MBA admission for a humanities major

[Anonymous]

DS is a junior at a small liberal arts college with no business school or business classes other than in economics. This was fine when DS applied because he always intended to major in history or political science or the like, and he is majoring in history with minors in philosophy and spanish.

He now thinks he may want to get a job in business management or finance or a hedge fund or something akin (he really has no idea what he wants to do, but he is starting to feel stressed about his lack of internships and job prospects and sees his HS friends who are engineers and business majors all with locked down summer internships in those areas leading to full time jobs, and likewise his econ major friends at his slac are in similar situations). He's studying in Spain this spring but hopes to apply for internships at international development agencies, district attorneys offices, etc. but doesn't expect any of those will lead to permanent employment offers, he is just trying to leverage off his fields of study (his career services office encouraged this).

DS asked me if he would be in consideration for an MBA after graduating with a history degree. I know enough to say he needs work experience before applying to MBA programs, especially to make sure he really wants to pursue that degree and career paths, but he doesn't feel hopeful he'll get a job in an mba-related field post-graduation, so he still circles back to wondering if he'll even be a candidate for MBA programs, and what he can do to enhance his chances as someone without a stem or business background. He has a strong GPA and historically has done well on standardized tests, and also was a strong math student in hs (took through bc calculus), although he has never liked math and hasn't pursued any math or stem classes in college other than for graduation requirements.

If you can't tell, spouse and I are former history and political science majors ourselves, who both went to law school, so we have no knowledge of admission to MBA programs, either outdated or current!

Thanks for whatever information and insight you can provide. Also, to clarify, my post is based on DS's questions to me and I just want to help him - I would be very happy for him to do something with his history degree, like to try teaching, a job at a think tank, consider law school, etc.

[Anonymous]

I was a history major at a SLAC who went to business school, as did several of my fellow history majors.

In my second year, I was a student application reader. We were the first round of readers. I don’t think we paid any attention to undergraduate major. The main things that are looked at are GMAT scores, undergrad grades and work experience. You could be an underwater basket weaver and get in if you made a good case for why you want to go to b school and you have the grades.
FWIW, I did feel that not having taken Econ or accounting in undergrad put me at a disadvantage.

[Anonymous]

It sounds like he has not the faintest idea what to do and is using the idea of an MBA as a way of kicking the can down the road.

The internships are a good idea to try things out and see what he likes. He needs to visit career services and start making a list of entry-level possibilities that interest him. If you have friends in related fields, have him schedule phone chats to learn more about their careers.

[Anonymous]

I would think the analytical, research, writing and thinking and language skills from his major and minors would be valuable. He could also add a couple of classes like statistics, economics, business writing, accounting or the kinds of classes found in a business minor to help sell himself.

I assume MBA programs want people to have experience. There is also the MPA route.

[Anonymous]

You typically can’t get into an MBA program without work experience. Your kid should go to the career center and network with alumni on linked in. Can your kid take a few stats and math classes? That will help.

[Anonymous]

Some math is a prerequisite for mba. And he needs meaningful work experience. Tell him to start networking with his college alum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You typically can’t get into an MBA program without work experience. Your kid should go to the career center and network with alumni on linked in. Can your kid take a few stats and math classes? That will help.

This is OP. DS did go to career services this past semester, and they encouraged him to apply for the types of internships I noted above, which he has done/is doing, but the timelines seem later or more vague on those so he doesn't expect to hear from any until some time in second semester.

When you say he should take some econ and math classes, which ones do you mean? DS took macro and micro his freshman year, didn't like either enough to want to pursue econ. (Btw, his friends who are econ majors didn't seem to like the micro/macro classes any more than DS did, they just slogged onward because they knew they wanted to "be" econ majors and get jobs in finance.) DS received ap credit though Calc 2 when he entered college, what other math classes would you encourage him to take? I don't think his college has accounting classes. I'm not sure what the point of taking linear algebra, etc would be - would he really use those in an MBA program? He also got credit for basic stats from his hs ap class, but would taking econ stat help with applying to (or succeeding in) an MBA program eventually?

The poster who said that DS has no idea what he wants to do is entirely correct. And I don't know if he actually will apply to MBA programs in the future (and he knows he wouldn't be applying until he has some work experience). But he doesn't think nor does his career center think he's a candidate for the rare finance jobs that recruit at his school, as many of the econ majors pursue those. DS has gotten to the point that he wants to feel some job and salary security like many of his stem-major friends are starting to, and he has also expressed that those same friends don't seem to "want" to do the jobs any more or less than he does, they just focused earlier on in college on pursuing majors that led to well paying jobs. Shame on us his parents for encourging him to pursue studying what he's actually interested in .

[Anonymous]

If he's serious about getting a job in business, he should get a minor in business and take some stats and accounting classes.

As an aside, you encouraged him to pursue studying what he is interested without thinking about the end game. You were also a poli sci history major and then went to law school.

If he wasn't interested in law school, what else did you think he could do with that background? As you are finding out, not a whole lot.

And yea, many of us end up going the practical route because we need jobs. Unless you have family money, you need to think practically.

[Anonymous]

Anyone can get an MBA. STEM majors do very well.

[Anonymous]

OP, liberal arts/humanities students just have to find their own path.

