I have been considering it, but the amount of debt scares me. Is it really worth it, please non of the BS i read on WSO that people there had already saved 250K by age of 27 and all of that sh**.
The reality is, there are no guarantee’s in life. Even with a top 3 MBA diploma.
But from everything I have seen, yes a top 3 MBA is worth the risk/reward. Strong recruitment opportunities are more critical than ever these days, and a top 3 will give you that chance.
Although I do think on AF we upgraded the hacksaw cutoff from top 3 to top 2.
If you’re pursuing a career in finance, an MBA from Harvard/Stanford/Wharton/Columbia/MIT/Chicago is almost certain to have a positive NPV.
Once you get beyond these top finance schools, the payoff starts to get more questionable.
Nope, Full Ride Scholarship to a Top 2 MBA or hacksaw. I now sell hacksaws at wholesale price. Hollachya boy when you inevitably need it.
We should be able to buy hacksaws with AF reward points.
we should convert the points system to sacks. and when say 15 people or more thumbs down your post, you get hacksawed by 5 sacks.
In my opinion, it’s worth it. If I had to characterize the benefits of such an MBA, here are the things that come quickest to mind:
(1) It “pre-qualifies” you. In a very similar way to how people go to the grocery store and tend to buy products from “known brands,” having the seal of approval from a top school can’t possibly do you any harm and can only work to your upside.
(2) You get to work with very talented people from a broad range of personal and proefssional experiences. This was something I really appreciated at school because it broadened my understanding of business in many ways beyond finance.
(3) The network. I can’t underestimate the importance of the network. This is what really helps you in your career after school. Through my MBA, I’ve been able to build connections with potential employees (people I may want to hire someday), employers (people that may and have actually hired me), and also draw upon a large number of alumni more senior than me, some of whom have essentially become my trusted advisors, mentors, and sources of referrals.
Furthermore, there’s a powerful networking effect too, because chances are the people you went to school with will know high-caliber folks at other schools so they too become good sources of introductions. On the buy-side, having a great network of contacts is a huge source of added value in terms of idea generation, job leads, and more introductions. Also, if I’m looking at any mid- or large-cap publicly traded company, within a few days time I can line up a call with either someone that covers the company on the buy-side or who actually works there (or at a competitor, supplier, customer, etc.) through my undergrad and business school networks. In a knowledge based business such as investing, having the right connections can make a real difference.
I only graduated from business school last year so if I ran an NPV of realized cash flows, I’d still be in the red. But over the long term (and likely medium term), I strongly believe that a good MBA is worth it.
I don’t have an MBA and never plan to get one to be honest, but numi’s reasons 1 and 3 are why you get one, IMO. I don’t think anybody gets an MBA to actually learn anything. You get it to say you have it and to gain access to the network that results from having it. I mean when I got my masters I took more finance classes then the MBAs at the same school yet they got the better finance jobs just because they had the MBA vs my MSF. It’s a brand more than anything else.
I also agree with 1 and 3 mostly. But would also add a huge #4. on campus recruiting
+1 on that.
The “seal of approval” and “network” will be worth something over your career.
But what makes a top MBA worthwhile financially is on-campus recruiting.
Anyone that has done a full-time BBA or MBA will tell you that on-campus recruiting is about 1000x easier than off-campus recruiting; it’s like shooting fish-in-a-barrel in comparison. On-campus recruiting is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change careers and get a massive step-up in pay.
I had an MBA classmate that used on-campus recruiting to make the transition from a $15,000/yr job teaching english in asia, to a $125,000/yr consulting job. Without on-campus recruiting, that transition probably wouldn’t have happened within her lifetime.
^ Was that pre or post 2008?
Yeah, totally forgot about on campus recruiting. That would be a huge plus for virtually everyone at business school. But since I was recruiting for hedge funds, most of my recruiting was off campus even though my school is pretty well represented across the total industry. Hedge funds don’t have the resources or interest to send people on campus for recruiting, not to mention that there are still enough people out there that would gladly travel for the opportunity to interview (myself included).
It might just be me, but unless you are already making MBA-type salary (let’s say $250k+), the few hundred thousand dollars that you would spend on the MBA in the short term seems pretty small compared to your future career earnings.
Er…have you gotten into a Top 3 school? Until then the question is moot.
It requires sh*tlaod of work to prepare for GMAT/MBA apps to get into Top 10. He is probably asking to make up his mind whether he should shoot for it or not. GMAT is such PITA.
