For many aspiring business leaders, the question isn’t whether to go for a degree, but when. Top business schools rarely prefer applicants coming straight out of college when putting together incoming classes — unless those early-career students meet certain criteria.
Little or No Work Experience
Some students gain admission to an MBA program right out of college, but that’s not the norm, some MBA admissions experts say. That’s because most MBA programs prefer candidates who can bring real-world to the classroom.
[Read: ]
A typical MBA student has about three to six years of work experience before starting their graduate studies, according to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, a global business school accreditation organization.
Some build their MBA curriculum around the case study method, in which students discuss high-stakes business scenarios in the classroom and propose solutions. Admissions officers may worry that an applicant who lacks work experience won’t be able to contribute to class, says Yael Grushka-Cockayne, dean-elect and senior associate dean for the full-time MBA program at the University of Virginia’s .
“Experience is not simply an admissions preference,” she wrote in an email. “It is part of the educational model.”
Sources of Recommendation Letters
MBA admissions committees also tend to favor from supervisors or managers over college professors, Grushka-Cockayne says.
Admissions committees “are basically looking at you as a value-risk proposition,” says Judith Silverman Hodara, co-director of the MBA admissions consulting firm Fortuna Admissions and former director of admissions at at the University of Pennsylvania.
“If you’re someone with four years of work experience, you have a track record, right?” she says. “You’ve gotten promotions, you’ve got references and you’ve got evidence that you can perform. If you’re a college senior and you’re a 21- or 22 year-old person, you’re asking that admissions committee to basically bet on your potential.”
[Read: ]
Advantages of Going Directly to Business School
Applying to business school straight out of college can still have advantages, experts say.
For some students, an MBA is an opportunity to further their education at a time when they are already used to the rigors of university life and may have fewer family commitments.
But admissions counselors caution applicants not to use this path to that come with entering the working world for the first time.
“A lot of college seniors gravitate toward graduate school because it feels really otherwise,” Silverman Hodara says. “If you have a clear picture of what you’re going to do with your degree, if you can get very articulate about a specific door you’re trying to open, then the timing could be terrific. But if the answer, which is not uncommon, is, ‘I want to keep my options open,’ that’s usually a pretty good indication that you want to go and work first, and then pivot to graduate school.”
College students who are serious about pursuing an MBA directly after graduation should make a detailed plan that describes how that early-career business degree will fit into their overall professional goals, she says.
This approach may work particularly well for with a startup business already in motion, or students who have already accrued substantive leadership experience — for example, by working throughout high school and college or serving in the , Grushka-Cockayne says.
For these MBA applicants, “the discipline, leadership and high-stakes decision-making typically come before college rather than after it, so by the time someone finishes their bachelor’s degree, they may already have more relevant experience than many candidates who took the conventional route.”
[Read: ]
College students can increase their odds of success in the MBA admissions process by pursuing off campus and looking for other ways to take on project management duties and leadership responsibilities at school. That could include fundraising for a student group, publishing a literary journal or being captain of a sports team, Silverman Hodara says.
“You want to be able to talk about what you owned over the summer, what went wrong in a project you were working on, what you would do differently,” she says. “Anything that requires , focus, time management and all of these different ways that you learn and grow as an individual while at college can be really important, too.”
Students can also look into graduate school business programs that are specifically geared toward early-career candidates and their professional needs. For example, some business schools require MBA students to complete a full-time business internship after their first year before returning to campus, or expect admitted students to and work full time for two or more years first.
For tips on how to get into B-school, how to it and what an MBA could mean for your career, for U.S. 91欧美激情’ twice-monthly newsletter, The Bottom Line.
More from U.S. 91欧美激情
originally appeared on
