If you can’t get into a top-five MBA program, don’t bother | Hacker News Reader

If you can’t get into a top-five MBA program, don’t bother

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64 pointskundiis54 comments

If you can’t get into a top-five MBA program, don’t even bother

In 2009 I had spent 3 years out of school in a multifamily commercial real estate brokerage role. (We closed transactions above $5M, average around $25M). It was hard to make great money due to transaction volumes, but I made enough money to rent an apartment and buy beers every now and again.

In 2012 I made more than 5 times what I made in any year from 2006 to 2009. The difference was attending a program ranked 24th in some ranking systems and north of 30 in other ranking systems.

About 50% of my current coworkers went to top 10 schools. The others went to elite undergrad programs and a few went to programs like mine.

If you want a great job out of an MBA program, you will need to do the maximum, practice interview skills and network well. You also need to be willing to tell people that the job they are trying to place you in is below you. This happened all the time, Target actually tried to recruit floor managers at an MBA career fair. I looked the lady straight in the eye and asked if she had any real jobs. Next thing you know I have someone’s card at corporate.

The company I work for now tried to put me in a fairly basic role, I said don't bother and I am in a much, much better role now. You have to be confident that a ranking next to your school name is bullshit.

A top 5 program makes things easier, but even if you get in, you will still need to work hard. I heard the CEO of Carlyle Group speak on our campus, he said “Nothing great ever gets accomplished between 9 and 5”. You can bet that I worked hard, took extra classes, attended EVERY social event, attended clubs, participated in the on campus investment club, went to the VCIC International competition, worked for the on campus angel investment network etc.

I didn't get a lot of sleep and I probably drank too much coffee, but I had a great time and I got what I wanted and needed out of the program. Not just in a job, but lifelong friends and an amazing learning experience.

-I'd say 60-70% of my classmates ended up substantially better than when they started. The ones who didn't do as well were either international students who couldn't get visas or the ones who worked the least and were least dependable.

Based on anecdotal observations of several colleagues who have graduated from a nearby top 20 MBA school since I have known them, there doesn't appear to be any correlation between an MBA degree and career success. The two who have since gone on to be very successful were already rising rapidly in their careers before they started the program. The other five were languishing in their careers before and have languished ever since. Most of them have fallen far behind the engineers who chose to spend that time honing their technical and engineering skills.

I suspect that, had you never gotten an MBA but still demonstrated that same level of confidence that you claim, you would have achieved a similar level of success.

Unless we can have a proper test for that, it's difficult to tell. Compare the situation of a young high school athlete. May have all the right athletic skills and attitude. But perhaps that attendance into some special skills development camp is just what they needed to push themselves over the edge to the next level. It can't hurt that they're attending together with other young top athletes who will push each other forward.

Aside from that, one of the only reason I'd ever attend an MBA school if I ever wanted to, was to easily develop a network of top-level A-players. It's easy to develop the network like that when top people are grouped together in the same place with the same goals. A top-tier MBA school is not the only place where you have that situation, but I imagine that it is one of the only places.

That being said, there are a lot of reasons to not get an MBA, especially if it would not contribute at all to your goals.

Curious which MBA school did you attend, I agree with the author that MBA outside of top 5 is worthless. 24th seems pretty low in the order and you would have to struggle a lot, seems like you did.

Curious if you'd expect those struggles to not exist in a top 5 school? It seems that he's just saying he worked hard. I imagine everyone who wants to attain a high level of success needs to work hard.

I didn't struggle, I did what hard working people do, I worked hard. I regularly met people at case competitions from the 5 schools mentioned who were not getting the job interviews or jobs I was because they expected to get it for free.

Sure, they get better on campus recruiting than other schools, but the best jobs are not advertised.

Hey can you shoot me an email, you sound like someone I'd like to meet. Address is in my profile.

This is a vastly oversimplified conclusion that only serves the author's interests. Of course he's going to say the MBA degree is worthless unless it's from Wharton... he went to Wharton.

A recent survey of top MBA students found that 88% of graduates say they were happy with the investment they made. Having come from a school that's not in the so-called top 5 (more like top 10), the MBA has opened so many more doors and offered opportunities I never would have without a degree.

"88% of graduates say they were happy with the investment they made."

Of course you will rationalize your decision and you will say you are happy after sinking so much money in! Can you imagine answering something else? The minute you were accepted you were 'happy with your decision' and you crafted and told yourself a nice narrative.

