Advice for a teacher considering business school

What’s good, folk. After my recent looooong entry about myself, it’s time for me to get back to dispensing advice to readers. The email below is from a teacher who wants to make a big career switch, facilitated by earning an MBA. She has a few starter questions that I’ve answered below, but I also gave her some advice about how to approach this whole idea. Let’s see if she finds it useful…

Also, before I close this out, I wanted to share a link to a YouTube video that I found recently. The video is a cover of the Geto Boys track “Damn, it feels good to be a gangster”, which some of you may remember from the “Office Space” soundtrack. It’s a play off of the reputational battle between consultants and i-bankers and had me ROLLIN’!!! Here you go…“Damn, it feels good to be a banker”

————–
EA wrote:

“Hello Marquis,
I really enjoy reading your blog, it’s shedding some light on a field that’s seemingly so secretive for some of us. I need any advice that you would graciously offer me. I am a 33 year old high school English teacher looking to make a drastic career switch. My objectives are to 1) double my salary; 2) seek an avenue of career growth other than school leadership. I’m toying around with the idea of pursuing an MBA but wondering if its totally insane for someone with almost zero business/accounting/financial background to pursue this field. I hate mediocrity and would not like to get into a field in which I would be incapacitated due to my lack of hands on experience. I already have a masters degree in education, and a PhD would be the natural course of action for most people in my field, but I’d like to do something that would boost my rewards even further. I’m also wondering if my age will work against me. Do they hire middle aged MBA’s? Also, does it matter which concentration one chooses in an MBA? Is that a big deal? What about the school. I’m wondering what the difference would be between an online program, Georgia State, or Emory. Does any program have more weight?

-EA”
————–
My response:

EA,

Thanks for bringing your issue to me for guidance. I especially like to hear about teachers thinking about making the plunge into business school because it is such a trajectory changer in terms of one’s career. One big piece of advice for you is to NEVER, EVER, EVER, tell anyone else that one of the reasons you want an MBA is to double your salary. It may be true and others feel the same way, but that’s one of those things that you just don’t say out loud in such plain terms. Instead, you should say something about wanting to expand your career options or position yourself for greater career growth, but don’t make it all about the money…that wouldn’t come across well at all. Focusing on your desire to pursue school leadership is a much better story and the management, strategy, and organizational leadership skills you’d gain in an MBA program would help you reach that goal.

Before you apply to business school, you should put some serious thought into the story you’d tell in your applications and how it might come across to the admissions officers at your schools. You asked some pretty good questions for someone who is just now approaching the idea of applying to B-school, so I’ll do my best to address them thoroughly, but please understand that I’ll just be giving you my opinion. You should reach out to some business school admissions folks to ask these same questions to get the perspectives of folks who actually make decisions on applications. OK, let’s get to your questions:

– It seems that your biggest concern is about your lack of “business/accounting/financial background to pursue this field”. Don’t let that concern you at all because it won’t keep you from getting into B-school. Like many other applicants, I didn’t have any business background when I applied and I got into several great schools. The most important things will be for you to tell your “Why MBA?” story and to explain how your educational and professional background will prepare you to contribute to a business school class environment. Whatever you do, don’t let your lack of a business background keep you from pursuing an MBA if you truly think you’d benefit from one.

– Regarding your concerns about age, B-schools look at age differently and, once you have decided where you’ll apply, you should really talk to some MBA admissions folks to get their read on it. I don’t believe you should let your age keep you from applying to business school. I had several Stanford GSB classmates who were older than you when we started our first year, including one who turned 40 that year. Also, of my MBA friends who finished after the age of 30, I can’t think of any that had any problems finding a job related to their age during the recruiting process. Others may tell you that you’re too old to pursue an MBA, but you won’t truly know whether you could get an admit letter unless you apply, right?

– I don’t know too much about the role of concentrations in an MBA program because Stanford’s program doesn’t have concentrations..it may play a role if you’re coming from another school though. I could see how your choice of concentration would play a role in recruiting for your first post-MBA job depending on the industry. For example, if you want to pursue investment banking after business school, you’d probably want to have a concentration in Finance or some other topic that would prepare you for an i-Banking gig. After that first post-MBA job, I imagine that your work experience and business skills would matter much more than your B-school concentration when pursuing that second, third, or fourth job after graduation.

– I’ve written a few entries about whether the MBA program you attend matters and this may be an unpopular view, but I do believe that the choice of school does matter. In an ideal world, the school where you get your MBA wouldn’t matter as much, but, in the real world, applicants should think about several factors when picking a school, including reputation of the program, perception of rigor, and quality of the faculty and students. For example, you will be much better off if you attend an accredited business school versus an unaccredited one. Also, attending a well-regarded program will likely open up more career prospects than attending a not-so-well-regarded one. Business school is pretty expensive, so you’ll want to make sure you get a good return on your investment when it’s all said and done. You’ll have to do some research on different MBA programs and their rankings/reputations/profiles to make the best choice for yourself. Overall, I recommend attending the best school you can get into because it’ll give you more bang for your buck when you look back at your B-school choice in the distant future. Don’t take my opinion on this as the gospel truth on it though. Talk to other people with MBAs to get their perspectives so you can form your own opinion on the issue. Ultimately, you’ll have to be comfortable with your choice of business school, so get as much information as you can.

It looks like you’ve got a lot of things to sort out before you actually go into the MBA application process. Please take the time to figure all of this out because you’ll have to explain it all in your applications and it needs to be communicated well. You won’t convince a school’s admissions office to accept you if your story doesn’t make sense to them. Take care and I wish you the best of luck with your business school applications.

-Marquis