Numi has summed it pretty well. Just one quick question related to the subject. I have scheduled my GMAT for mid-Aug, but my friend (Wash.U MBA) says that preparing single app for any of the top 10 MBA will require around 2-3 weeks so I should take GMAT by mid-July at any cost if I’m planning on sending 2-3 first round apps. Can anybody (with experience) advise me how much time it generally takes to prepare one application?
Those timelines make sense for Round 1. However, you should also be taking notes about your essays and sketching out drafts in tandem with your GMAT. It will take some time for your ideas to develop; in my case, my ideas developed over a span of a few weeks, arguably a few months (in terms of ideation to iteration/revision to finalization). Ideally you’ll want to talk to people that had gone to your target MBA schools to get their perspectives, have some of them read and provide feedback on your essays, and so forth. The people you want to retain to review your essays are people that either know you and can give you very candid feedback, others with terrific attention to detail and can write well (lawyers, private equity folks, and consultants at leading firms tend to be best at this), or some kind of experienced admissions coach.
You need people that have gone through a rigorous admissions process in some capacity, who have worked with others, and who really can take a skeptical eye and a fine-tooth comb to reviewing your essays. These people will scrutinize every word and phrase of your essays, and by the time you’re done writing them you’re probably going to be so tired that you won’t even know whether your essay answers the question that’s being asked (by far the largest pitfall of unsuccessful essays). Basically, what I’m saying is that If you’re not getting pushback from your reviewers on your early drafts, you probably aren’t asking the right people for feedback since they are being too generous with you.
This point is worth repeating because it’s so important – you need to put together your team or coalition of advisors, mentors, etc. If you don’t have a team, find the one or two people that will take the time to get to know you and have a demonstrated track record of success in admissions. You need to find people that want to win as badly as you do. For me, the most valuable feedback that I got came from (1) an experienced strategy consultant that eventually became a full-time career coach and mother of three; (2) a friend of mine that is a patent attorney who spends his entire days scrutinizing legalese and drafting memos; (3) another friend that works in hotel adminstration but is an amateur creative writer on the side; and (4) an electrical engineer that went to HBS in order to switch from science to finance. They often offered different perspectives and helped look at different essays, but ultimately knew enough about me and were willing to dedicate energy to go through my documents with a fine-tooth comb. I transfered a lot of my learnings from each individual across all my apps. Some of these folks were very nice in their suggestions, others were extremely blunt in their feedback and told me that I didn’t have a chance getting into school based on my essay draft, and all came from different backgrounds. However, the common thread is that they all gave me clear, actionable, no-nonsense feedback. In the end, my results spoke for themselves, and of course I owed a lot of people some very nice dinners/champagne bottles for their efforts in being champions for my cause. You need to build your own team of champions; it’ll make the process a lot less lonely.
You also want to leave time to coach your recommendation writers as to what they should include. Basically, there are a lot of things going on and you want to give yourself at least three months to comfortably work on things, unless you’re capable of firing up several near-all nighters like me (I do this by choice because I have a pretty short attention span, and just tend to work better in spurts even if it sometimes harms my sanity…)
Anyway, as mentioned above, I tend to work best under tight deadlines, so I wrote essays for three schools in the span of about three weeks. Getting the first set of essays done made the rest easier since at least I was in the right mental framework. However, for most people, you should allow more time than that. You really have to know your work habits, but hopefully how I’ve described things at least gives you some framework of designing your work plan and timelines.
One last piece of advice – start your applications for your “safety school” first. Your earliest application will be the most raw, both in terms of writing as well as ideation. There’s nothing you can do about this; it’s simply an inevitability that you get better with more reps.
Great post Numi! Thanks a lot!
I agree with many of Numi’s points but not all.
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GMAT - focus on the GMAT and only the GMAT. Do not even begin to think about essays yet, however, give yourself a deadline (which it sounds like you have) so you don’t become one of those applicants that keeps delaying taking the GMAT OR takes it 10 times (I’m sure you know a couple of these people). And take it early - I think August is fine, but keep in mind Round 1 deadlines are mid Sep (I think?) so you’re not giving yourself much time if you want to submit ALL your apps round 1 (see next point). Also, don’t fixate on getting a 790. Honestly, for the top schools, assuming you have decent experience, grades, and most importantly, put together a good application, all you need is 700 or above. Trust me on this - if you get 700 or above, you’re done - move on.
