The Naked MBA

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.