Am I Thinking About an MBA Wrong?

You're thinking about an MBA (mostly) right! I strongly recommend that applicants have a goal and determine if given their background and previous education they need an MBA to achieve that goal. Then determine if the MBA is the most cost-effective way to achieve it and if it's worth the cost. "Worth" included both financial rewards and personal satisfaction if you will enjoy what you're doing more after you earn the MBA.

While I understand the emotion behind "I just paid of $100K in debt, I don't want to do it again." as someone if finance, you know that's not how you analyze an investment decision. You need to look forward.

Here are links to a few interviews with current MBA professionals who decided the MBA is worth despite impressive academic and professional backgrounds before they went for the MBA:

• https://blog.accepted.com/a-bain-consultant-turned-wharton-mba-starts-h…</a">A Bain Consultant-Turned Wharton MBA Starts Her Own Business

*https://blog.accepted.com/ida-valentine-investment-banker-inspirational…</a"> Ida Valentine: Investment Banker, Inspirational Speaker, HBS 2021 * https://blog.accepted.com/mba-private-equity-cop-meet-nik-kumar-columbi…</a">MBA, Private Equity, Cop: Meet Nik Kumar, Columbia MBA 2019 * https://blog.accepted.com/bain-companys-keith-bevans-talks-about-career…</a">Bain & Company’s Keith Bevans Talks About Careers, Life at Bain

Best, Linda

A lot of things to think about here, many of which will be personal to you, and that only you can really figure out if it's "right" or "wrong." I'll try to break it down, but the question is really, "What do I want out of an MBA?"

The monetary and time commitment are real. The monetary commitment won't just be tuition and living expenses, but all of the social/project stuff that will or may be never ending. That can add up.

A few verticals to look at..

Cost: You have already mentioned this. How big of a factor is it? How much does being in more debt/having the pay it off/sacrificing mean to you? Big difference if it keeps you up at night vs "Meh - I'll pay it off and be fine"

Professional: Do you want to switch tracks and do something really different? If so an MBA is a great reset button. If not... Will your company (you are in IB so probably not, but for the sake of others reading this...) sponsor you and then promote you/have a spot for you when you come back? What would the commitment be post-MBA? Can you get the roles you want/network into them without the MBA? If so, would it be much harder?

Social/Professional Network: How is it now? How is it from your college and personal life? Do you feel that you will need to build it out further? Would a MBA help? If you are not particularly social can you make good friends, say in work groups etc? If so, great. If not.. Being social in a program like a MBA (or college for that matter) can help enormously... Do you even care about your network? Many do, but I know many don't.

Academic: Do you want to actually learn new stuff? Did you go to a target school or not? Ie. will the MBA give you "pedigree" that you don't already have?

I'm sure there is more but this is off the top of my head.

Good Luck

i'd consider doing two years at PE before bschool, will open up your options to basically whatever the fuck you want to do

you'll have good options going banking > bschool but banking > pe > bschool is basically the nut high outside of mbb tracks

that said i think you're thinking about it right

Can't comment on the rest but if you're thinking of getting into entrepreneurship now is a great time and do it ASAP. Very easy to raise money at high valuations even if you're not remotely qualified (not saying you are/aren't).

You should google and go find CompBanker's post from a few years ago about him getting an MBA. He went from banking to a partner track PE role and still went back to B-School.

You're thinking about it the right way, but you're still a 22/23 year old with one year of work experience, so I'll play devil's advocate. If you can get over the opportunity cost, a couple of reasons I think B-School might be interesting to you down the road.

1. It's a break from work life. Coming out of school, I'm sure you're tired of school and excited to be working in a big city, have some disposable income, no studying, etc. After 2 years of banking a few more of PE, you'll quickly realize that school definetly has it's merits. Even though the cost might be high, the ability to go back to a campus environment, especially one where your peers are pretty interesting accomplished people and everyone wants to socialize, travel, party, spend money, etc for a few years, it's something that might be a welcome break.

2. You can't place a definitive value on the network you get from a B School, but it definitely is a thing. I was talking to a younger, anti B school co worker about the network that one could build and his response was "well you can do that for free, just look people up on linkedin, ask for coffee/lunch and keep in touch, you do a few of those a week, you'll have a great network... in my opinion that is an entirely different network than what you'd get at B-school, you get an international group, across a variety of industries, and potentially share some really meaningful experiences with people. People meet spouses, best friends, future business partners and B school has the benefit of being a self-selected pool in which to meet those types of people. Again not to say you couldn't use the dating apps to find a date, networking groups to find business partners etc, but it's different than having to do a marketing case study with someone who works at LVMH or going 4 wheeling in the deserts of Egypt with a guy who works for Singapore's sovereign wealth fund. You never know where those connections might come in handy down the road.

3. MBA provide optionality as well, they kind of raise the floor of what you can do in some sense. If you have an M7 MBA, even if you decide to spend a few years doing entrepreneurship or whatever after and then decide you want to go back into a corporate job. The network plus the branding will allow you to slot pretty easily in most generic good paying corporate, consulting, finance types of roles. If you did 2 years of banking, maybe a little PE, and then try a startup for ~5 years and it fails, your options are probably more limited than someone who did the same, but did an MBA. Again, if you do banking into PE, I'm sure you're smart, well networked, etc so maybe the difference is marginal, but for some, there's a comfort in knowing that worst case, you end up with a 200k+/year corporate finance job anywhere in the US.

With all the being said, there's no need for an MBA in most modern jobs today. It is an extremely high opportunity cost and if what I said above doesn't resonate at all, then you are thinking about it the right way and shouldn't focus on it.