I'm sure there is tangible ROI for a lot of MBA graduates, but the question whether they are 'happy' is simply biased.

"If people commit, orally or in writing, to an idea or goal, they are more likely to honor that commitment because of establishing that idea or goal as being congruent with their self-image."

Living in denial and rationalizing obviously irrational/destructive choices is one of the things that bothers me most about humanity. When we finally go extinct, this will probably be a major if not THE major reason why. :/

Or, it's like so many things in life and it is what you make of it.

"A recent survey of top MBA students found that 88% of graduates say they were happy with the investment they made."

Funny, that's what all the unemployed liberal arts majors who spent $100,000 in student loans on their college degree said too...

Accepting that you've made an extremely bad decision and are now condemned to indentured servitude for the rest of your life is way too difficult of a realization for most people to handle. And so--they say that it was worth it, and encourage those who are younger to follow their paths, not realizing that this cowardice is not only what perpetuates the cycle, but allowed the runaway degree inflation to flourish in the first place.

> Funny, that's what all the liberal arts majors who spent $100,000 in student loans on their college degree said too...

Is that true? I would be shocked if that were true.

That's because liberal arts majors don't know how to calculate ROI.

Spending 100k in an MBA seems better value for the money though.

(and as far as I've looked, they go to that value with everything included, tuition is less)

This should be tempered somewhat with: "if your goal is to catapult yourself into a management position at a large organization." Basically, the kind of big companies that pay the kind of salaries that justify typical MBA tuitions can fill their recruiting needs by just looking at the top 5-7 (usually, Booth and Columbia are thrown in with Wharton, Harvard, Stanford, Sloan, and Kellogg). And these days, even at the top schools it's not like everyone is choosing between McKinsey or Goldman like they used to. A lot of people have to hustle in ways they did not before.

Of course, that's not the only career track that might be helped by an MBA. If you've got an established track record and want to move up within your organization, or to a higher level position in a related organization, getting a well-known but not elite MBA can still give you a boost.

I have an MBA (from a top school), and teach a class there now too.

My advice to you:

Do your MBA in a city you want to stay in. You will start businesses and get job referrals from your classmates that remain in the town.

Go out of your way to impress a few influential profs. Employers ask for the best students. Profs will get you gigs.

These MBA bashing articles always focus on the same thing: that an MBA no longer guarantees a good job and that it doesn't help you start your own company. I would love to see an article that examines the real value of an MBA: its network. Does the value of the connections you make during an MBA program outweigh the cost, both time and money?

This article makes that point indirectly. If the primary value of an MBA is the network, you should only go to a school where the network has meaningful impact on your career prospects: a top 5 school.

which begs the real question - why is "networking" so important (i mean, i know its important, but how come many things hinges on you knowing the right person, instead of hinging on your innate capability instead)?

I don't like the sound of an elite clique forming that excludes those who are unable to pay or for some reason can't participate in that clique, and this is prevented from roles such as CEOs/upper management.

It's because we are, at the bottom, monkeys in shirts and pants.

I have the same question, what does everyone emphasis on Networking so much? I think it's purely overrated. If you really want to network, you can do that for a fraction of a cost by attending industry events/conferences and don't need to spend 2 years to go to Business School.

It's a different kind of network.

The people you meet at conferences are not likely to be highly placed, and you will not have a particularly strong bond with them.

Spend 2 years in a highly-ranked MBA program, though, and you will develop deep, long-lasting bonds with people, many of whom will end up in important positions.

It's the same sort of deep connection you get from being, say, an early participant at an important company. The PayPal Mafia [1] are important partly because they are smart individuals, and partly because they're part of a well-connected network.

I hear you also get a similar effect from incubator programs like Y Combinator: it builds bonds that last.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal_Mafia

Ok, that explains..but I would still not go to MBA school mostly to build network.

Because there are a lot of pieces to running a business that fall outside of your innate capability, and your network allows you to draw on others for those capabilities.

I agree with you on the moral issues. I'm especially concerned about that kind of clique persisting across generations. This country worked too hard to get rid of royalty to let it happen again.

However, I also appreciate how valuable a good network is. People are social animals, and good networks allow you to cut through a lot of bullshit.

When I'm hiring, for example, the first place I always go to is my network. Placing ads is such an arduous and chancy process. If I can hire somebody who has strong recommendations from people I know, it's much easier and much more likely to work out well. Those people have collected information over time on things I can't possibly discover in an interview. And the social relationships provide a context that make the relationship more solid than one brokered via Craigslist.