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Really really focus on your essays. I can’t stress this enough. Especially now that there are LESS essays than before (HBS is going to one essay). Couple additional points on this:
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REALLY know the schools. All business schools are not the same. They really aren’t. If you can’t speak in front of 90 people and be comfortable defending your ideas or critiquing others, than you will fail miserably at HBS but might do great at another lecture based school. Really do your research and try and incorporate your knowledge of each school into your application and tie in how it fits with where you want to go.
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Also, some schools look for certain qualities in applicants. If you don’t convey them, in either essays, resume, extra curriculars, or recs, you simply won’t get in. Like HBS/Stanford look for leaders (duh, everyone knows that), but there are certain ways to express that and more importantly, certain types of leadership they want to see examples of. So, do your research.
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Essays: After your GMAT, really think about your essays and what you want to convey. Important - KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. You are not writing to sophisticated finance professionals - you are writing to admissions HR. So write your essays in language your mom can understand (which is hard sometimes when your job is complicated). At the elite schools, many times they want to know non-professional things about you to see what drives you. Look at past essay questions - in the year I applied, HBS had 6 essays, of which only 3 were realy professional related questions! By looking at past essay questions, you can see what they’re really trying to understand about you. And again, each school is different. Example? Pickup a copy of “65 Successful Harvard Business School Application Essays” - you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about. You’ll read essays about people’s upraising - being adopted from Gabon and growing up in Alaska as the only black person, etc (I just made this up but you’ll see what I mean). It’s not all about “I was an ibanker at Goldman and scored a 790 on the GMAT”. Also, doing 20 revisions of your essays is not abnormal. It will be painful. You will really want to keep things in there that just simply don’t belong. You will write and rewrite one essay a ton of times. Just remember - admissions will be able to tell how much work you put into the essays - they look at these ALL DAY LONG.
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Brainstorm and think of your application as a whole: So after you get a sense of what schools are looking for, how do you give them that information? You have to look at your apps as a whole. This is something that few people do. Think of it this way - you have maybe 3 means to get your information accross to admissions: Essays, resume, and recommendations. That’s not a lot of avenues. SO, you have to be incredibly efficient. DON’T repeat things that can be gleamed from your resume easily (IE: I completed 5 deals with transaction values of 5 billion, etc) - they can see that, and trust me, you are not the first successful banker they have seen. Don’t repeat things in your essays that your recs will also mention (confirmation by recs of achievements is okay, but keep it really short). My point is - you have to think about everything you want to communicate and somehow fit it within the essays, recs and resume. Agreed with Numi - brainstorm. Jot down thoughts on examples fromwork that you want to include in essays. Maybe this example is better in this essay vs that essay. Or maybe it’s more appropriate coming froma recommender? Think about what information you want recs to convey and how that fits in with your essays and other parts of your application, etc. The hardest part - you won’t be able to fit everything in that you want to say.
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You asked about timing. As you can imagine, given the info above - do not understimate the time required to really craft your best-foot-foward application. It is by far harder and more time consuming than the GMAT. As you can probably surmise, the entire business school application process, post GMAT, is a very self-reflective time and takes planning. So give yourself time to really think through things. Also, do think about logistics - mangaging your recommenders and making sure they are on schedule as well apprised to how you’re positioning yourself. When I went to my recommenders, I actually had almost complete drafts of my essays for them to read. You can start to understand how much planning is involved? Think about how many people DON’T do this? Yeah - that’s why admissions rates are so low at the top schools.
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Given how muh work it takes to apply, I’d say limit yourself to 3 or 4 schools. I don’t think it’s possible to put in more than that, assuming your’e trying to put in a perfect application for each school. For example, my goal was to apply to two schools for first round, and two in second. Well that didn’t work out as my apps weren’t ready to go by first round deadline, and I ended up submitting only 3 all in the second round.
The below survey, combined with government statistics on education, seems to demonstrate that people with education above undergrads (6.5% of population) would represent close to half (46%) of the High Net worth individual. This is for Canada.
The US has a similar one apparently from BCG - which if I recall, found that education was even more relevant to income.
Here’s the sources:
- BMO says that 46% of the high net worth surveyed had Graduate/Professional degrees (its even more for US as I recall).
- Stats Canada says that Graduate degrees represent about 6.5% of the population.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/12-581-x/2012000/edu-eng.htm
These reports must be taken with skepticism.
There are many newspaper articles about the reports for those interested.