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locdogg posted:At it's heart, it is a generalist degree, wherein you learn to be the boss. I think this is potentially misleading. It's not like getting your MBA entails an automatic promotion to management. Rather, an MBA provides you with the business background that is necessary for the boss to have. And I also think it's very important to stress the generalist nature of the degree. The real purpose of studying various topics as part of an MBA is to allow you to ask intelligent questions of experts in those topics, and not be totally lost by the answer. Of course, there are exceptions--for example, people who study finance at Wharton do end up knowing a lot about finance--but those should be viewed as exceptions rather than the norm. (I hope I'm not coming across as too down on MBA programs. It's a valuable degree, and even more so when you understand exactly what it is and what its limitations are.)
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Sep 26, 2008 19:14
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Triple Tech posted:What can you tell me about how an MBA relates to the typical engineer's mindset? The primary benefit of an MBA for an engineer is that it will teach you how the business folks think, and how to talk to them. You can go two ways with it: either go over to the business side and be one of the few folks who isn't lost when talking to engineers, or stay on the engineering side and be one of the few folks who has a good understanding of the way the business works. Either way, it's good for you. (But as long as you're looking at software engineering degrees, Carnegie Mellon has one you should check out.)
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Oct 1, 2008 17:26
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is that a egg posted:Plus, I think I can transfer more of my previous grad school courses to the MLRHR. Most graduate programs are really picking about letting you transfer credit. Check with your program's policies, but don't be surprised if they're stingy.
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Nov 26, 2008 17:57
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Buff Butler posted:GPA does not mean poo poo in the real world. I finished grad school with a 3.95 GPA. Nobody cares. If you'd finished with a 2.95, you would find that people do care.
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Feb 25, 2009 16:33
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ion posted:What's the difference between a BBA and a MBA in terms of curriculum? It seems to me that they are almost nearly identical; in fact, I know one school setting up an accelerated MBA program now for BBA graduates because they're noticing this.. Depends on the school. Consider the two top-ranked BBA programs. At the University of Virginia, the undergrad and graduate business schools aren't even on the same campus, and there are some major differences in the possible concentrations. At the University of Pennsylvania, the second-year MBA courses are cross-listed with the junior/senior-level electives. Anything in between is possible.
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Feb 26, 2009 15:55
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You have the option of studying something different for your MBA, but yes, if you already have a BBA, the major value in getting an MBA is getting to say you have an MBA. Depending on where your MBA is from, it might be worth it.
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Mar 2, 2009 02:02
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SiDeath posted:I've been thinking about grad school, but am more interested in Finance than general management. I'm planning on getting a CPA, but fall a few hours short of qualifying to sit for it, so I was thinking of augmenting my education with another degree. In lieu of an MBA, I've been considering a Masters in Finance and also attaining my level 1 CFA. Has anyone had good experiences with Masters in Finance programs? Or know of any good risk-management programs? I'd really appreciate it. If you're interested in general finance, why are you looking at a CPA? And if you want to get a CPA, why aren't you looking at accounting programs?
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Mar 23, 2009 23:45
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unterdude posted:This doesn't pertain necessarily to MBA's but it is related close enough. I would like to pursue studies in Quantitative Trading, but I am a freshman majoring in Finance right now. Would picking up a minor in Math give me a good enough background to apply for school in Masters in Quantitative Finance? I know this field traditionally only accepts Math, Physics, and Statistics majors. Those programs are generally designed on the assumption that the students coming in have a strong background in some quantitative discipline, but not much training in finance. You'd probably be better off moving over to math/physics/engineering, which gives you a better shot at other jobs in case you change your mind sometime in the next three years.
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Apr 10, 2009 01:44
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Go to the highest ranked school that you can get into. That gives you more options than going to the one school that's still accepting applications.
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May 15, 2009 00:45
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:This seems as good a place as any to mention it - did anyone else take a CFA exam today? And how meaningful is the designation (no time like after an exam to ask that question)? In the typical finance arena, it's expected that you hold the CFA charter after a certain point in your career. Not having it doesn't look good.
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Jun 7, 2009 17:14
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Rekinom posted:So, assuming I have 12 years of work experience in a job with tons of leadership and responsibility, keep taking the GMAT over and over until I get a 700+, could I actually parlay that into getting into one of the top programs in the country? Also, I'm an "underrepresented minority" if that helps. You have a shot, but the top business schools are extremely competitive--at the extreme, Stanford admits fewer than 8% of its applicants--so you'll need to have everything going for you in terms of essays and recommendations. You should shoot for a high GMAT score the first time around rather than after many tries, and plan on applying to some lower ranked schools as well.