I'm sympathetic to your kid. I was interested in getting an MBA when I started college in parent times. But even then you needed work experience to get into the best programs. I also wanted to take a lot of liberal arts classes (my fantasy job was medieval history professor). My last decision re: majoring was to jettison a business/liberal arts dual degree program in favor of just an econ BA. And I stayed on the softer side of econ...int'l development, trade, and labor economics...which was more typically liberal artsy. It took me 9 months after graduation to find a real full-time job and I ended up as a GS-7 fed at an agency that interested me. Rose to GS-13. Then, after 7 years, I went to a top MBA program and went F500 corporate.
Yes, there are humanities grads at MBA schools. Were back then and still are now. There are a lot of econ, business, and engineering students, but the "other" category is large.

There are many different business jobs a liberal arts major can do. Most of them involve data analysis and information synthesis. And other skills that every college student works on - planning, communication, etc.

Since I was an econ major and have an MBA and have worked with campus hiring, I'm pretty comfortable saying that Intro Econ classes and Intro Accountimg aren't highly relevant to most business jobs. Spreadsheeting and data analysis are relevant. So statistics and the new data science classes might be useful. Any kind of software skills above the norm are usually helpful.

Your son needs to determinedly search among a bigger, more varied, and perhaps lower-paying set of opportunities than his more easily labelled peers. That's just how it's been since the 80s at a minimum. To prove this, I'm going to quote a book in my next post.

As far as concrete next steps, I'd suggest that your son make a well-reasoned list of target employers based on LinkedIn and alumni databases. Have him cold e-mail alums for career advice. I've been contacted less than 10 times in 20 years out of MBA. It's not a burden. Just looking at what older people with his major have done with their careers may be instructive.

[Anonymous]

PP... A reading from the book "Liar's Poker" by Michael Lewis, 1989, P. 24.

"And the more people studied economics, the more an economics degree became a requirement for a job on Wall Street.

There was a good reason for this. Economics satisfied the two most basic needs of investment bankers. First investment bankers wanted practical people, willing to subordinate their educations to their careers. Economics, which was becoming an ever more abstruse science, producing mathematical treatises with no obvious use, seemed almost designed as a sifting device. The way it was taught did not exactly fire the imagination...[snip]...I often asked otherwise intelligent members of the prebanking set why they studied economics, and they explained that it was the most practical course of study, even while they spent their time drawing funny little graphs. They were right, of course, and that was even more maddening. Economics WAS practical. It got people jobs. And it did this because it demonstrated that they were among the most fervent believers in the primacy of economic life.

Investment bankers also wanted to believe, like members of any exclusive club, that the logic to their recruiting techniques was airtight...No one who didn't belong was admitted...[snip]...The only inexplicable aspect of the process was that economic theory (which is, after all, what economics students were supposed to know) served almost no function in an investment bank. The bankers used economics as a sort of standardized test of generalized intelligence."

This passage amused me so much that, as an Econ major from the 80s, this is one of the few books I've kept for 30 years. It's still basically the same phenomena out there. Humanities grads need resume work experience in order to better convey what they can do for an employer. We're basically talking about signalling. Help your kid to send the right signals to a receptive hiring manager or firm and the major won't matter.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)#:~:text=Signalling%20started%20with%20the%20idea,information%20to%20the%20other%20party.

Good luck to your kid!

[Anonymous]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_(economics)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If he's serious about getting a job in business, he should get a minor in business and take some stats and accounting classes.

As an aside, you encouraged him to pursue studying what he is interested without thinking about the end game. You were also a poli sci history major and then went to law school.

If he wasn't interested in law school, what else did you think he could do with that background? As you are finding out, not a whole lot.

And yea, many of us end up going the practical route because we need jobs. Unless you have family money, you need to think practically.

what a useful post … OP said her kid’s school doesn’t have a business major or accounting classes …

op, anyone can get an mba. the tough part will be getting a job that launches him to a good mba program, and as others have said, networking from his college alumni database will be useful to him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If he's serious about getting a job in business, he should get a minor in business and take some stats and accounting classes.

As an aside, you encouraged him to pursue studying what he is interested without thinking about the end game. You were also a poli sci history major and then went to law school.

If he wasn't interested in law school, what else did you think he could do with that background? As you are finding out, not a whole lot.

And yea, many of us end up going the practical route because we need jobs. Unless you have family money, you need to think practically.

also, many people major in history, poli sci etc and find solid careers. you sound like someone who views college as akin to trade school.

[Anonymous]

OP here again. Thanks for the replies! I’m still curious what math classes posters suggest DS take, because his college has a strong math department and I could suggest he take some
classes in it if it could help him in his job search or eventual mba apps, if he goes that route.

I suggested he take some more classes in the econ department, but he thinks that taking a few one-off econ courses isn’t going to help a job search, and he’d prefer to use the class slots to potentially bump his spanish or poli sci minor to a double major or something along those lines (he also wants to take more psych and philosophy classes- he’s really not interested in any business or econ related, although as posters have said, he needs a job!).

I do feel a little guilty for not forcing him to be more practical in his choice of major - I also went to a slac and to in a time when liberal arts majors were very sought after by all the investment banks and management training programs for anyone so inclined, so I didn’t think his major would matter as much as having a rich, engaged experience in a major of his choice.

Thanks again.