Is an MBA Right for You?

Are you a sprinter, wanderer, or straggler? What do your parents, your spouse, and your co-workers think you are? It's worth knowing which style is yours before diving into a Master of Business Administration (MBA) program. Ready to find out what you're made of?

The Sprinter

A recent article in the New York Times outlines three typical stances taken by 20-somethings these days. The “Sprinter” is the student in college who picked a major early, stuck with it, leveraged a series of internships, graduated, and is moving up the career ladder.

Sprinters have laser-like focus, try to emerge from their undergraduate and graduate programs with little or no debt, and zero in on job opportunities while the rest of the pack is still deciding between a Short and a Grande at cappuccino at the coffee shop. 

Sprinters may prefer an online MBA degree program because it compresses what is traditionally a two-year process into 15 months, allowing the sprinter to stick with a current position. Even if the current job is minimum wage it is still income, which means a way to reduce student debt. Sprinters avoid student debt almost as much as they avoid dead-end careers.

The Wanderer

Wanderers succumb to the seduction that college naturally follows high school. They may have no passion for a particular path, but feel obligated to pursue a Bachelor’s degree of some kind. Then the wanderer wanders into a Master’s program, sometimes because no other opportunity stands before them.

Wanderers need love, too, but choosing an MBA almost as casually as you choose between a Caramel Macchiato or a White Chocolate Mocha is a huge mistake. U.S. News & World Report tells us three terrible reasons to move into an MBA program, and mindless drift is one of them:

• You have no idea what else to do
• You want a career in a field that does not need an MBA
• You hope to pad out your resume with an MBA

No idea what to do? Visit a career counselor at a school or vocational guidance specialist. Want a career in education? Forget the MBA; get an M.Ed. degree instead. Need a better resume? Volunteer, learn to write a better resume, and stick with a job for more than three months. Do not latch onto an MBA as your golden ticket.

Wanderers benefit from many life experiences, but if they do not consciously thread together those experiences to learn from them, they will always wander. For the Wanderer who has the epiphany and wants to put experience to practical use, an MBA could be a straight path forward.

The Straggler

Stragglers, in their hipster, counterculture way, are far more honest than Wanderers. They simply do not know what to do with their lives, so they slowly work their way into one thing, then another. Stragglers sometimes gather classes the way others gather pens and paperclips—by the handful. A community college class here, a free MOOC there; soon, they have dozens of disparate credits with no paper tidying it all up.

Stragglers may be late to the party, but they do have skills and are often curious to learn more. Information technology may so fascinate the Straggler that they know several programming languages, for example. Stragglers can combine those many skills and transform themselves into entrepreneurs or IT specialists.

Respect the MBA

No matter the graduate school, no matter the method of achieving an MBA, the work is the same: hard.

An MBA is right for you if, like the Sprinter, you have drive. An MBA is right for you if, like the Wanderer, you have wandered enough and want something with direction. An MBA is right for you if, having straggled along behind your peers, you had your gap year (or decade!) and are now ready to bring order, security, and maturity to your life.

Don’t Kid Yourself

An MBA in business management, information technology management, or healthcare administration is an uphill climb, but the view from that victorious peak is breathtaking. Whether driven to finish fast like the Sprinter to leap into global markets or help others through healthcare administration, today’s online MBA students know every class demands attention and excellence.

In the end it does not matter if you are a Sprinter, Wanderer or Straggler. An MBA could be worth it for you! Download our free whitepaper, Is An MBA Worth It? for more information. If you're ready to start your journey towards an MBA, contact ECPI University today to learn more.

It could be the Best Decision You Ever Make!

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