The MBA Thread

Originally Posted by Milpool

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Solid work experience.

+1. I worked in a business environment all through college and a lot of admissions counselors said I needed more experience if I wanted directed admittance into a B school.

Happy I didn't cause I remain debt free. An aspect to consider IMO.

Originally Posted by NameBack

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CS is definitely a solid alternative to b-school, but I'd argue that if you want to be truly cutting-edge, grab a degree in statistics.

I'm sorry but this is horrible advice in the US. Mathematics in general is highly undervalued in the workplace in the US. I'm a numbers jock, and I get paid **** compared to former classmates that could barely handle Excel.

CS is a much better alternative to stats/math for a stats/math type.

@arrogant bastard

Well, yes, it's true that a lesser degree generally substitutes just fine for the moment -- but that's due to the relatively short supply of people well-versed in stats. As more people catch on, those who have advanced degrees now will have a long-term leg up.

My personal experience with this is in the field of electoral politics, where there's been a rapid and dramatic shift towards making everything about campaigns more empirically-driven (whereas prior it had been a very guru-driven industry). Right now most of my friends are working well-paying (but not spectacularly so) jobs in various progressive organizations/institutions/campaigns, but they're going to have a far easier time moving to high-powered consulting firms, polling firms, etc, than almost anyone else in our field. Or they can just start their own targeting firms and exclusively do micro-targeting.

In politics, that might be somewhat tougher as more of that stuff is coming in-house, but compared to what campaigns are doing, business is absolutely pre-historic when it comes to micro-targeting. The wealth of data businesses have or could have from their customers is unreal. Just a simple sign-up procedure that takes your gender, age, and ZIP code is enough to create vast amounts of insightful information that can be paired with purchasing habits to inform basically all aspects of how products are marketed to customers.

And it's just going to accelerate as everything moves online. Hulu is a great example. In theory, advertising time on Hulu should actually be substantially more valuable than advertising on regular TV, per person it reaches, because you can know who's watching. Every time I see an ad for Tampax, that's dollars wasted. But if you can send me an ad tailored to me because you know where I live, my gender, and my age (and by extension of where I live, probably my ethnicity, income, education-level, and political leanings), then you're getting more bang for your buck. But Hulu still deploys ad by the show, not by the viewer. They make sort of half-assed efforts that are totally empirically un-rigorous (like how you can say whether or not you find an ad "relevant" to you -- what does that information even mean?), but all-in-all, the potential is massively under-utilized. The same goes for, say, Facebook. My profile lists my political views as "Democratic Party," yet half of my ads are for Republican-themed causes and candidates. Even if I didn't list that, I'm 20 and I live in DC. I am not a Republican voter. Again, massive waste of potential.

I'm confident that there are going to be people who end up making boatloads of money in consulting by figuring out how to drive business decisions with data. Maybe that's optimistic, but who knows.

Originally Posted by NameBack

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tl;dr
All of those problems that you listed are, by their nature, tech issues. You can't teach any statistician [at least, not easily] how to easily re-code your system for these factors. You can teach a knowledgable CS major the applicable statistics, and let him/her deal with it. The issue is finding that good CS major, but that's for another topic.

Anyone know any good online practice tests?

Don't mind paying.

if you're talking about the GMAT, there's a free practice test on mba.com

check gmat forums too. they have a wealth of info.

Anyone going to the NSHMBA career fair want to grab a drink on Thursday or Friday night?

B are you seriously suggesting that a CS degree is needed to use & understand technology? That's absurd. The real need is for people who get it on both the business & technical sides (not coders), and there are any number of ways to achieve that.

Originally Posted by JoelF

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AB are you seriously suggesting that a CS degree is needed to use & understand technology? That's absurd. The real need is for people who get it on both the business & technical sides (not coders), and there are any number of ways to achieve that.

