Hello, all. I sure have been on a tear in terms of posting new entries in the past week, haven’t I? I guess that’s what happens when the weather takes a turn for the worse and I end up not wanting to go out. Maybe I’ll finally be able to get back to some of the readers who’ve been waiting for responses from me for 6+ months. We’ll see…
The email below is from a prospective MBA applicants with a Technology background who wonders whether B-school is the right move for him based on what’s happened in the economy since last September. In particular, he’s wondering if an MBA is a good use of his money and whether he’d be able to find a good job on the back-end after graduation. I have a feeling that many other kids are going through this same sort of thinking right now with the new application season upon us. I hope my response provides some decent ideas for this reader and anyone else thinking through this issue.
By the way, you might notice that I gave this reader a shout-out for being thoughtful about the length of his email in my response. I felt like I had to do that because I skipped over eight emails from other readers that felt more like dissertation proposals than emails before I decided to reply to his. I know y’all get tired of seeing me write about how much I hate to get long emails, but I’m going to keep on saying it until people get the message. If I look at your email and determine that it’ll take me a long time to read and process it, chances are that I’m going to deprioritize it in favor of ones that I can read through and address quickly. I’m sorry for having to state this yet again, but I guess I need to keep giving reminders. It’s all good though because I’m going to type up some new guidelines regarding the emails that I will and won’t deal with over the next few days and y’all won’t have to read these kind of statements anymore. In other words, my whole “I’ll get to everyone’s email eventually” thing might end up changing a bit.
——-
DR wrote:
“Hello Marquis,
Good day. i just got to read your blog today while googling for MBA admissions and Gmat stuffs. It was really a great blog and i m sure thousands would have gained from your advises. so i see u can give me right advices for my aspirations. so i decided to write u. i will keep my story simple since i believe u have much more mails to read. i had graduated Bachelors of technology, 2 years 4 month back and i work as a software programmer for the IT company Infosys technologies in India since then. So i have 2 year 3 month work experience till date. My interests are always towards business and want to startup a business sometime later. My family is of a business background, but it was never a success story..i feel the reason of failure as my dad not having a formal business education. i always believe i would turn those failures into success one day. All these had made my mindset to go for an MBA degree. but i dont want to get it for a name sake. Though i aspire for a top b-school, i m confused whether i could make up to such a top notch univ. The series of things which are happening post september 2008, makes me to rethink if i really should go for a business degree spending so much and is it really worth it. so i look for your advice in choosing up right path.
here are my questions..
1. I will be 3.3 years experienced by the time i complete the Gmat tests, done with applications and stuffs..i have around 3.7 gpa in undergraduate..
will i be able to make up to a top b-school with this undergraduate grade and work exp? i believe i can get a very good GMAT score
2. If i have two choices left for my money, one to invest for a good MBA degree, second to invest in an startup with confidence, which one can i chose taking into account the
curent economic situation?
3.Will the B-schools be able to provide good placements amid worse market.
hope to read your advice.
Thanks in Advance
DR”
——-
My response:
DR,
I hope this message finds you doing well. Thanks for checking out my blog and trusting me enough to provide input on your situation. It sounds like you’ve got a lot of anxiety around the choice you’re facing, so I hope I can provide some helpful guidance as you think through it. Before diving into my response, I’d like to thank you for writing a relatively short and direct email. As I was going through my Inbox, I skipped over several MUCH longer emails before getting to yours because I didn’t feel like spending two hours writing a reply to one of those crazy long joints. You’d be surprised at how few people actually think about how many emails I receive. They’re usually too worried about getting their own questions answered. I’d like to thank you for being thoughtful about that when you wrote your message to me.
OK, let’s dive right into your questions because I know that’s what you’ve been waiting for
:
1. “I will be 3.3 years experienced by the time i complete the Gmat tests, done with applications and stuffs..i have around 3.7 gpa in undergraduate.. will i be able to make up to a top b-school with this undergraduate grade and work exp? i believe i can get a very good GMAT score ” –> This is a tough question to answer because there’s so much to a business school application than grades and work experience. The admissions folks take one’s extracurriculars, GMAT, recommendations, essays, and interviews into account, so there are a LOT of moving parts in the application process. My quick answer to your question is that I believe you’ll be able to get into a good business school with what you’ve told me so far, but you’ll have to work hard to put together a strong application package to make that happen.
