Is Getting An MBA Worth It? Part 4

So far we’ve covered compensation, personal benefits, the full or part-time decision, and the required investment. Today in the last post in this series I’ll look at the lifestyle impacts as well as the opportunities to change the type of work that you do.

Lifestyle (Upgrade)

Beyond my desire to learn how to run a business, my second priority was upgrading my lifestyle. Not financially, but rather by having more time. As a consultant I was always on call, always traveling, always eating out (i.e. unhealthy high-calorie foods). I could have quit the consulting work and joined a local firm somewhere, but I would still be on call and have to support software roll-outs. I’d still be a cost-center employee. I desired something different.

My goal was to find work I enjoyed with reasonable hours, meaning consistently less than 50/wk. My current job is pretty close to 40 at the moment, but will probably increase some as promotions occur throughout my career. I also wanted a skill set that could be applied in any region of the country, so I avoided entering a highly specialized industry (i.e. auto, financial, etc) that would most likely require that I move to one location (Detroit, NYC).

This benefit has paid off nicely. Having more time means a higher quality of life. Since I left my consult job I’ve:

• reduce my work hours from 60+/wk (plus 10 traveling) to 40/wk (and no travel)
• lost 70 pounds
• stopped traveling. Sleeping in my own bed more than two nights a week is nice. My current job involves about one overnight trip a year, but even this doesn’t occur every year (2 trips in 3 years).
• found the time to exercise daily. My current employer has a state of the art gym on-site.
• reduced my stress dramatically
• taken my vacation. It’s only 2 weeks a year, but as a consultant and manager I usually covered holidays so my teammates could have the holidays off. Now at least I can take my 2 weeks off whenever I want.
• been able to attend church every week and get plugged in
• stopped working weekends. My current employer even lets me work 4.5 days a week most weeks (as long as I get my 40 hours in and my work done)
• met my wife right after moving to my new job. During the prior six years I didn’t even have the opportunity to start a long-term relationship with anyone.
• removed the need to be on-call. I’ve only received two work-related phone calls on my cell phone in the past three years, and these were at times when I had decided to work in advance for a few hours from home on a saturday morning
• I can easily work from home if I’m ill or have someone coming out the the house for a delivery

Type of Work

It’s better to run toward something rather than from something, so you need to have a target job or field in mind before you apply to business school. This will help with the application process too, because all of the application questions ask about what you want to be when you grow up.

I enjoyed being a software developer, and I still miss that type of work. I spend my free time working on programs and miscellaneous projects now to get my software development “fix”. The work I do now is interesting though, and I enjoy participating in the “real” business-driving decisions of my company. I’m learning things daily, and there are a wide variety of future opportunities available to me within this one company.

Summary: if there are at least two or three big benefits to getting an MBA I would recommend proceeding. For example, if there are big personal and financial benefits, I would do it. If you want to change careers and change your lifestyle, I would do it. If there’s only one main factor of value to you, like compensation, I think you’re wasting your time.

Different schools offer different styles and opportunities. Some schools focus more on general management (Harvard), while others require you to identify a major. The four most common majors are Finance, Marketing, Operations, and Entrepreneurship. Others exist as well, but I would say that 80% of MBA tend to focus either on finance or marketing, and may choose to purse a specialty within that major if they so desire. I chose finance based on the type of work I wanted to do, and decided to focus on corporate finance and entrepreneurship classes rather than the more demanding investment banking track. If I wanted to work 80 hours a week I would have kept my old job.

So, is it worth getting an MBA? Yes, if you know what you want and are passionate about pursuing your goals!

This series only covers the reason to pursue an MBA. Getting accepted is an entirely separate topic, and will itself involve a lot of time and money. Studying for the GMAT, buying prep book, filling out applications, writing essays, application fees, interviewing, traveling to vising schools (and interview), and all of the associated research will be a HUGE commitment. Be sure to identify what you want to get out of an MBA program before investing the time and money to pursue an advanced degree.

Image Credit: gadgetdude

If You Liked This Post Then Please Check These Out...

• Is Getting An MBA Worth It? Part 3
• Is Getting an MBA Worth It? Part 2
• Is Getting an MBA Worth It? Part 1
• Be More Productive At Work
• Improving Your Career Prospects

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