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Jun 27, 2009 17:35
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Tezer posted:When you get an MBA do you focus on a particular industry? How do you define the limits of your studies? The structure of most US two year MBA programs is that you spend the first year studying a general business curriculum, you get an internship between the school years, and then you spend the second year doing a more advanced curriculum on one or more specific subjects. So everyone has a basic background in finance, operations, marketing, etc., but you also have specialists in each of those subjects and more. Furthermore, since most programs require at least two years work experience for admission, people are bringing some industry experience to the table. If you want more details, here are the curricula at Wharton and Stern. You can also pretty easily find details for any other school. quote:Does an MBA require math courses? Programming courses (even just excel macros)? It depends on the program and specialization. Most programs will require some basic math at some point, but any given student is free to learn that math for the test and then promptly forget it. Everyone should be proficient in Excel, but if you're looking for someone with more skill than that, you'll have to read their resumes a little more closely. quote:Are there any basic science requirements? No. It's a business degree. Any given student may have a science background from their undergraduate days, but that's by no means guaranteed. quote:Do MBA students complete a lot of research projects? That depends on what you mean by research. It's extremely rare for an MBA student to do academic research, but they have to be capable of writing a report analyzing a few case studies, or synthesizing various reports about a company or industry. quote:Do MBA programs have color/space theory classes? How is report/presentation design taught? Again, it's a business degree, so if anyone has an arts or graphic design background, it's from their prior work. quote:Or are MBA students more likely to just buckshot the job market with their resume than other graduates? To some degree, especially this year since job opportunities are a little scarcer than usual. My guess is that people are seeing that you're at a consulting company and not paying much attention to the rest of the ad, or hoping that your extra requirements are nice to have rather than necessary.
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Jun 28, 2009 15:59
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There are a couple good reasons for this guy to go for an MBA: 1. As an entrepreneur, he will need to be familiar with every aspect of business development. An MIS degree and experience at an accounting firm certainly cover some of that, but not all of it. 2. Going through a top school's program will give him access to all the resources of that school, including their small business development office and alumni network. Of course he's right to be concerned about the cost, so I'd recommend he talk to an admissions councilor at at least a couple schools.
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Jul 8, 2009 21:11
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The typical EMBA student is an executive or slightly below, and general over 35. They're at the point in their careers where they're looking to transition to upper management and need the credentials for whatever reason. The curriculum is designed on the assumption that everyone coming in has significant experience and general knowledge, so there's no need to teach business basics in as much detail. Really, the only thing it has in common with a regular MBA is the name of the degree.
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Jul 13, 2009 06:16
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DocAres posted:I have an IT degree, but I have transitioned into electrical engineering and now focus on merging the fields within our medium sized corporation. That depends on what you want to do with it. If you just want to stay at your current company or move around in similar roles, the local schools are fine. Going to Chicago or Northwestern will give you more options. Edit: You may want to look around for management degrees that are more targeted at technology management. Check out the search here and see if you find anything interesting. Don't rule out the online schools, either--they're not competitive with an MBA from Chicago, but they might be perfectly good alternatives to the local MBAs. Double Secret Edit: Check out Northwestern's Master of Engineering Management Program. ultrafilter fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Jul 17, 2009 |
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Jul 17, 2009 22:39
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Michigan's top 20, and Indiana's top 25. Both are excellent schools and therefore admissions are very competitive.
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Aug 22, 2009 01:55
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dvs112 posted:I just finish the first semester of my MBA program. I have a CS undergraduate degree but I am increasingly interested in finance. Do you folks have any tips on how to move into finance without job experience? I am in the Minneapolis area, which has a number of hedge funds, private equity firms, and some smaller investment banks. I've heard furious networking can help land a job here, but are there any things I can focus on over the next few years to get my poo poo together for an interview close to graduation? Focus on getting a finance internship next summer.
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Dec 1, 2009 05:13
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Agent Escalus posted:Say, does anyone know of what kinds of jobs MBA alumnus have been able to get in the last ten years (economy notwithstanding)? I'm sure it depends on their level of experience, so let's say someone in their late 20s-30s, with mostly entry-level positions held prior to going back to school. What program and specialty?
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Mar 13, 2010 07:48
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zmcnulty posted:At this point I'm saying no don't do it mostly because I don't have any specific plan of what I want to do or why I need an MBA to accomplish that. Once I can be more specific, it seems like it would be worth revisiting. But in the meantime I'd appreciate any advice. This is exactly the right thought process. You'd be giving up a lot to get it right now, and shouldn't do so unless you have a plan for getting more later. You don't, so now's not the time.
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Mar 20, 2010 17:30
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How committed are you to staying in Baltimore?
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Mar 25, 2010 22:32
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Bigass Moth posted:It usually takes a few years to get into Ohio State's MBA program (they want several years of work experience). My work pays for tuition, so would it be beneficial for me to work towards a second bachelor's while I keep trying to admittance into the MBA program? What's your current degree in, what would the next one be in, and why do you want to do it?
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Jun 14, 2010 15:33
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madkapitolist posted:Im about to graduate with an undergraduate degree in econ in June 2011 and I want to pursue an MBA immediately. Why? That's the question you'll have to answer for your essays, and without a good (and sufficiently detailed) answer, you're not getting in to anywhere worth going.