2. “If i have two choices left for my money, one to invest for a good MBA degree, second to invest in an startup with confidence, which one can i chose taking into account the curent economic situation?” –> I’m always cautious when answering questions like this because I fear that people will use me as THE authority on the topic and make a choice based on what I say. So, I’ll qualify my response by saying that I’m answering this question as if I were in this situation…this is only based on my own opinion on the question and I’d HIGHLY recommend that you talk to others about this before making a final decision. Now, on to my response…if I had those two choices, I’d invest in the MBA degree because I believe there’s no better investment that one can make than in his/her own education. Having high confidence in a startup is good, but that doesn’t automatically translate into a successful business. There are just too many external factors involved in whether a startup will do well or not. On the other hand, I’d feel confident that I’d always be able to make a living by leveraging that MBA degree and would hope that other startup opportunities would come my way in the future. I’m not saying that this is the right answer for YOU, but that’s just how I’d think about it.
3. “Will the B-schools be able to provide good placements amid worse market.” –> This is a question that thousands of current MBA students and even more MBA applicants are asking themselves every day. I don’t know if I can give you a definite answer to whether the B-schools WILL be able to provide good placements in this down market. But, I can say that the B-schools ARE TRYING their best to provide good placements. No school wants to see its students unable to find jobs and pay off their loans after graduation because it would make its MBA program look bad. Career placement offices at B-schools are working overtime to generate job opportunities for their students, but the students have to also be willing to bear some of the burden of sourcing opportunities. Kids can’t expect their schools to just give them jobs…they’ve got to be out there networking, job hunting, and being creative on their own too. I guess the quick answer to your question is that B-schools are doing their best to provide good job placements, but, until the economy gets better, it’ll be an uphill battle for everyone.
I hope you find the above responses to your questions to be helpful. You’re off to a good start in plotting your path just by having been thoughtful enough to try to work through these questions. The decision to apply to business school shouldn’t be taken lightly, so I’d suggest that you talk it over with a couple of other folks that you trust to get a fully informed perspective. Take care and good luck with your business school applications.
Marquis
P.S. Just wanted to give you a tip in terms of writing your emails in the future. I noticed that you used “u” in place of “you”, which is not the kind of language you want to be using in professional business email communications. I’m probably the most laid back dude on the planet, so I don’t have any issues with stuff like that but everyone in the business world isn’t as chill as me. Be mindful of that as you reach out to people during the rest of your B-school application process.
The email below is from a prospective MBA applicants with a Technology background who wonders whether B-school is the right move for him based on what’s happened in the economy since last September. In particular, he’s wondering if an MBA is a good use of his money and whether he’d be able to find a good job on the back-end after graduation. I have a feeling that many other kids are going through this same sort of thinking right now with the new application season upon us. I hope my response provides some decent ideas for this reader and anyone else thinking through this issue.
By the way, you might notice that I gave this reader a shout-out for being thoughtful about the length of his email in my response. I felt like I had to do that because I skipped over eight emails from other readers that felt more like dissertation proposals than emails before I decided to reply to his. I know y’all get tired of seeing me write about how much I hate to get long emails, but I’m going to keep on saying it until people get the message. If I look at your email and determine that it’ll take me a long time to read and process it, chances are that I’m going to deprioritize it in favor of ones that I can read through and address quickly. I’m sorry for having to state this yet again, but I guess I need to keep giving reminders. It’s all good though because I’m going to type up some new guidelines regarding the emails that I will and won’t deal with over the next few days and y’all won’t have to read these kind of statements anymore. In other words, my whole “I’ll get to everyone’s email eventually” thing might end up changing a bit.
——-
DR wrote:
“Hello Marquis,
Good day. i just got to read your blog today while googling for MBA admissions and Gmat stuffs. It was really a great blog and i m sure thousands would have gained from your advises. so i see u can give me right advices for my aspirations. so i decided to write u. i will keep my story simple since i believe u have much more mails to read. i had graduated Bachelors of technology, 2 years 4 month back and i work as a software programmer for the IT company Infosys technologies in India since then. So i have 2 year 3 month work experience till date. My interests are always towards business and want to startup a business sometime later. My family is of a business background, but it was never a success story..i feel the reason of failure as my dad not having a formal business education. i always believe i would turn those failures into success one day. All these had made my mindset to go for an MBA degree. but i dont want to get it for a name sake. Though i aspire for a top b-school, i m confused whether i could make up to such a top notch univ. The series of things which are happening post september 2008, makes me to rethink if i really should go for a business degree spending so much and is it really worth it. so i look for your advice in choosing up right path.
here are my questions..
