I touched on the subject of getting an MBA in USA from accredited MBA programs a little bit in one of my previous posts, but I’d like to expand on it here some more.
I check my spam box occasionally and there are always periods in time when my spam box is flooded with offers to get an MBA, PhD, or any other degree imaginable from online universities that sound legitimate. One time, I actually looked these schools up and while they sometimes have impressive looking websites, they are not accredited.
The offer also usually states that you can get a degree that usually takes two years or one year of very hard work, in a few months based on “life experience”.
What this means is that you pay this “school” money, and they in return print out a piece of paper for you that says you have an “MBA” or any other degree.
I have to say that I’m not sure how this is even legal, but let’s assume it is.
These so called schools are corporations set up to collect money from people who either don’t understand the value of an accredited MBA, or want to take a shortcut to getting an MBA and not work as hard as people with “real” MBAs.
Let me tell you this: the value of what you get is equal to the amount of effort you put into getting it.
If you pay some money and get a piece of paper after 3 months, all you’ll have is a piece of paper that says “MBA” on it. You can make the same kind of “degree” at home using a computer and a printer and it will have similar value.
Think about why you are getting a degree. Is it to improve your ability to get a better job and show potential employers that you have an advanced degree? If so, most employers will see through this “fake MBA” in no time by checking the source of your degree.
Is it to improve your knowledge and learn more about business? Well, all you really learn with a degree from non-accredited MBA programs is how to pay money for a worthless piece of paper. Not much value there.
Do you just want to take a shortcut because you don’t want to put in the work and time required for a real MBA? Well, good luck, as I said, you get the value that you put into it. So you will have a paper with the words MBA on it, but it will not have much value, since you won’t have the knowledge, experience and skills someone with a real MBA has.
That said, there are many online schools that do offer accredited MBA degrees.
You need to make sure that the school you are looking at is accredited one of the following:
Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB)
Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP)
International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education (IACBE)
If they do have accreditation from any one of these groups, it should be a valid degree. Again, make sure to use your common sense and sound judgment.
If a school offers you a degree that usually takes 2 years or 1 year of full time hard work to get in only 3 months, then you need to understand how and why it can do so while others don’t… these are usually scams that will take your money and offer you nothing in return except for a useless piece of paper.
When applying to business school, one of the most overrated issues people tend to constantly obsess about is their GMAT score. Here at MBA in USA, we see people who want to apply to accredited MBA programs who either get really worried about their score if it is even one point below the advertised average of the schools of their choice, or over cocky if it is just slightly over the average.
The truth is that GMAT isn’t that important.
Yes, you need to have a good GMAT score to get into a good school, if you scored 500, you might want to consider retaking the test.
The GMAT number schools publish is only an average, which means some people who attend have scores below that, and some have scores over that.
The GMAT is used as a kind of indicator of quality. If your score is anywhere in the range of 100 (and sometimes even 200) below the average, you can still easily get into the school of your choice. There is no “cutoff” line in most schools. All applications are completely read by the admissions teams and assessed as a whole.
I can understand the GMAT obsessions.
Since GMAT is really the only quantifiable part of the application, it’s very easy to get obsessive about it. If your score is lower than average, you can continue to worry if it’s enough or not until you get into the school.
On the other hand, I’ve seen people with high GMAT scores (780 for example) who think that once they got that score they are done working on their application and they have a free pass to get into any school they want. This is also wrong.
What does this mean for you?
There needs to be some common sense when thinking about the GMAT score.
Think about it from the admissions person point of view that looks at your application as whole package reflecting who you are and what you want to be:
If you score low on the quant side but you really want to be in finance and your grades in undergrad are really low in statistics and math, then the likelihood of you succeeding in what you want to do is low since quant is a weakness for you.
On the other hand, if you have a below average GMAT score, but you have great work experience and write excellent essays and do a great job on the rest of your application, your GMAT score won’t be much of an issue since you did very well in other parts of the application.