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Oct 5, 2010 20:48
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Josh Lyman posted:I'm teaching 1 of 4 sections of the core undergrad finance course in the spring, Intro to Corporate Finance. The other sections use Ross, Westerfield, Jordan "Fundamentals of Corporate Finance" which is $155 on Amazon, but I want to use Ross, Westerfield, Jaffe "Corporate Finance", typically an MBA book, which is $163 on Amazon. Require the same book as the other sections, but give them the option of buying the other one. Mention everything that you've told us here so that they can make an informed decision.
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Nov 13, 2010 01:23
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SWATJester posted:This may be a dumb question, but I'm thinking of getting an MBA now that I've finished my JD and don't really like law. However, name of school is very important to me (more so than what job I end up in). Between Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and Georgetown, what kind of scores am I going to be needing? Work experience.
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Dec 13, 2010 00:14
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Homebrewism posted:Would a DBA be significantly more beneficial to me than an MBA? What do you want to do after?
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Dec 13, 2010 21:49
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bewbies posted:Business PhDs are probably most valuable to people with some solid real world experience in business, this puts them in a position either in academia or (more lucratively) in think-tanks or in consulting. If you don't have a business background, even if you were accepted to a program, you'd not see much (if any?) return on a PhD (read: community college professor). This is pretty badly inaccurate. There are two different kinds of business doctorates out there, and they can't generally be distinguished by whether they're called DBA or PhD. The first is a practitioner's degree, which is designed to take somebody who already has some work experience and give them some degree of advanced training. There is a thesis attached, but it's more along the lines of a large project in a more traditional degree program. People with these degrees can be hired to teach at business schools, but not to do research. The second is a research degree that's designed to train future professors. This is much more like what people think of when they hear PhD, and no industry experience is required for these programs (although it certainly doesn't hurt). People who go through this degree will publish one or several papers in academic journals and complete a dissertation that's comparable to the norm in non-business fields. The specializations here are the traditional business fields--accounting, marketing, operations, finance, etc.--and it can be pretty hard to get a job in any of those fields if you're coming from a non-business background.
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Dec 13, 2010 23:43
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Koine posted:Where do I want my career to go? Sustainable development in particular. MBAs without borders, or selling more energy efficient technology, that sort of thing. I've already had my taste of it in appliances, now I want to do it large scale. That's a great reason to go for an MBA.
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Jan 21, 2011 19:11
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Elucidarius posted:EDIT: I mean couldn't what you said apply to any Masters type program? No. An MBA is very different from an academic degree.
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May 6, 2011 23:16
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Dishwasher posted:Are Information Systems type MS's desirable on the job market? Shouldn't you be asking that before you make the decision to get one?
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May 15, 2011 19:59
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bouncyman posted:Decisions for UCLA's FEMBA program were released today, and I got rejected. My stats were solid (740 GMAT, 2.7 engineering gpa), and I'm pretty sure my recommendations were good. Graduated in 2007, have three years of work experience, but purely in an engineering function. Does this mean I just got my rear end kicked on the essays? Or are my stats more terrible than I thought they were? 2.7 engineering GPA is solid?
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Jun 22, 2011 19:03
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Ingraman posted:So I seriously F'd up my first two years of college and graduated with about a 2.4ish GPA (Economics/Psychology major). I have a pretty good job right now and 4+ years of working experience in non-profit finance, but I'd like to get a Masters to move up the career ladder more easily. I'm taking graduate level finance/accounting courses at Harvard extension school, which isn't a "real school", but I figure I'd build a separate transcript to show that I've cleaned my act up. I'm not looking at high end MBA schools at all, but assuming I get a good GMAS score, is business school still out of my league (like BU/Northeastern level)? How's your GPA for the last two years?
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Jul 10, 2011 18:08
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prankquean posted:I'm most interested in applying to MBA programs with a deferral so I can get some of that real world experience before going to get the MBA. I'm hoping to go to a top 10 school. When you apply for an MBA, there's a shortlist of questions that the admissions committee wants to have answers to:
quote:1) My friends who are majoring in the humanities say that they need at least a 3.8 to get into various grad schools (the idea being that it's an automatic cutoff). Your friends are delusional. I have no idea where they got that idea from, but it has no basis in reality.
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Aug 21, 2011 19:33
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Rrail posted:I'm getting everything together to apply to quite a few of them (as a transfer), amongst them is Michigan-Ann Arbor, Washington, Virginia, UT-Austin, North Carolina, etc. My understanding is that, given my background, I should have little trouble getting into just about any state school. I am all new to this school thing though, please excuse me if I come off as ignorant. For general undergrad, the U of Virginia is consistently ranked as one of the top 25 schools in the country, ahead of a lot of private schools except the absolute cream of the crop. I wouldn't worry too much about that, or any of the others on your list.
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Dec 22, 2011 19:36
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