1. I will be 3.3 years experienced by the time i complete the Gmat tests, done with applications and stuffs..i have around 3.7 gpa in undergraduate..
will i be able to make up to a top b-school with this undergraduate grade and work exp? i believe i can get a very good GMAT score
2. If i have two choices left for my money, one to invest for a good MBA degree, second to invest in an startup with confidence, which one can i chose taking into account the
curent economic situation?
3.Will the B-schools be able to provide good placements amid worse market.
hope to read your advice.
Thanks in Advance
DR”
——-
My response:
DR,
I hope this message finds you doing well. Thanks for checking out my blog and trusting me enough to provide input on your situation. It sounds like you’ve got a lot of anxiety around the choice you’re facing, so I hope I can provide some helpful guidance as you think through it. Before diving into my response, I’d like to thank you for writing a relatively short and direct email. As I was going through my Inbox, I skipped over several MUCH longer emails before getting to yours because I didn’t feel like spending two hours writing a reply to one of those crazy long joints. You’d be surprised at how few people actually think about how many emails I receive. They’re usually too worried about getting their own questions answered. I’d like to thank you for being thoughtful about that when you wrote your message to me.
OK, let’s dive right into your questions because I know that’s what you’ve been waiting for
:1. “I will be 3.3 years experienced by the time i complete the Gmat tests, done with applications and stuffs..i have around 3.7 gpa in undergraduate.. will i be able to make up to a top b-school with this undergraduate grade and work exp? i believe i can get a very good GMAT score ” –> This is a tough question to answer because there’s so much to a business school application than grades and work experience. The admissions folks take one’s extracurriculars, GMAT, recommendations, essays, and interviews into account, so there are a LOT of moving parts in the application process. My quick answer to your question is that I believe you’ll be able to get into a good business school with what you’ve told me so far, but you’ll have to work hard to put together a strong application package to make that happen.
2. “If i have two choices left for my money, one to invest for a good MBA degree, second to invest in an startup with confidence, which one can i chose taking into account the curent economic situation?” –> I’m always cautious when answering questions like this because I fear that people will use me as THE authority on the topic and make a choice based on what I say. So, I’ll qualify my response by saying that I’m answering this question as if I were in this situation…this is only based on my own opinion on the question and I’d HIGHLY recommend that you talk to others about this before making a final decision. Now, on to my response…if I had those two choices, I’d invest in the MBA degree because I believe there’s no better investment that one can make than in his/her own education. Having high confidence in a startup is good, but that doesn’t automatically translate into a successful business. There are just too many external factors involved in whether a startup will do well or not. On the other hand, I’d feel confident that I’d always be able to make a living by leveraging that MBA degree and would hope that other startup opportunities would come my way in the future. I’m not saying that this is the right answer for YOU, but that’s just how I’d think about it.
3. “Will the B-schools be able to provide good placements amid worse market.” –> This is a question that thousands of current MBA students and even more MBA applicants are asking themselves every day. I don’t know if I can give you a definite answer to whether the B-schools WILL be able to provide good placements in this down market. But, I can say that the B-schools ARE TRYING their best to provide good placements. No school wants to see its students unable to find jobs and pay off their loans after graduation because it would make its MBA program look bad. Career placement offices at B-schools are working overtime to generate job opportunities for their students, but the students have to also be willing to bear some of the burden of sourcing opportunities. Kids can’t expect their schools to just give them jobs…they’ve got to be out there networking, job hunting, and being creative on their own too. I guess the quick answer to your question is that B-schools are doing their best to provide good job placements, but, until the economy gets better, it’ll be an uphill battle for everyone.
I hope you find the above responses to your questions to be helpful. You’re off to a good start in plotting your path just by having been thoughtful enough to try to work through these questions. The decision to apply to business school shouldn’t be taken lightly, so I’d suggest that you talk it over with a couple of other folks that you trust to get a fully informed perspective. Take care and good luck with your business school applications.
Marquis
P.S. Just wanted to give you a tip in terms of writing your emails in the future. I noticed that you used “u” in place of “you”, which is not the kind of language you want to be using in professional business email communications. I’m probably the most laid back dude on the planet, so I don’t have any issues with stuff like that but everyone in the business world isn’t as chill as me. Be mindful of that as you reach out to people during the rest of your B-school application process.
Very good response to MBA or startup question. Based on my experiences with two prior failed startups, I will second your opinion.
Actually, during planning for my third startup, I analyzed the prior failures and realized I may be better off getting an MBA to fill some gaps to improve my chances of success in next startup.