Is it right for you?
Ideal MBA candidates are:
Students just two to three years removed from their undergraduate business degrees, with a confident passion for the particulars of business administration.
Students in their 30s and 40s who have reached a plateau in their chosen fields and wish to deepen their administrative skills.
According to the Business School Journal, 69 percent of MBA programs nation-wide are vastly changing their curriculums, and 25 percent are adding deeper specialization to the degree. The word is out: Many students now find the MBA degree too broad for the current business climate.
“Each discipline now has its own ‘coin of the realm,’ so in public relations they might value a Master of Communication. That’s a more powerful signal than the MBA in that field,” says Karen Boroff, dean of Seaton Hall University’s Stillman School of Business. “For instance, we have found that in health care, the Master of Public Administration or the Master of Health Care Administration was the stronger degree.”
When considering, a question to ask yourself is: Is my passion in administration? Will I wind up managing people who are doing work I want to do? “The MBA has grown in popularity over the years, due to pretty advanced marketing, frankly,” says Kate Klepper, dean of graduate programs at Northeastern University. “The MBA is really a general business degree. You get a bit of everything.”
