Get An MBA If You’re One Of These People

This is jobs such as management consulting, investment banking, private equity… in these fields, if you don't have an advanced degree, you're not going to be able to progress to the partner level, to the most senior level. They just assume that you will have some kind of advanced degree. Consulting firms, more and more, are hiring JDs, MDs, people with PhDs. They're hiring people from a variety of advanced degree programs, but if you're already a consultant and you're looking to come back to consulting, the MBA is going to make the most sense. It's the most expedient, it's the most immediately relevant, and in many cases, your company is even going to pay you to get that MBA. So that one is a no-brainer. People for whom they need it to keep going in their current field obviously should go for the MBA.

So let's say you started your career as an accountant and you've done a really good job of learning the tools of the trade, getting your certifications, managing people – you've really mastered accounting, but as you look into your future, you say, you know what? I don't think I want to go all the way to the top in this accounting firm. I actually want to do something where I'm not just interpreting the numbers and making sure they're compliant for tax purposes, I actually want to be one of the people making decisions about which numbers get increased and where we make investments and how to reduce costs. You want to move into investment banking, or you want to move into consulting, or you want to move into corporate finance, or even you want to make a really radical pivot and move into marketing. Forget about finance and the effect of investment decisions, you want to be someone connecting with customers. We all start our careers in the best place we can think of when we're 21 years old. Your first job is not necessarily going to resonate with your sense of purpose and passion. So if you're someone who is making progress in your career and you can see that there's something really different that you want to be doing, the MBA is almost certainly going to be the easiest way to make that pivot, because marketing programs at top companies hire MBA even if they have no marketing experience. Same thing with consulting. Same thing with investment banking. There are tricks and tools to getting recruited in all the different industries, and every company is a little bit different. So this is not a blanket applicable statement that just because you're a strong accountant, you can automatically move into marketing at Nike – there's a whole journey you're going to have to go on ­ but the MBA will give you access to make that pivot in a way that nothing else could. So if you're a career switcher and you want to move from one function to another, or from one industry to another, or both, you should probably very seriously consider getting an MBA. Of course, it's true that the stronger the brand of the MBA, the stronger the post-MBA recruitment opportunities will be for you. But that doesn't mean that a top 50 or even a top 100 global MBA program isn't going to give you access to jobs that you can't get any other way. And so when we're calculating whether an MBA is worth it or not, you look at it this way: you've got one possible future with an MBA, and without it, you don't have any of those possibilities. It's like going from zero to a hundred. Is it worth it? Yes or no? Binary? Probably yes. So that's the second category of person who should get an MBA.