So, Why MBA?

Quite paradoxically, it’s both the easiest and the toughest question faced by prospective candidates in the MBA selection interviews. And guess what, it’s the most frequently asked one too! So, why indeed?

Why so serious?

Well, quite simply it boils down to the very fundamental question of what are one’s goals in life. And though it may seem quite straightforward at first, it’s not always that people have a ready list of their lives’ goals. What they do have instead is an information overload of all sorts of things, which makes it quite challenging for them to choose a few short and long-term targets from among a plethora of options. So when they think about pursuing an MBA, there could be any number of reasons they can think of and yet they find it’s hard to convince themselves to believe strongly enough in any one of those reasons. The interviewers are aware of this pattern, and they’ll grill the candidate till the time s/he either makes them believe in his/her convictions, or till s/he concedes that what s/he is aiming for can very well be achieved without an MBA! In fact, the rationales for giving the MBA a skip are quite solid and range from why it no longer makes sense from a return-on-investment (RoI) perspective, to how the current MBAs are taught an insufficient style of management, to how the program itself is detached from real-world issues and needs an overhaul. So the point is, while the arguments against an MBA are piling up, there’s a corresponding pressure on the candidate’s end to have a compelling reason to go for it.

So, um…is it even any good?

Yes. Understand that the MBA is a professional course, which means it is meant for those who WANT to be professionals, and from those who already are into some profession it is for those who WANT to be trained better at their respective professions. This is not to say that you couldn’t learn those things on your own without an MBA, but you may take a lot of time in the process and the whole thing might turn out to be quite inefficient. Having a certain amount of professional experience is helpful in the sense that it exposes you to a degree of workplace culture, the different styles of work people follow, and the way work gets done. When you start looking at questions like what are the kind of day-to-day operations and processes you have to execute and the critical points where productivity gets reduced, are you targeting the right customers, is your money circulating well enough, what are the challenges that are faced not just by the managers, but by each and every individual supporting the value chain, it is then that you realise the value of learning certain tools and techniques which can help in answering and managing these issues. And that right there is your reason to go for an MBA, which is one of the best tools a businessperson can have to solve these critical business challenges. And it not just gives you an advantage in the competitive global marketplace, but also teaches you the adaptability needed to prevail in an extremely dynamic economy that we exist in.

Isn’t it well…just an experience?

There would be people who’ll tell you that at the end of the day it’s just an “experience”, which is a fair thing to say, but the crux is what you learn from that experience. One experiences a lot of things, but unless you learn something useful from that experience how does that leave you better off than you were without it! Thus, if you have that list of questions ready, questions that really matter to you and the ones for which you are ready to invest a substantial part of your time and money, you’ll be able to make the most of the MBA experience, because you know exactly what you want out of it.

 

So essentially what you’re saying is…?

People have different motivations for taking that all important decision of going for an MBA – some want the brand of the institution, some just want a job, some are looking for a seal of approval to go out in the world, and some simply want to have the experience, and many are doing it for all the wrong reasons. Some, when they think of MBA automatically think of entrepreneurship as an answer to why MBA, because that B in MBA makes people think of starting one of their own, which is actually a really desirable and the right thing to do if you have the right motivations and are willing to go that extra mile for that dream idea of yours. But if you’re not sure, and still try to convince the interview panel that you want to be an entrepreneur, they might even believe you and select you ultimately, but understand that it’s not they who need the convincing, it’s you. If you’re making up reasons on the go, and are simply doing an MBA because even though you do want to become a “professional”, but that’s only because you want a job (and an MBA, in all likelihood, will land you a job), your MBA experience would at best be utilised only sub-optimally.
So to make the most out of your MBA, you have to be very clear on your objectives, which is actually something that goes for everything else in life too! And that’s why “why MBA?” is both the easiest and the toughest question you’ll face in the selection process.

What are your views on this and how would you approach this question, share with us in comments.

© Jayant Rana, 2013

Photo credits: Poster Boy NYC / Foter.com / CC BY, macropoulos / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND, Socceraholic / Foter.com / CC BY-NC