Why not do an Evening MBA and still work?

Why did I prefer a full-time MBA over an evening, weekend, online or part-time MBA?

I looked into all the Part-time/Evening MBA programs around and decided not one of them was what I was looking for. The other options weren't bad, but because they didn't fit with me for three reasons. These are my reasons, but there's some other things that anyone deciding between full-time and part time school need to know.

1 - I didn't feel evening MBA programs in the Salt Lake City were the best for career-switchers.  

They are for people trying to advance in the company they already work for, or same line of work. They don’t provide much - if any - new work experience from internships or consulting projects. Ultimately, no part-time MBA sufficiently molded my resume to be what I needed. Even good online MBA degrees like with Arizona State University don’t overcome my apprehension.

That can't be right...I know lots of people how got a Part-Time MBA then a new job. Yes, you may, but it's rare that the new job was both an MBA level job and a truly big career switch.  Those who do generally have an above-average amount of previous work experience or some kind of unique skill they developed outside of their MBA program.

What about Fidelity where you used to work? Don’t they have an MBA recruiting program in their other departments? Why not "career switch" with them? Yes, they do with their investment research department and internal consulting department. I had an introductory interview with their Equity Research group after meeting Fidelity’s Director of Research when he was in Seattle. He gave me a fast pass for an interview with an HR rep. She and I talked about 30 minutes, but at the end she was very frank and said “ You can apply, but we rarely hire full-time MBA’s outside of our core schools" such as Wharton, Harvard, Stanford, Kellogg and MIT.

I've found the best way to career-switch is to try to get recruited into a large company's MBA rotational program, where they have you work in a few different kinds of projects/roles for a while. Almost every major company has this kind of program, and they pull almost exclusively from Full-Time programs, not part-time.

2 - I feel there's no highly-ranked Evening MBA programs within 600 miles of Salt Lake City 

I'm defining “highly-ranked” as a top-50 ranked Evening MBA program, and feel it isn't too high of a standard. The U is the only top-100 school in the area at 52. 

Why does that matter? Schools in Utah that have an Evening MBA program (University of Utah, Westminster, UVU, Utah State) won’t post their admitted students’ average GMAT score, starting salaries, (etc) like higher-ranked schools because their job placement track record & other stats are not competitive... nor great recruiting material. Utah-based schools tend to post national averages (Like the U), selling the 'MBA Acronym' but not the school itself. I have strong feelings about the lack of value found in the Evening MBA programs around the Salt Lake Area not because the schools are bad, but because their graduates generally get local, undergraduate-level jobs with marginally better pay than before getting a graduate degree. That wasn't what I was going for. 

There's less of a draw for employers to recruit students if the school's true statistics are an employment-out-of-graduation rate of 80%, average starting salary of $60k, and average GMAT test score of 580 out of 850. The numbers would suggest that on average, higher-ranked schools would offer more experienced candidates with higher reasoning & quantitative aptitude than lower-ranked schools.

Aren't school rankings mostly a marketing play or a pride-thing that Ivy-leauge people trumpet around? I don't believe so. On rare occasion there are tools who like to remind others how great of a school they went to, but on average the graduates I know from top-tier universities are humble and grateful for their education. Rankings & stats matter for one big reason: It needs to be clear that when you get a job right out of school, your starting salary is influenced by the average salary stats your school has. Most large employers have a basic formula where they input the school's average salary & the candidate's previous work experience to determine how much they'll offer you. I've had more than one HR recruiter tell me this, and experienced it first-hand. HR departments are surprisingly open with sharing the methodology or reasoning on how they decide on salary offers.  

3 - A long, stretched-out time in school isn't what I was looking for. 

I did one quarter of 3 evening classes this year so I could work as a teaching assistant and take the classes I wanted. For three days a week I stayed on campus from 8:30am to 9:20pm with a 30-60 bus commute each way, then had regular 8-5 hours the other two days. It was really miserable leaving the apartment at 7:00am and coming home at 10:30pm. Why would I do anything similar to that for years for only a marginal benefit to me?

Many evening programs are 2 ½ to 3 years. Committing myself to a longer-than-necessary time commitment of working nights and weekends for only the marginal benefit of a local evening MBA was not worth the cost to my bank account, energy levels or relationships.

Things everyone should consider:

If you are thinking about switching careers, no type of MBA (evening, full-time, online) is a golden ticket. Employers want people with experience more than they want education.  Take the path with the most opportunity to get new work experience (projects, internships and such) before graduation because at the end of the day, employers ask for stories about things you've done, not what you studied in a class.

Was getting an MBA worth it?

Was getting an MBA worth it for me?

Have you ever wondered, 

“Was it actually worth it for him to quit his job and pay to go to school for 2 whole years? What about all those costs you have to make up? Why go to school full-time instead of an Evening MBA so you can still work? Why not just try to get promoted where you already work instead? Why not buy a house instead? Why move to go to school? Will this really be worth it for them? ”

Christine and I wondered about those things.

If you’re thinking about going back to school, you also may wonder things like these:

“Can I really afford it? What if you don’t get a better job? What if your new job is lame? What if you have to move somewhere lame? What if you learn very little that is useful in the real world, like non-applicable theory? What if things aren't really better because of it?”

We wondered about those things, too.

And I’ve written the answers for me and Christine. Every week or two I'll share an answer to one of the questions above. I hope they will be useful for people who were curious about why we even did this but don't feel comfortable asking, or are considering getting a Masters of Business Administration themselves.