If you are still bothered by your GMAT score, you can always retake it. Another way to get over a low GMAT score is to take classes in the area that you are showing a weakness in and by that show that you can overcome the low score in other ways. Example: if you have a weak quant score, you can take a statistics class and if you get an “A”, it will show the admissions person that you are not as bad at quant skills as the GMAT indicated.
When thinking of getting an MBA in USA from accredited MBA programs, you should know up front that this is a very big investment. Aside from the tuition, housing, books, and other living expenses, you will also be taking 2 years off from work, and lose out on the income that provides. If you plan to finance your MBA with loans, you will also have to pay back a lot of interest.
So is it worth it?
The short answer is yes. The longer answer is as you might learn when you go to business school “it depends”.
If you plan to attend a top tier school (I would say top 50 or even top 100), you will most likely end up with an income that allows you to cover all those expenses fairly quickly (if you manage your money properly of course and don’t spend all of your income on non-essential stuff).
In most cases, the increase in income that comes from moving to the US and working in a local company can be huge! This also means that if you get an MBA in the USA, you will have access to companies who might sponsor you for work locally, which could lead to permanent residency and even a citizenship in the US.
On the other hand, if you plan to attend a less popular school, you need to be very careful and evaluate the hiring statistics, the companies that hire, and the starting salaries that those companies offer to graduates from that school. Starting salaries at major companies could drop significantly if you don’t come from a top 10, or top 50 schools.
Beyond this there is the non-financial value, which I think is greater.
I started my own company in my home country and had some experience working with international companies, but the exposure I got while getting my MBA was beyond anything I could dream of.
I met people from almost every country in the world and learned about their culture. I was exposed to the top business leaders of fortune 10 (not a typo, actually top 10) companies and met people like Carly Fiorina (CEO of HP at the time) , Jeff Immelt (CEO of GE), Sam Johnson (CEO of SC Johnson), and other CEOs of major companies in person and had time to chat with them about their vision and business experience.
I also learned a lot about business in class and by doing cases and my resume was exposed to major companies that would have never even considered hiring me without the MBA.
Most of all, if you go to a top 50 school, you get a brand name for life. Just like Coca Cola, the names Wharton, Harvard, Colombia etc. are highly recognized in the world and in the business community and if you attend one of those schools, you will earn the quality brand that they offer and that you can carry for life.
Just so you know, these top schools are not impossible to get into.
I am not from the USA and I never really thought about anything to do with an MBA in USA until my brother told me that people who get an MBA from accredited MBA programs can make over $100,000 in a single year. That was more than double what I was making, but it sounded too good to be true. I started investigating, and turns out that it was true.
I did a lot of research, made some mistakes and corrected them, and spent a lot of time and money figuring out the best ways to get into top MBA programs in the USA.
Just so you know, these top schools are not impossible to get into. I had average grades in undergrad, my GMAT wasn’t low, but was sub 700, and I didn’t have too much of the “traditional” work experience business schools look for.
I ended up applying to 6 schools that were in the top 10, and got into 3 of them. One even offered me a scholarship to attend.
After I entered the school, in 2002, I found out that it was the most competitive year in history in terms of MBA applications. I also joined the student admissions group to get an insider understanding of what it takes to get into top accredited MBA programs in the US.
Fast forward a few years. I am now actually making the 6 figure salary I was hoping to when I started out my MBA in USA journey. I live in a large house just outside a major US city, and have a very nice car and a great life. I also have an amazing job where I have influence over products that are used all over the world by hundreds of millions of people. I would never have been able to achieve this kind of success in my home country, even with a local MBA.
In this blog, I will share with you some tips and lessons I learned on what it means to get an MBA from accredited MBA programs, how to increase your chances to get in, and how to pretty much beat 98% of the people who apply without knowing this information and will never get into the school of their choice. I will also talk about school selection and how to best find one that matches your career path (or at least your goals as they are today).
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