As promised, here is the summary of the “Should I go to Business School Panel Discussion?”
*Due to the nature of the event, please excuse me for not naming names and official titles*
Panelists:

  • 1 Harvard Business School – Director Level
  • 2 Stanford Business School – Director Level
  • 1 Kellogg Business School – Director Level
  • 1 Undergraduate Degree – Upper Management Level

The post turned out to be way too long.

Schools Info:
*The information below is based on the panelists’ experiences in those schools and could differ vastly from individual to individual.

  • Harvard (General management):
    • Big class – 800~900 Students
      • Also means graduating with a huge network available
    • Classmates are mainly bankers and consultants
    • Case Study Method
      • Help builds intuitions based on real life situations
    • Non-Grade disclosure policy
  • Stanford (Entrepreneurship):
    • Small class
      • Smaller network
      • Higher International ethnicity
    • Classmates are mainly venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and engineers
    • Team focused
      • Collaborative and non-competitive environment
    • Offers joint degree:
      • Engineering
      • Education
    • Non-Grade disclosure policy
  • Kellogg (Marketing):
    • Mid-sized class – 450 Students
    • Team focused
    • Nearly all events & assignments are in teams
    • Known as “Hyper-social program”
    • Heavily student powered
    • Classmates are mainly bankers and consultants
    • Non-Grade disclosure policy
  • Yale (Financial)
    • Small class – 220 students
    • Strong financial focused & influence due to location
    • Large non-profit and public sector population (1/3 of class)
    • Mix strategy – teams, straight stats, etc
    • Non-Grade disclosure policy

Benefits of Business School:

  • Builds connection and bridges
  • Helps career change
  • Increase interpersonal relationship
  • Open perspective
  • Learn about people
  • Increase negotiation and conversation ability
  • Increase pattern recognition in real world
  • Better equipped to deal with real world situations
  • It helps accelerate
    • Experiences
    • Compensation
  • It is like you started on a new fresh sleet again
  • The best 2 years of your life!
    • All those who went to business school agreed.

Concerns of Business School:

  • Be double sure where you want to go
    • Where you go affects hugely the connection and focus
  • Research the industry focus of the school
  • Pick where you feel home, since it will be home for a while
  • Debt is your friend
    • School is expensive
    • Networking & socializing is expensive
  • Very serious in class environment

Some good questions asked:

  • Would you consider part-time or full-time?

It is extremely demanding and hard to do part-time. You also lose out a lot of networking opportunities and makes it hard to build the network and relationship.

  • What is the average age and experiences in a business school?

About 28 years old and 4-6 years of experiences.

  • Is there a stigma on doing business school at the same school you did undergraduate?

It does not matter, since most business schools are vastly different from undergraduate experiences. It all comes down to what network and focus you are looking for. Plus it’s hard to get in anyways, you should first focus on getting in before you worry such trivial questions.

  • How does MBA help advance in the same industry?

Go in with an open mind, it helps you find lots of new and exciting opportunities. That being said, a good amount of students still goes back to the original industry or even companies they were originally in. Those that do go back, usually switch to a different function, eg.individual contributor to manager, and also get a decent compensation increase at the same time.

  • How top of a school should I go?

You should always aim for the top 15-20%. If not, you are really limiting yourself to the network that you are building and the experience that you will be encountering. Bottom line, the top or don’t go – after all, it is not cheap.

  • Other comments?

Engineers with a MBA is dangerous!

My Conclusions:

To be honest, although everyone is very honest and open about their experiences, this panel is rather skewed in terms of achievements in their careers and degrees, as a result, it is not hard to see why they are in such favor of getting a MBA. The panel discussion would be much more interesting if they get more panelists that are as successful as the current panelists and without MBA or those with MBA from top schools but find it useless to broaden the perspectives.

Personally, what I get out from the panel discussion is that if you want to further your career within the corporate world, then a MBA is close to essential if not absolutely critical, and if you do get one, it better be from a top school. If what you are pursuing is outside of the corporate world, such as a startup, starting your own gig, and etc, it would be helpful, but not dyingly necessary, and at the same time put you in some real financial burden.

Panelists’ Recommended Books:

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