MBA or not? (转贴）

xiangyu4255

MBA or not?

Now I am at New York JFK int'l airport. As committed, I would like to finish the topic I mentioned several days ago.

MBA or not? That is a question. After getting married, still being available will be a real challenge to you. No matter you are a men or woman…….

I am kidding. MBA is still mainly standing for Master of Business Administration. However, sometimes, it also means Married But Available.

Recently, MBA or not has been a quite hot topic among the people around me. They are my classmates, high school and university, former colleagues or current colleagues. At the age of late 20s, they are thinking about doing something different. Simple enough, they are at the crossing roads of career path. Some of them would like to take this opportunity to jump out of the original technical career. Another motivation is to taste the flavor of MBA as part of the life experience. Even just getting another title could be some of their objectives as well.

My point of view about MBA is about people himself/herself. First of all, MBA is just one kind of study which teach you some basics about business with some focus on finance, marketing or strategy. If you are already a business owner, this could somehow refresh the empirical knowledge you had already and give you a framework to organize them. In other words, you will get some theoretical guidance for your future business. If you are totally from an engineering background without real business experience, MBA could be the tool to enlighten the way ahead and really give you a chance to peek into the different world and decide whether you really like it or not. If you are a fun seeker, MBA is a perfect place in terms of providing 2 years platform with great people from everywhere to be your counterparts. You could definitely have one of your best time in life during MBA if you are not only focused on finishing those courses and getting the degree.

However, it is just a tool or platform. You should never expect MBA to be a golden finger. By doing that, you cannot expect to be able to immediately transform yourself from an engineer into business people. If you do so, 99% out of the real world, you will be disappointed. It is just learning experience and basics. It may acts as an enabler for you to find the good job. Without real business exposure or sense, the job can easily be gone. Not every people in this world should go to the business world. Being a good engineer, an artist, a musician are all kinds of alternatives in life. If you are already doing a fantastic job in computer engineering, why should you change and give up all the spikes you already have?

One thing I believe quite a lot is you should only go back to school when you have some bottleneck in your career. If you are doing perfectly in the company, giving up what you have done and starting MBA could very much be a bad choice unless you do believe it is the MUST step for your career in next 20 years.

You need to have a very clear analysis on yourself. SWOT could be a good practice by analyzing your strength, weakness, opportunity and threat by making the choice. Normally, the results will tell you whether you really fit that role or not and you have to believe in yourself. In another words, if you cannot fully convince yourself about going MBA, you won't be able to convince your future employers about your choice. If yourself is not convinced, very likely, you won't be able to fully enjoy this journey and have all your passion to make something happen. Without all things above, spending lots of money and time on a degree will be a disaster.

Besides the analysis about yourself, economic wise, MBA is also a tough choice. If you decide to go MBA and pursue your career in business world, my suggestion would be better go somewhere impressive. Those are the most precious two years in your life and you should make them meaningful. DO YOUR BEST and BE AGGRESSIVE on where you will go. HBS, Sloan, Kellogg are not far away. After clear consideration as suggested above, you will be able to build your own story that should be able to convince everybody about your decision.

As a preliminary conclusion, GO for MBA only if you ENJOY it and you exactly know what you want from that. Now, I am not convinced yet!