No, he's saying to make yourself a competitive prospect, a CS degree is helpful. Anybody can learn business, but if you can market yourself to a company as being a businessman that recognizes problems and has a good technical solution, it makes you that much more competitive.

bros MBA is not about learning (obv) it's about partying with future rich people so you can hit them up for $$$.

No offense to you computer science guys, but you're totally off.

CS is a great, wonderful degree, but what you're saying is like saying that medical doctors can be replaced by physicists, oh and by the way physicists can do ANYTHING better than ANYONE.

Tech is great, CS is great, but some of the posts in here have been pretty arrogant and overreaching.

Originally Posted by Flambeur

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No offense to you computer science guys, but you're totally off.

CS is a great, wonderful degree, but what you're saying is like saying that medical doctors can be replaced by physicists, oh and by the way physicists can do ANYTHING better than ANYONE.

Tech is great, CS is great, but some of the posts in here have been pretty arrogant and overreaching.

If you cannot be arrogant and overreaching on the internet, where can you?

Originally Posted by Flambeur

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No offense to you computer science guys, but you're totally off.

CS is a great, wonderful degree, but what you're saying is like saying that medical doctors can be replaced by physicists, oh and by the way physicists can do ANYTHING better than ANYONE.

Tech is great, CS is great, but some of the posts in here have been pretty arrogant and overreaching.
Posting generalities is powerful for your argument. Why not actually have a discussion about these things? Nobody's saying CS is the end-all be-all for everything; we're just saying that for the up-and-coming businessman, especially one interested in starting up a company, a good tech background [or connections to people with such backgrounds] is key. Many brick-and-mortar stores are finding themselves replaced by/beaten by computerized/online versions (see: success of Amazon), it's just an inevitable fact that tech will start to replace many industries, or strongly enhance many others.

Originally Posted by deadly7

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Posting generalities is powerful for your argument. Why not actually have a discussion about these things? Nobody's saying CS is the end-all be-all for everything; we're just saying that for the up-and-coming businessman, especially one interested in starting up a company, a good tech background [or connections to people with such backgrounds] is key. Many brick-and-mortar stores are finding themselves replaced by/beaten by computerized/online versions (see: success of Amazon), it's just an inevitable fact that tech will start to replace many industries, or strongly enhance many others.

I believe tech is invaluable and you have to understand it.. yet it doesn't mean that you have to know how to code or anything like that, or that knowing how to code it more critical than understanding most of how business works.

Someone said about 4 ps and all that stuff.. Yes, you can read a chapter in the book, but until you form a cohesive applicable framework in your head, you wouldn't necessarily have it all work together.

Originally Posted by deadly7

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Posting generalities is powerful for your argument. Why not actually have a discussion about these things? Nobody's saying CS is the end-all be-all for everything; we're just saying that for the up-and-coming businessman, especially one interested in starting up a company, a good tech background [or connections to people with such backgrounds] is key. Many brick-and-mortar stores are finding themselves replaced by/beaten by computerized/online versions (see: success of Amazon), it's just an inevitable fact that tech will start to replace many industries, or strongly enhance many others.


Most MBAs are not seriously aspirational about being entrepreneurs (they might say that in their essays, but that's just to get admission). In fact, I would venture to say that folks who end up getting an MBA are usually the most risk averse folks (not the characteristic you want if you aspire to be an entrepreneur). An MBA is (usually, and generally if you go to the top schools) the least risky way of getting a job which will let you lead a middle to upper middle class life.

If you want to start a company, I'd say an MBA will be of marginal benefit (it won't hurt your chances, but won't make you "realize your dream" magically). On the other hand, if you want to be an investment banker (not a trader) or a management consultant (at M/B/B) then MBA is your route (at the associate level or beyond). Also, an MBA is probably the best chance in your professional life to change career tracks. So many of my classmates (H/W/S) went from being consultants to bankers, bankers to industry, industry to VC, VC to industry, etc etc. It was almost as if folks were trading jobs, professions with each other.