Why not a top 6 school? These articles are rarely very useful.

I'm not sure it's really the number that matters - each network has a distinct focus - some non top-10 or top-5 schools (Carnegie Mellon for example) may have less highly-ranked MBA program/network but have a really strong engineering/undergraduate network. For an MBA who has an engineering background or is pursuing engineering management, getting an MBA at that sort of program may make a lot of sense. I think the real key here is that blindly following rankings makes little sense and that picking a program that's really right for you is what does make sense.

Sure. I guess that's what I was trying to say in a snarky way. I just don't understand the anti-education mentality here at HN when it comes to this specific degree.

First of all, you can network via LinkedIn, Lunchmeet, attending conferences, founder dating services, etc. There's so many ways you can do it for much less if not free. Second, how many of the people you encounter during the MBA program will actually be of any use to you? I know you can't tell, but from my experience, you don't really need to network with everyone--it's often a waste of time. You just need to be introduced to the ones who matter in your industry. So if the real value of an MBA is the network, then an MBA doesn't really seem valuable at all.

There is definitely a need for another kind of business education.

At some point I left a cushy full-time position for a consulting (in another area, to boot). Classic MBA education is obviously too heavy weight for me. All the things that I needed to run my one-man business I learned from a mish-mash of other consultants' war stories, web forums, and few books.

I would say that Fred Wilson's MBA series (http://www.avc.com/a_vc/mba-mondays/) or courses like Entrepreneurship 101 (http://www.marsdd.com/event_series/entrepreneurship-101/) are getting pretty close to what I need, but sometimes I need to know things that are even more down to Earth. Sometimes they are just technicalities, but very important technicalities: nevertheless. E.g.: how to choose corporate structure, what documents to keep for audit, does CRA (or IRA) accept scanned images instead of paper receipts, basics of accounting to make sure I work more effectively with my accountant, templates for invoices and shareholder meeting minutes, etc. Moreover, it would be great if such education was split into courses or stages. E.g. once my business grows large enough, I will want to know about hiring people, choosing and using CRM, setting up basic IT infrastructure. It is not that (if and when I grow) I am going to do all that myself, but I need to understand at least certain things at certain stages to make informed decisions and give more or less informed "go aheads" to people I hire.

I would definitely subscribe for something like this.

You might be interested in your local chapters of SCORE or the Chamber of Commerce. They often have events featuring that sort of down-to-earth advice, and are also a good way to meet other small businesspeople.

I feel like this is the you can't have the same job for 30 years story told over and over again.

Yeah. New economy. You have to have skills. You can't just buy a good job.

For some context, this was the state of play in 2000 (http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/01/business/a-matter-of-degre... ):

"Consulting firms are especially hungry [...] consulting firms still hire hundreds of M.B.A.'s and say they would sign up even more if many of the most desirable candidates were not instead joining dot-com companies that can lure them with equity stakes."

"'Frankly, business is in some ways not that difficult to learn,'' said Rajat Gupta, McKinsey's managing partner. ''We can pick up people who have not studied business and can teach them, if they have the intellectual firepower.'"

"STILL, from some perspectives, these are not the best of times for the M.B.A. [...] many potential students [... are] eager to join start-ups. If Bill Gates or Jeff Bezos didn't need an M.B.A., some people wonder why they do, either. Also, with technology rapidly and fundamentally changing so many industries, other people worry that two years spent outside the work force is too long."

"Indeed, at a time when technology is changing the rules for many industries, the skills of scientists and physicians are especially attractive to consulting firms looking to develop new theories. ''Oftentimes, the problems they're trying to solve really do require a deeper level of analytical skills'' than many M.B.A.'s have, said Laura D'Andrea Tyson, the dean of the University of California's Haas School of Business..."

Or... just don't bother with an MBA in the first place. Talented managers are grown, they are not produced.

Rather, go get a skill that can be used to build something. If you're talented for management, you don't need an MBA - it will come as part of your experience and interpersonal skills. Everything important taught in an MBA program can be learned later in your career as a by-product of simply being part of a good organization.

Don't underestimate the skills taught at good MBA programs.

However, I'd say that the way to go is to get a position which requires those skills first, some experience, and THEN do an MBA-type program - you'll get far more out of it.

