Looking for your thoughts. I have three years of Big4 audit experience, recently moved to Toronto for a mid-market M&A role. I’m a CA Charterholder and CFA LIII candidate. Ive been considering whether an MBA at a tier 1 school in the US would be a good investment of time and money (assuming able to score high enough on GMAT to even apply), or whether the opportunity cost is too high at this point. I’m 25 years old, so still have a long runway in terms of career timeline.
I don’t have an impressive salary at the moment so the opportunity cost based on my current earnings isn’t all that high, but, within two years that may change. How do you evaluate cost/benefit of an expensive tier 1 MBA versus continuing to progress in your career, if your trajectory is already pretty good?
My ultimate goal is to be a CFO, long way to go obviously, and not that many public company CFO’s have a tier 1 MBA so it doesn’t seem at all essential. I just dont really have enough context to evaluate for myself and would really appreciate some of your insight.
Separate question - for any of you CFA candidates/charterholders that have written the GMAT, how did your study committment compare to the CFA program, and how well did you score/how attainable is 700+?
Actually, this is interesting. You’ve done so much work obviously and attained all these degrees and experience. What is your salary, may I ask?
I live in Toronto and MBAs are working for free, average people like me are basically at $30k level jobs. I wonder what Toronto pays for your qualifications.
$70k - but, I received an offer from one of the clients I was working with recently for about double that + 20% bonus. It was a tough choice but I decided that M&A experience was more valuable to my development over the next couple of years. This is realistically more than I should expect to be offered in the near future, so when I think of opportunity cost of an MBA I have about $120k/yr + work experience lost in mind.
MBA is tough to leverage for more than an entry level job in Toronto (I had a hard time getting into M&A with a CA + CFA level II) - what would you like to do for a career? $30k seems a bit low, I think most analysts with an MBA, even at an accounting firm make $45kish
Yeah, I think you are in good standing. I have basic qualifications like BA and some sort of semi relevant experience and i got lucky with $45k but now I am unemployed and fortune is not in my favour.
I think for your case in particular, because you have CA, soon to have CFA, and big audit experience, an MBA will help you. I know if you only have an MBA these days, it’s like “so what” because everyone does, just like a regular degree. But as a synergy, I think the cost/benefit analysis works in your favour. I know the high paying controller jobs (120k+) do ask for an MBA.
There are two things I learned about the MBA:
It’s not about the education, it’s about the reputation - You pay for the name of the school and the network you build inside of it. The content is vanilla.
It’s mostly relevant in the country where you have completed it - So if you take your Rotman MBA to Europe, they won’t care. So if you have decided to live in Toronto then it’s better to study in Toronto.
So if you decide you want to pay up for the reputation and you have the socia skills to build a network inside the school, and you want to stay in Toronto, then the MBA - in my opinion - will pay off for you. Especially considering you have a commensurate salary and can sink the MBA debt much quicker than the average person, not to mention you will get a pay bump once you obtain it.
There have been a few other Toronto/MBA threads lately, take a read through some of them. You will be able to glean a bit of the job market here and prospects (or lack thereof), and other information to form your mosaic.
I would say that the ROI is significantly higher if you were to take a job in the US after your top tier MBA. In a messed up sort of way, staying in Toronto is the opportunity cost these days. Come back in 10-15 years when you’ve made a good pot down there.
This… but to be fair big 4 firms don’t pay well to begin with. When I started with a big 4 firm, the starting pay in Canada for the same job was 10-15% lower than what I was getting paid in Texas.
For me, I would say passing CFA level 2 was more difficult than getting a 720 on the GMAT just because I spent more time studying for the CFA. Obviously it’s hard to compare two different tests, but I spent >300 hours to pass level 2, and half of that on the GMAT. I think you’ll do fine on the GMAT if you put the same level of commitment into preparing it.
I think getting a 90+ percentile on the GMAT is actually harder than passing the CFA exams due to the basic requirement of higher than average intelligence whereas most people can pass the CFA with enough prep time.
Anyway, I think anyone can probably get 700+ in GMAT, if they study like a monster. It gets exponentially harder than that as you progress up the score though.
GMAT is just not an intelligence or method test. It’s a mistake test. Some people are genius but will get some of the questions wrong due to lapse in focus.
Ohai - $70k is CAD, Big4 firms definitely pay less than market value in exchange for the experience (that’s the pitch anyway)
It sounds like most of you are saying you didn’t put as much time into the GMAT as any of the CFA exams and were able to score well, so that’s promising at least.
Agree. Some say GMAT is easier than CFA…maybe but for me i have to disagree. Sure GMAT would be easier than CFA if you are going for a 600 on the GMAT. But as klaudine said, if you are going for the +90th percentile, i cannot imagine how this would be easier than the CFA exams. I mean it is the top 10% of all GMAT takers. CFA on the other hand…just beat around half the people taking the exam and you get a pass.
Usually the people who are “naturally good standardized test takers” are the ones that are bright and smart.
Also, I disagree with “unfortunatly they are not the best predictor of career trajectory” because good test scores will get you into top schools and top schools will get you top jobs or at minimum something in the top industry. People who are good at standardized tests are bright. They think fast, and outside the box, characteristics that are needed in FO or any decision making jobs.
I’ve browsed throught the entrance application requirements/metrics for recent graduating classes with some of the top US schools, they don’t mention GRE at all (Stanford, harvard, etc.)
Being a CA/CPA is sufficient to become a CFO, you don’t need CFA/MBA as well. If you need to round out your skillset why don’t you take some free courses, then there’s no opportunity cost? A lot of my friends did MBAs and I would say most of them have not earned the money back in extra income still about 3 years about now. I think over the total career lifespan you might, but the way I look at it that’s a pretty big it.
On the CFA vs GMAT debat it’s hard to say which is harder… they are totally different. I haven’t taken the CFA but getting 99th precentile on GMAT has to be insanely hard.