MS in Finance while on active duty

Current active duty Marine Corps officer looking to transition in the 2019 time frame, at which point I would like to pursue a Top 10-20 MBA (Currently 650 GMAT, which I am working hard to raise). I am wondering what benefits I would receive from completing an MS in Finance prior to exiting the military. A few schools offer decent online programs which would be partially covered by the military.

My goal for completing this would be to.

  • Make up for a low undergrad GPA (3.0)
  • Ensure that I can transition to a civilian job more easily.
    -Round out my skill set for an i-banking role once I exit the military.
    -Maximize my competitive advantage for a selective MBA program.

Does this make sense for my goals? I'm tracking there is some redundancy with these degrees, but I have the time now.

5 Comments
 
Best Response

The issue is unless you say went to the OCC or Fed Reserve, the masters won't do much without some work experience outside the military. You could do the gtown program as that is going to give you the best brand and experience in a flexible format. Not sure how much value you'd get out of the Penn state or Indiana online program.

Frankly, your GPA isn't horrible and you could probably make up with it by taking a post college cert and having some solid ECs. The masters would be basically an expensive cert and rebranding.

 

Thanks for the awesome reply! Should clarify that the GPA is from a top-10 NESCAC if that matters. If the MS is a no go, would you just recommend going through a state university for some form of cert?

 

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