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MBA school immediately right after BS degree?
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Anonymous
| I work for a school with a not top MBA program and we would not admit someone without at least a full year of work experience. |
Anonymous
Ok, “LESS-prestigious” 
I still don’t buy the one-size-fits-all line everybody is pushing here. It’s like when everybody says you can’t make it to Wall Street unless you went to a handful of elite colleges, & then you run into guys doing great who went to Penn State & UMass. You are equating “less than optimal” and “completely worthless.” |
Anonymous
OP: I have written many responses in this thread. Your son is highly likely to be accepted to several elite MBA programs such as NYU-Stern & Yale SOM and others as well as to several deferred admissions programs. OP: If your son prefers a one academic year program with other recent graduates with zero to less than 2 yers experience, he can apply to one of the 30 MIM (Master in Management programs). The two best are at Northwestern--Kellogg and at Chicago-Booth. Both are very likely to award your son a generous merit scholarship and, if your son later decides that he wants an MBA in addition to the master in Management degree, he will be given one full year of course credit at Northwestern if he graduates among the top 25%. The total COA at Northwestern--Kellogg for the 10 month program is about $107,500 and about $103,000 at Chicago-Booth. However, your son's total COA should be greatly reduced due to significant merit scholarship awards at both programs. Duke-Fuqua also offers two MIM programs, but the tech oriented program seems to focus on international students. I do not recommend this program. The MIM programs at Northwestern-Kellogg and Chicago-Booth are superior to Duke's program. Again, the MIM programs are limited to recent college graduates with less than 2 years work experience. Zero post undergraduate work experience is fine. I do not recommend these programs for your son based on his statistics & major, but if his maturity level is not up to elite MBA standards, then these two MIM programs should be considered. Yale also offers a similar program for recent college grads as does Maryland, Cornell, Emory, USC, Michigan, Notre Dame, Lehigh, Wake Forest, Boston University, and over a dozen other schools--but Chicago-Booth and Northwestern-Kellogg appear to be the best MIM programs. |
Anonymous
|
US News MBA Program rankings 2024:
1) Stanford 1) UPenn-Wharton 3) Northwestern-Kellogg 3) UChicago-Booth 5) MIT-Sloan 6) Harvard 7) NYU-Stern 7) UCal-Berkeley 7) Yale-SOM (School of Management) 10) Dartmouth-Tuck (OP: Not worth applying to as they insist on work exp.) 10) Virginia-Darden 12) Columbia Business School 12) Duke-Fuqua 12) Michigan-Ross 15) Cornell-Johnson 16) UTexas at Austin 16) CMU-Tepper 18) Emory 18) USC-Marshall 20) Indiana-Kelley (OP: Son should get a very generous merit scholarship) 20) UNC-Keenan-Flagler 20) UCLA-Anderson 20) Vanderbilt-Owen OP: No need for your son to apply below the top 14 listed programs. |
Anonymous
| Haven’t read all the replies but regardless of the total amount of work experience, MBA programs are going to want to see evidence of leadership. That is the most important aspect of the application. They would definitely accept a candidate with a much lower GMAT score and strong leadership, demonstrated through extracurricular and work experience, than a 780 GMAT and weak evidence of leadership. Also, candidates need to have a coherent story of what they want to do and how the MBA will help them achieve that. |
Anonymous
Agree with the bolded portion. While leadership is important, it is not always the most important part of an application. In the same vein, job progression is important for those with post undergraduate work experience beyond 2 years. It seems clear that you know about MBA admissions, but you may not be aware of the latest trend regarding STEM MBAs. OP: Consider this program at Northwestern-Kellogg which is a STEM MBA focused on AI (artificial intelligence) and ML (machine learning). It is Northwestern-Kellogg MBAi joint program between Kellogg School of Management & McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern. The work requirement / expectation is a bit unclear for those with an undergraduate STEM degree (the issue is whether or not undergraduate internships & undergraduate research (R&D) will satisfy the work experience desired by the program). Extremely high demand for this type of STEM MBA degree. GMAT or other standardized test indicating high level of intelligence is important--much more so than for a regular MBA. https://kellogg.northwestern.edu/programs/full-time-mba/mbai-program.aspx My understanding is that the school arranges the mandatory internship. |
Anonymous
Kellogg did put the two to six years work experience desired in bold. I'm sure that means nothing. |
Anonymous
Good point. However the text does indicate that any combination of two of the three would be fine and the second qualification allows for significant leeway. |
Anonymous
|
I'm a career business professor. There is a shortage of students, especially STEM students who can do the work. A GMAT of 780 is 99th percentile. This student should get admitted to multiple top 20 schools.
Business schools created the fiction that we are about "leadership". No, professors are not leaders. We are nerdy Ph.D.'s from the U.S., India, China, etc. Meanwhile, low-level administrators make admissions decisions. They need to fill the class with students who won't flunk out. Mature students are easier to place in jobs. The classroom dynamic is also better if the students are similar. But schools have always accepted some students without work experience. The two-year M.B.A. is expensive, and Computer Science majors make good money. What is the point of an M.B.A.? Doe your son really want to turn down 6-figure CS jobs and move to Indiana for two years to become an assistant brand manager at Proctor and Gamble? Consider one-year specialty masters degrees in financial engineering, supply chain management, etc. If he has no clue what he wants to do, then it might be cheaper to figure that out while working. |
Anonymous
Thank you for posting. I am not the OP, but I have made several posts in this thread advocating for OP's son to apply to various types of master's degree programs in business. I do agree with almost all of your post. The issue, I suspect, is that OP's son has not secured employment, yet has a stellar GPA in a difficult and valuable STEM major (CS) along with a superb 99% GMAT score of 780. Many Top 20 MBA programs are likely to accept OP's son with an offer of merit scholarship money. Many MIM programs and many specialty master's degree programs are also likely to offer scholarship money. |
Anonymous
Just checked Stanford GSB's website. States that no years of work experience is required. Stanford GSB Deferred Enrollment gives current college seniors who are accepted to the graduate school of business the option to proceed directly to Standford's MBA program or to defer for up to four years. Yale's Silver Scholars program requires seniors to attend Yale SOM immediately after graduation for one year before taking at least a one year break to gain post undergraduate work experience. NYU-Stern has students who move directly into the MBA program after their senior year of college. These are just three examples of many. |
Anonymous
What kind of leadership? I've seen coworkers go off to MBA from their entry-level jobs. |
Anonymous
Leadership can be during one's undergraduate school years in school related ECs or in community involvement. Stanford GSB website also states that leadership can be shown through undergraduate research, although there is no further clarification. |
Anonymous
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You pay right?
Stupid idea. Go to a good undergrad business school. |
Anonymous
Get a JOB! 30+ years ago, I went to grad school (right after college for me, but I had worked 2 summer internships with the company that ultimately hired me). The company hired you and sent every one to grad school. Was in a program that was CS/EE/Business. So we took classes with MBA students. This was early 90s, so lots of kids went to grad school simply because they couldn't find a job. But man, I quickly learned to select partners for projects in Business courses--you wanted the slightly older students, ones who had some work experience. Over 50% of the "direct to MBA" had literally Never held a job with a paycheck. These kids had never even worked as a waiter or at McD's or Target. They lacked common sense and real world experiences. They had no clue their interests, because they had no real world experiences. I cannot imagine spending $50K+ per year for an MBA and not having a clue what/why you want to focus in a specific area. My two favorite "partners" for business courses (besides the students in our program, where we all had worked at least summers in a real job or rather any job) we MBA students with 4-5 years work experience. Projects were a much better learning experience. |