I'm finishing up at a top tier MBA and am frankly shocked how little I feel I've learned in terms of preparing me for an investment banking career. And now I'm dreading my Associate role a bit because I feel unprepared.
Does anyone have similar thoughts? Would be interested in hearing your perspectives on your MBA experience and preparation for success as as Associate and beyond.
This will probably get +MS but maybe because IB has a specific skillset not often used in corporate/general management roles in which I feel at least 50% of top MBA graduates enter.
It's the same way at top 30 MBA schools that focus on certain industries (tech, healthcare, retail/consumer). If you're entering other industries unrelated to their strength, I'd imagine you feel a bit short-changed.
Monkey Sh*t
I'd also be interested in hearing from people who are already settled in at their banks and can look back on how well prepared they were after MBA
Didn’t learn shit. Feel fine about the job. Just work hard, ask questions and get up to speed
No one goes MBA to learn hard skills really… surprise that you are expecting. it’s mostly soft leadership skills and network. I guess some courses such as how to craft a story, designing and formatting deck, managing teams, would prob be some of the more useful skills that I picked up and that are still applicable for me now in IB
Was it tough coming in as an Associate then without the hard skills? Did you use other resources to learn some of the complex accounting or did you just learn that from doing lots of deals
And you need to pay 100k a year to learn that. I can learn that online.
Online/local MBAs may get a lot of sh*t but I personally know a few people who make low 100-110K a year within 2-3 years after graduating from them (may cap out at 150-200K at some corporate job working 40-50 hours a week in the 'burbs, not a bad deal). Some local MBAs may have a strong industrial relationship with local big conglomerates for example. Heck in healthcare, the highest paid C-suite person ($3 mil would be a down year for him) in my area went to a local no-ranked Masters but is highly respected by people I know who work in their hospital systems (people with like Harvard MDs).
Kind of underrated honestly for those who don't want to drop 6 figures on an MBA.
You're screwed
Lol
MBA emphasis is not on hard skills but there are opportunities to build them.The vast majority of MBAs are setting up for leadership positions and this is what MBA programs teach to.
You learn everything on the job, relax
For the most part no with the exception being some of my electives. My finance electives were very worthwhile and still helpful today when I'm looking at something that is nuanced. I had one class where we spent so much time on 10-k filings that I was able to hit the ground running with finding information and doing what I need to do with it, tax related stuff comes to mind.
The rest of the classes are pure fluff and I think give MBA students a piss poor attitude when they head into the working world because they think those classes are real life and they probably try to apply it in the workplace which would be dumb.
What you get out of your college experience from an educational standpoint is very much dependent on the professor, be it MBA or undergrad. If the majority of your professors are academics who have spent most of their career in academia with little to no real world experience then you're generally not going to learn very much. Academics only know what they have read and then teach based on that instead of based on real world experience. I had a pretty decent MBA experience and learned quite a bit but that was because I would vet my professors before signing up for classes to see if they had any real world experience. Adjunct professors were always the best because they were either retired with decades of real world experience or were teaching on the side and were able to bring real world examples into the classroom from their day job. For example, I had a portfolio management class that was taught by a hedge fund manager, it was awesome.
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