find the value of a full-time MBA. I cannot be earning or doing what I do if not for my MBA. Even if I had not gotten a scholarship, loaning the amount (if that was possible) would have been worth the ROI for me.

Right now, I am a practice leader for analytics/AI/machine learning projects. Technical chops are also heavily required for my job. But even then, the MBA helped me with how to communicate results to senior management. I cannot count the number of times I've seen my company's data scientists confuse people with their presentations. Yes, they look cool, but nobody knows what to do with them.

I am usually asked by senior management to be a business translator of sorts to figure out the insights from those machine learning projects. Re machine learning I learned everything from Youtube, Coursera and Udemy. It wasn't that hard for me because I have a heavy quant background.