Every year, tens of thousands of young professionals approach the time in their early careers for reassessment. They've been in the world of work for three to five years and either they have decided that their initial career choice isn't exactly what they thought it would be. Or they are in the right industry and the right role but want to rise faster than seems possible.
For either person, getting into a highly selective MBA program can make the difference. It can turbocharge an existing career or more easily allow a transition to a new discipline, industry, company or geography. In fact, many MBA graduates are able to make what is called the triple jump all at once, moving from engineering to marketing, leaving construction for tech, relocating from Detroit to Silicon Valley.
That is the power of an elite MBA. It can and does change professional lives, gives people an opportunity to completely reinvent oneself. Yet, for many who start on this journey to consider going back to school, there are many challenging questions. Is the cost of the degree worth the benefit? What does it really take to get into a quality program? What do you really learn when you study for an MBA? Will your classmates share your values and ideals? And do major employers truly value the degree and the graduates who get it?
You can spend countless hours surfing the net to get the answers to those questions. Or for the first time ever you can get them in a single morning on May 1 at The MBA Summit, an extraordinary lifestream event sponsored by PoetsandQuants.com and the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. I have the unique privilege to moderate what will be three fascinating panel discussions starting at 9 a.m. EST and ending at noon EST. You'll not only get candid answers to the above questions, you'll also get to ask your own questions during each session.
The Student Perspective: Vetting Top-Ranked MBA Programs
The process of choosing the program that fits your goals can be daunting. In the first of our three panels, students and graduates from Michigan’s Ross School, Yale’s School of Management, and UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business will share how they decided where to pursue their MBA. With 20-20 hindsight, they’ll offer advice to prospective students about the school research and comparison phase and they will discuss how they compared such factors as academics, co-curriculars, culture, career outcomes and alumni networks. Here's what I plan to ask, among other things;
How did you decide if a full-time MBA was worth the investment?
How did you determine your fit at various schools?
If you had a specific industry, function you wanted to go into, how did you identify which school would best help you achieve your career goals?
Given what you know now, what--if anything--would you do differently in your MBA journey?
MBA Admissions Directors: Assessing Your Chances Of Getting In
Hear three of the most influential decision-makers in MBA admissions open up about what it takes to get into a highly selective business school. Soojin Kown, managing director of full-time MBA admissions at Ross, will be joined by Bruce DelMonico and Morgan Bernstein, who respectively head the admission offices at both Yale SOM and Berkeley Haas. We’ll explore what a candidate can do to stand out from the crowd, how standardized tests, undergraduate GPAs, and work experience are weighed in admission decisions, and how an applicant can shine during an interview.
How do you assess highly qualified applicants?
What are the most common mistakes applicants make during the application process?
Is there a 'best' time to apply to a highly selective MBA program?
Does it matter if an applicant visits your campus?
From Employers: What Recruiters Really Look For In MBA Hires
In the third and final panel, executives from three of the most highly desired employers of MBAs will share insights into what their companies value in MBA graduates and the impact they have made in their companies. Peter Faricy, vice president of Amazon Marketplace, Grant D’Arcy, head of strategy at Google’s Moonshot Factory, and Ellis Griffith, McKinsey & Co.’s head of inclusion and diversity, will discuss the value MBAs bring to their organizations, how they evaluate candidates, and what experiences during an MBA program have made the biggest impact on their job performance.
How have the responsibilities and opportunities for MBA hires changed over the past five years?
What are the new expectations and demands placed on MBAs today?
What are you looking for in MBA recruits and how has that changed over the past five years?
How important is a candidate's pre-MBA work experience in your hiring process?
Michigan Ross Dean Scott DeRue, one of the most dynamic and charismatic leaders in business education today, will join the panel to discuss how business schools are addressing the changing expectations employers have for MBA graduates.
In other words, if an MBA is potentially in your future over the next year or two, this is a must-attend event. It's free. It's one morning. And it will be live streamed as it occurs all over the world. Register now to partake in what promises to be one of the best opportunities ever to demystify the most popular graduate degree in the U.S.
