The Naked MBA

One of the things I loved about business school was meeting people from so many different countries. I made some great international friends, all of whom were extremely intelligent and competent. But this didn’t necessarily help all (or even most) of them in their job search. The problem was that on top of cramming for their classes and keeping up with the hectic social schedule, they also had to learn the American way of looking for a job.

Networking doesn’t come naturally to a lot of us. But at least we’re aware that it’s a crucial part of getting a job. I know a lot of international students who felt like attending networking events was akin to landing on Mars. That’s just not how it worked for them at home. So it took them a while to catch on to the recruiting game, and they suffered because of it. (“What to do mean I can’t ever work at Goldman because I missed their presentation?”)  It’s funny, because I felt the same way at first. I didn’t come from a corporate background, so the recruiting events felt pretty alien to me, too. But I took Career Services’ word when they said I had to go, and a lot of my international friends didn’t. It was just too much for them to comprehend that a culture could actually work in such an artificial way—that being smart and hardworking didn’t always mean you got the interview.

International students also suffer from gaps in their knowledge of business jargon. In a lot cases my friends’ grasp of the English language was better than mine, but it took them time to learn all new vocabulary that we don’t think twice about.

Landing a full-time job after business school is hard enough; now imagine having to land that job at a company willing to pay thousands of dollars to sponsor your visa. If you want to work in finance your chances are better, but in marketing, consulting and a lot of other industries, good luck. A lot the marketing companies that came to my campus explicitly requested no international students at their presentations. Then even if you find someone willing sponsor your visa, you’re still not guaranteed the visa. This year the quota of H1B work visas was exhausted on the first day applications were accepted! One classmate I knew was stuck in the position of having stopped recruiting after he accepted an offer with an investment bank, only to find out months later that he was among the unlucky ones whose visa applications arrived too late.

Getting your MBA is stressful, but imagine how much more stressful it would be to do it in an entirely new culture and in another language. I saw tensions run high in study groups at times, and often it was due to cultural misunderstandings. But this is a chance to learn how to exercise patience, which will no doubt also serve you well in an increasingly global workforce.

If you’re just finishing your first year of business school, you’re probably breathing a sigh of relief. Everyone says that compared to first year, second year is a cakewalk. You’ll have to judge that for yourself, but harder or easier, it’s definitely different.

Whereas first year is a major earthquake, second year is a series of tremors. They still need to be taken seriously, and sometimes call for taking shelter in a doorway or under a desk, but they don’t strike fear into you heart the way the Big Quake does. Second year is just as busy (sometimes more) as first year, but it’s a different kind of busy. Your to-do list is just as long, but you have more power over what’s on it. For starters, you have mainly electives, so you can focus on classes that are aligned with your career interests. Most people focus on what they’re good at, so the classes seem easier. And if you still don’t know what you want to focus on, I have a strategy for you, too: pick you classes based on the ratings. All schools have some sort of faculty rating system, whether formal or informal. A fantastic professor can make you fall in love with a subject, while a bad one can make you despise something you previously found interesting. And taking a class on a subject that’s unfamiliar to you but taught by a phenomenal professor is a good way to stretch yourself.

Second year also offers more leadership opportunities. The first-years look to you for guidance on navigating the recruiting process, and for feedback on your internship and academic experiences. Once you start sharing your insight with them, I promise you’ll be surprised at how much you actually did learn your first year! You may also get the chance to be a more active student leader. In my experience, first years do a lot of the grunt work in clubs and organizations, while the second years sit back and delegate. I had to get comfortable with this when I became co-president of a large student club my second year. I was used to making sure things got done by doing them myself. Then someone pointed out to me that my job as a leader was to manage other people doing things—even if it was sometimes more time consuming than doing it myself. This is what leadership and management is all about.

I also made most of my friends second year. I met a lot of people my first year (365, to be exact!), but the friendships really happened second year. People stop going out en masse and you have more opportunities deepen relationships and hang out one-on-one and in small groups. For me this was a big relief, because I spent most of my first year feeling like there was more quantity than quality to my friendships.

While second year sometimes feels like one long party as everyone starts going out more and studying less, it also takes on a serious undertone as your mind turns to life after your MBA. You start to reflect on what you’ve learned, and what you still want to get out of the experience. You come to terms with the fact that you’ll soon have to leave the warm coccoon that is business school and re-enter the real world. But this isn’t all bad. When it happens, you’ll be ready.

With such a large range of choices, deciding where to go to business school is a tough decision. On top of that, many people wrestle with the decision of whether to go full or part-time. Some employers will pay your tuition if you keep working for them while in school; though they often then require you to stay with the company for a certain amount of time after you finish business school. If you’re really lucky, like a friend of mine who works for McKinsey, your employer will ship you off to a full-time program for two years, but that doesn’t happen often!

If your company is not paying, then you need hard to look at what your goal is in getting an MBA: do you want to change tracks completely, or are you focused on advancing in the industry you're already in? If you want to stay in your current industry, then you are better off going part-time and chalking up more work experience as well as the MBA. This way you don’t miss out on promotions and will move up the ladder even faster. As a part-time student you also get to apply your classroom learning directly to your job, which helps seal in the benefit of the MBA. Imagine going over a case study in class one night and then applying what you learned at work the very next day--education doesn’t get much more practical than that! Part-time programs also tend to be more focused on the actual learning you’re doing, instead of the grades. Because let’s face it—if you’re going to school and also have a full-time job, you’re more focused on finishing the program then on getting A’s in all your classes.

There are also clear disadvantages to part-time MBA programs. The biggest drawback is that if you’re looking to switch jobs then you don’t have the same recruiting resources available to you as full-time students do. For example, Chicago GSB allows all MBA students (full and part-time) to use the career center's resources in looking for a job, but they don’t let part-time students participate in on-campus interviews. They see it as a conflict of interest; they don’t want to take tuition money from a company and then turn around and help that company’s employees find another job. Fordham, on the other hand, allows part-time student to go through on-campus recruitment as long as they sign a waiver stating that they have notified their employers that they are interviewing for jobs.

Another disadvantage is that the demands of interviewing and intense competition for the best jobs often require a full time investment, and the reputation of a full-time program at a top school. Part-time programs are often not as well-regarded.

Getting an MBA is an investment in yourself, so you should calculate about what the return on that investment will be. Will an MBA increase your salary and career prospects so much so that it merits a full-time investment, or will you be better off doing it part-time? Can you afford to take two years out of the job market? Can you afford financially to go full-time? Thinking about these questions will not only help you decide whether to go full or part-time, but it will help you define what your ultimate goal is in getting an MBA and how it fits into your long-term plan.