Choosing the best MBA program for your career goals can be tricky. Rankings only go so far in making the decision, offering an objective view of program performance, but unable to consider your personal and professional targets. And these targets are crucial, providing a benchmark against which to measure MBA suitability, and ensuring that the program you choose will meaningfully advance your career.
So how are you supposed to determine the best MBA program for you? This article will explore some of the key factors to consider and outline the steps to take when making your decision.
Understand Your Career Goals
An MBA can drive your career forward—but the direction it moves in is up to you.
There are many career-specific reasons that people decide to complete MBAs, and these heavily influence their choice of program. Some may be shooting for a specific industry, dreaming for a leadership role in the healthcare sector, while some may be hoping to start from scratch and give entrepreneurship a go. For all MBA applicants, it’s important to consider both long-term and short-term goals. This helps ensure that the MBA will set them on a path to success for years to come.
Whichever career path you choose, it’s important to make some firm choices before choosing your MBA program. Knowing what you want from an MBA program helps you know what resources to look for, and so makes choosing the best program for your career goals that much easier. It helps with your applications, too, making clear communication with interviewers simple and assisting you with that all-important career goals essay question.
Assess Curriculum and Specializations
Once you understand your career goals, what do you do with that information? Simple—you compare it to the resources offered by each MBA to decide which is the best program for you.
Specializations
The great thing about the MBA program is that it’s pretty much customizable.
One of the major ways this applies is specializations. Some MBAs are general programs, whereas some allow you to specialize, selecting a program that is tailored to a specific industry.
When choosing between a general MBA or a specialized program, reflect again on your long-term career goals. A general MBA is likely to lend more flexibility to your qualifications, concentrating on the fundamentals and opening you up to career change in the future. A specialized MBA, on the other hand, may give you a competitive advantage if there is industry demand for the area you are specializing in, training you up for a career in your dream sector.
If there’s one specific industry you’re interested in, then a specialization can be a bit of a no brainer. MBA programs with specializations in entrepreneurship, for example, may boast close-knit communities and even startup incubators, while ones specializing in finance may offer industry connections to big-name firms.
Curriculum Delivery
Specializations and content are important, but are not the only features of a curriculum that you should consider. The method in which learning is delivered can be as important as the learning itself.
Many MBA programs offer a blend of lectures, experiential learning, hands-on opportunities, internships and team project. In some programs, schools let faculty decide, leaving it up to professors to determine the best teaching method for each topic. It’s important to consider which of these works best for you, and which each program prioritizes.
Faculty Expertise
The faculty of an MBA are a crucial factor in determining which program is best for you. A dedicated, experienced faculty will help you excel, and you may even find that they provide valuable industry connections.
When assessing the faculty of an MBA program and how it fits with your career goals, you might find it helpful to consider the following:
- The faculty to student ratio: This is a great indicator of how much access you’ll get to the bright minds leading the course.
- Guest lecturers: A great hint at the industry insights you can look forward to.
- The faculty’s experience: Is your program being led by academics, or by people with real-world leadership experience?
- The links to your industry: Have any of the faculty worked in your target employment industry? If so, get to know them—see which courses they run and read their research.
Types of MBA Programs
As we mentioned before, the MBA program is a highly customizable option. This is more true now than ever before, with the rise of online MBAs meeting an increased demand for flexible learning.
There’s no right answer to which style of MBA program is the best—that comes down to your needs and your priorities. Here’s a walk through of the five main MBA program structures to help you understand their differences.
Full-Time MBA
The full-time MBA is the classic option. It offers students an immersive, on-campus experience, allowing them to complete an intense program in a one or two-year time frame.
Part-Time MBA
Like the full-time MBA, but spread over a longer period. Since the program is part time, it’s favoured by those who juggle work or family responsibilities on the side.
Global MBA
The Global MBA puts internationalism front and center. It usually runs global internships and offers business opportunities across the world, making it a great choice for those who want to advance their careers overseas.