Maybe you can learn such skills as a by-product, but doing so in an organized and challenging way is useful by itself.

Edit: see

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5065605

I have to agree with this post to some extent. Years ago we had an MBA from a local university apply and it actually made a negative impact on the interview when we saw that on the resume- and this was for a business analyst position.

But, I think if you are geniunely interested in business, there is nothing wrong with getting an MBA anywhere. Just couple it with starting your own business. You don't even have to list it on your resume if you think it will hurt. Just be aware- it is NOT cheap, and you are lucky if your company will fully fund it; the last place I worked would fund only the cheapest in-state MBA program and they wouldn't pay for books or associated fees, so it would have been thousands of dollars a year out of pocket I couldn't justify.

From my and few other people's I trust (totally unscientific) observations: not only MBA does not help you with starting your own business, it actually lowers your chances.

MBAs come out of schools with a set of skills geared towards big businesses. That is what MBA was created for. But the real killer: after so many courses and case studies, for any idea or execution plan you know exactly why it is not going to work. Because this "was tried before and did not work", or "it works sometimes, but we do not have enough capital".

Why entrepreneurs that make it big are usually young? It is not just pure energy and stamina. It is also because they do not "know" that things will not work. And they don't, 95% of the time. But 5% of the cases when they do, against all odds, bring real innovation and wealth creation.

MBA adds too much years of this kind of knowledge on your shoulders.

One or two succeed and tens of thousands fail. With MBA's, one or two succeed but only hundreds fail. I call that improvement. It's not guaranteed success but you've improved your situation. And failure does actually have real consequences.

This "I'm too dumb to know better, therefore I am better" idea is based on the few lucky people but ignores the huge amount of failures. Consider there may be ten thousand failures each year that you never even heard about.

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I went to a top 25, but not top 5 MBA program, and my network is not all that great, but I actually feel like I learned quite a bit.

I don't mean to be rude, but that doesn't sound like a lot of return of investment.

That only 75% of Stanford MBA grads have jobs at graduation is more a reflection of the rising value of entrepreneurship than the difficulty of getting jobs. Students aren't lining up consulting or banking jobs because there are better prospects in starting something up in silicon valley. That plus the unfortunate difficulties of foreign students getting work permits.

That's an interesting theory. Do you have any evidence?

There have been a few articles:

http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/01/mba-startups-st...

It anecdotal, but I've also met several recent grads who are starting something up, have been working on pitches, or who waited until after graduation to try to find work at a startup.

What about Chicago?

I'd argue he's overlooking some schools. Notably Chicago and Columbia, but also Duke, Dartmouth, and Berkeley. I'd also say Rice and Texas if you'd like to work in energy financing, USC and UCLA if entertainment is your game, and regional programs your employer, should they be so kind, might help you pay for, especially if your background is in science or engineering and you'd like to rebrand yourself.

But the underlying point holds: It's not the golden ticket it used to be. It's primarily for consultants and bankers these days, and those aren't sectors that hire far and wide. They want brand names that'll impress their clients who probably attended brand name MBA programs themselves.

if you're interested in the tech scene, save yourself the tuition money. For a tiny fraction of the cost, spend a year building your own product/offering and you will learn more than in any b-school.

The point of business school isn't learning, it's networking and signaling. Even within the "tech scene" if you want to work for one of those VC's, a Wharton degree and a stint at Goldman is going to go a long way.

I know this is what people are saying, but is it actually true? I would imagine that if you can land a position as a technical lead in a small team within a couple of years, you'll be much better suited to lead a startup than you would be building your own products. Also some selection of business courses wouldn't hurt like marketing, business intelligence and networking.

No it isn't true. This is, yet again, a great example of American self-centered thinking. The rest of the world trains and hires many more MBAs than the top 5 could possibly put out.

you're forgetting that you learn about 100 other people's careers and industries, Wisdom and Insight of profs that tell you what isn't in the book, and the book knowledge, which I feel certain anyone focused full time on a startup doesn't have time for. People have been ripped off for hundreds of thousands of dollars before for simply not understanding basic accounting.

Harvard, Stanford, INSEAD, London Business School, UPenn, UChicago, Columbia, Northwestern, Duke, MIT <let's stop here>

Which were the top 5 again? It changes by year and publication

Yes, limiting yourself to the "top 5" (by what measure?) is a sure sign this makes no sense.

Top 5 MBAs by number of squirrels on campus?

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