Why a Full-Time MBA?

Attending the grand opening of Rowling Hall, the new home of the Texas McCombs MBA program, made me begin to reflect on the very long 9 months it’s been since graduating the program… and what it was like when I first began thinking about business school. First of all, Rowling Hall is incredible (https://medium.com/@UTexasMcCombs/robert-b-rowling-hall-advances-the-future-of-business-education-at-ut-4e7d450750b9), and if you go to the building, you’ll see that I’m definitely not exaggerating by saying that. But second, since graduating, I’ve been speaking to many people about whether or not a full-time MBA program was worth it; with 2nd round offers having just gone out for most schools, I wanted to help people who were on the fence about whether or not to accept.

Look, I know you already may be tuning out — there are a lot of articles talking about whether or not a full-time MBA is “worth it”. People generally don’t hesitate to share their opinions and there are a million ways to think about it. While I fully acknowledge that I’m just another opinion, I would like to note that if I had followed what most people said, I probably should not have gotten one. That being said, I think it was one of the best decisions I’ve made, and is a decision I will look back on and will take advantage of for the rest of my life.

Now that that’s out of that way, I wanted to highlight some themes I’ve noticed about why it could be worthwhile for you to get a full-time MBA. After graduating and starting work, here’s how I look at it (taking into account experiences from myself and my classmates). You should consider getting an MBA, and specifically a full-time MBA, if…

1. ‎You’re making a career switch or potentially a location switch (either to make more money or to get into something different).

This obviously isn’t applicable for all careers, but if you aren’t in a career touching the business, an MBA is a great way to signal to employers you’re serious about switching. Or if you want to stay out of the business world, maybe you want to be able to understand and influence how business managers make decisions because you’re tired of being the engineer who wants to build cool stuff but can’t get your manager to prioritize this. Or maybe you’re happy with your job, but you’ve lived in NYC your whole life, keep hearing great things about Austin and want to see what the buzz is about, and want a huge head-start in building your network there. Whatever the reason, this is a great way to do all of these things. Keep in mind, if your goal is to switch careers, getting accepted to an MBA program is only one signal. There’s a lot more work you’ll have to put in throughout the process, and the full-time programs give you a lot more flexibility to explore.

2. ‎You want to meet people.

People who can challenge you and your beliefs, people who you’ll spend two years socializing with, and people who want to help you. One of my goals was to get to know (as opposed to just know) as many people as I could and learn some of the best qualities from each of them. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I’ve met some of the smartest people I know and some of the most driven people I know, and learning from them is something that I cannot overstate.

Also, here’s a rhetorical question: After graduating from high school, college, or wherever, when was the last time in your life that you were able to meet a ton of new people who had enough time to devote to developing friendships (or relationships)?

3. ‎You want to learn and push your own boundaries.

One of the coolest experiences I had was during one of the classes I took that was a 10 day leadership backpacking trip in Patagonia (PS — This is a class I decided to take after never having camped in my life… talk about pushing your boundaries). I can talk to you about how the pros and cons of permissioned vs public blockchain, what happened to cause the financial crisis in 2007 (says a guy with an engineering background who had no idea what a bond was or what the term derivative meant outside of calculus), and explain to you why I think Apple can still continue to be successful even though they haven’t really been innovative since Steve Jobs passed away. I also went from being afraid to run for a leadership position in an undergrad club to a president of our improv club (something I’d never done before moving to Austin), a VP of our business technology group, and most importantly, a chair of our ambassador organization which amongst other things, conducted interviews for applicants to the school.

But all of this was by choice — I made a conscious decision to use this time to push myself and learn more.

4. ‎You want to explore other fields and see what’s out there.

I was a consultant who worked in cable, media, healthcare, finance, and public sector, but who was interested in tech, sports, airlines, education, gaming, hospitality, and entrepreneurship. I had the opportunity to speak with and interview with tons of people, a small sample of which include IBM, Google, Amazon, Major League Baseball, Delta, Riot Games, and Expedia/HomeAway. By prioritizing my time, I got to try out, learn about, and play with all of these fields, which helped me land the right post-graduation industry and role for me.

5. ‎You want to grow your network.

I talked about the personal reasons in point 2, but you’re probably doing this to impact your career as well. To be completely honest, I’m exactly where I want to be in life. But if for some reason, I need to/want to switch it up… it’s kind of nice to have met over 500 people that I know well enough to call up for a recommendation at the best companies and startups around. I can start a business and am able to reach out to my venture capital friends for funding, I can text my old roommate and ask him to connect me with his colleagues at McKinsey, or I can call my classmate from the Patagonia trip and ask him about airline manufacturing in Mexico. And, if for some reason I go into sales, I have a network of successful people with buying power to instantly tap into.

6. Your career requires it, and you want to stay on your current career trajectory.

This one’s easy (and boring). Fewer careers are requiring an MBA these days, but there are definitely still roles where this exists. If you want to become a VP at an investment bank, you’ll most likely still need an MBA. On the other hand, while I was a consultant at Deloitte, the consulting group’s strategy and operations practice had just removed the MBA requirement for a practitioner to become a senior consultant in the firm (after having it in place for many years prior).

So what am I telling you?

Here’s the thing, and if you’ve made it this far, this is the most important part. My honest opinion is that, outside of the career requirement option, don’t get an MBA because someone wants you to or because one or two of these things sounds appealing to you. You’re probably not going to get nearly as much as I did out of it. Don’t think of it as a transaction, either — there are other ways of getting each of these experiences individually. And if money is a big factor for you, weigh the money part a lot heavier in your considerations (though I would like to note that for most people who graduate, the cost of tuition for an MBA program is around one full year of salary at graduation).

To me, there are a bunch of ways to define ‘worth it’, or in business terms, ‘positive ROI’. As a person who tries to value experiences more than pure dollar amounts (where possible), my reason for getting an MBA was that it gave me an opportunity to do a bunch of these things at once, while having a great time doing it. I can definitively say that I am a better person, and a person that is more able to start/run a business. I got the job I wanted upon graduating, with the compensation I wanted to support my goals. And, I also have tons of memories that I’m going to remember forever. And for my situation, that’s all I could ask for.