Online MBA
The online MBA is by far the most flexible of all the MBA programs. Not only are they usually part-time programs, they are tailored to fit around full-time jobs and offer most classes in the evenings and on the weekends. These MBA programs are increasingly popular due to students’ ability to keep working and to study from home, two factors which cause the MBA price to plummet.
Executive MBA
Sometimes referred to as the EMBA, the Executive MBA is aimed at professionals already well into their career. The program aims to bridge skill gaps and boosting knowledge.
Alumni Network and Career Support
Choosing the best MBA program to meet your goals isn’t just about the program itself. It’s important to consider what comes after.
Alumni network
A well-connected, expansive and supportive alumni network can be a real asset to an MBA program, helping to provide mentorship and increase job placement. Networking via the school’s alumni can really open doors to future career progression.
The alumni network can also benefit you now, before you’ve even applied to or chosen an MBA program. How? Reach out! Chat to alumni in a school’s network (especially if they’re local to you) to learn more about their experience, their successes and their resultant career trajectories.
Frequent Employers
Some MBA programs may have partnered employers, top-tier companies which frequently hire from a particular school and therefore offer somewhat of a pipeline. These relationships are nurtured over years, and offer you two things.
The first is obvious—a shot at a job in one of these top firms. The second is a vote of confidence from these companies. If they’re willing to hire so many alumni from a particular school, they clearly trust in that program’s academic rigor and MBA quality.
Career Services and Employment Reports
Since you’re attempting to select the best MBA program for your career goals, career services and employment reports should play a large part in your decision making process.
Every business school publishes a yearly employment report; we recommend you get stuck into it. In this report you can learn:
- How many MBA graduates were being offered jobs;
- The level of starting salary offered to graduates;
- Which industry most graduates are getting jobs in;
- And, perhaps most importantly, how many of the jobs were “engineered” by the school career services. Some schools include this statistic, putting a number to the amount of job offers that resulted from career service intervention or offering.
Location and Access to Opportunities
The position of a program may greatly affect its influence on your career prospects. For those specializing in finance and hoping to grab a leadership spot in the industry, New York has a particular appeal; for those keen on entrepreneurship, proximity to Silicon Valley could be handy.
The location is also worth considering in its own right. Is it important to you to be close to your home or would you rather explore a new city? Costs play a part here too, with MBAs in New York accompanied by a much heftier price tag than those in, for example, Florida.
Financial Investment and ROI
Look into Program and Living Costs
The costs of an MBA vary greatly from program to program. This is due not only to tuition, but to various fees and living expenses. Most programs will offer an estimated cost per year that is based on student surveys and school-set costs; get to grips with this number, as student loans are usually based on it.
It’s important that you really dive into where these costs come from and what they total before choosing which is the best MBA program for you. For an example of what this looks like, check out our breakdown of Columbia Business School tuition and fees.
When researching these costs, don’t forget to check out the financial aid, grants and scholarships that are on offer to MBA applicants.
Return on Investment
When considering the financial side of an MBA program, the return on investment (ROI) is an important factor. The ROI essentially considers the cost of an MBA alongside the salary graduates get from it. It compares the average starting salary and signing bonuses of MBA grads with the average debt of students at their school.
U.S. News & World Report has ranked the 32 programs with the highest return on investment here.
Culture
The final aspect of an MBA program to consider is its culture.
The culture of a program varies greatly. It can depend on the location of a school, on the campus, on the teaching style and, importantly, on what the MBA program prioritizes and nurtures. For some schools this is diversity, for some it is support and collaboration, and for some it is competition.
Deciding which of these is best is personal—it truly is down to which environment you are most likely to thrive in. Some good spots to find out more about culture are MBA forums, alumni networks, or even Clear Admit’s Real Humans series; hearing from real people will give you the most accurate insight into the true atmosphere of an MBA program.
