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Welcome to MBA Podcaster, the only broadcast source for cutting-edge information and advice on the MBA application process. I’m Janet Nakano. This time we’re bringing you a very special program. It’s a little different from our usual topics. We’ve gotten a number of MBA related questions from our listeners so we thought we’d take the time to answer them on our show. We plan to do another Q&A program another time in the future so please keep sending along your questions and suggestions for show ideas to info@mbapodcaster.com.

The very first question comes from our listener, Vance; he wrote “I already make a base salary of $160,000 a year with bonuses I make over 200,000. Would a MBA do me much good?” Well to answer this question I phoned Nicole Chestang, Chief Client Officer from GMAC, the Graduate Management Admissions Council. In 2006 GMAC released a survey on MBA salaries but we’ll go over the findings after this. “The question I might ask instead is if I were this person, do I have all the professional skills and qualification that I need to ensure continued success in today’s competitive workforce. So if he or she are earning $200,000 congratulations, that’s great, they’re in the top 5% of wage earners in the US but what about tomorrow? The purpose of a MBA is to help provide the kind of training and the theory and practice of business in management that one needs to be successful as a senior executive. Among the important benefits of a degree are of course increased earning power but also increased career opportunities over the course of your career and so while you’ll achieve higher level skills in management and business one of the things you often get is the opportunity to meet and form life long partnerships or relationships with your MBA classmates which is in all likelihood the network that will be the source of that next big opportunity. Many also tell us that just the personal growth and satisfaction that comes with earning a graduate degree also accompanies earning a MBA. If somebody’s looking for a short-term jump in their salary then I’m not sure I’d suggest that a MBA is a way to get it but if on the other-hand their looking longer term like five to seven years out post a MBA then when you couple the degree with the experiences that you’ll gain in the work place you’re put in just a terrific position to be considered for those senior posts in organizations all over the world who higher MBAs. It’s always interesting you know when you get these questions about salaries, but many MBAs get involved for more than just the money. Although I know that’s the big draw. GMAC has been working with schools in an initiative called Team MBAs, it’s aimed at showcasing how MBAs are changing their world through service and giving back to the communities that they live, learn, work and play in and it’s an excellent example of the kind of networks that you can build and the contributions that you can make with a MBA. So again, you might be earning $200,000 today but depending on where this person is in their career, they’ve got 20 maybe even 30 plus more years to work and you want to position yourself well for the wide variety of opportunities that are out there.” Thanks, Vance for your question.

According to GMAC’s study on MBA salaries the average annual starting salary for new MBA hires was $80,292. Now that was according to the US recruiters who responded to the survey. You can find more on GMAC’s MBA salary study at GMAC.com. Most business schools also release salary data of their graduates on their websites. Our next question comes from Esha, and the question is, “What do top fortune 500 companies think about top tier MBA programs compared to accredited state or regional programs?” I posed this question again to GMAC’s Nicole Chestang, “Corporate recruiters have been telling us that they like to recruit at schools that have consistently produced highly qualified applicants for them before. Our latest corporate recruiter survey tells us that corporations are looking to higher even greater numbers of MBAs this year than they have in the last three years and there’s no real evidence that rankings or placement of schools is driving their hiring decisions because it’s so competitive out there. They’re looking for talent wherever they can find it really in this marketplace. MBA students are reporting to us this year that they’ve got 2.5 job offers coming out of business school which is an increase over the last couple of years as well. Recruiters told us that they’re finding their greatest competition from other companies looking for the same people, that that’s their top obstacle for looking to hire new MBAs. In an environment like that, I think if you’re getting yourself into a good quality MBA program that’s accredited, if I were this individual I’d be paying more attention to the schools I’m interested in and what companies recruit there, for example. And what their success has been in placing people in the actual field that they want to pursue a career in, but that might be a better indicator. Organizations are telling us that their biggest obstacle is other organizations competing for the same people so they’re looking everywhere, they’re on-campus more, their using all kinds of other outlets to try and identify candidates which also leads me to believe that they’re looking at a wide range of schools.” In general, regional programs will get regional recruiters and top programs have wider name recognition but then again I think the saying goes companies higher a person not a school. Thank you, Esha for sending us your question.

Our next question is from Adytia, he wrote, “What kinds of projects or outside work activities can one take up to show a different side of a candidate’s personality?” To find the answer for this question I went to Linda Abraham, founder of Accepted.com, an admissions counseling and essay editing service, “Get involved in something you love. Don’t just get involved to get brownie points. Choose something you love, something that reflects your values, your interests, your passions. It can be sports, it can be music, it can be your religious commitment, political, professional organization or something that goes on the big umbrella of community service. I would like to give my definition of community service which actually would include all those sub things I just mentioned. Community service for me is active participation in an assumption of responsibility for your community. Now that’s an intentionally broad definition because community can be any group that you identify with. It doesn’t have to be just serving in a soup kitchen but that’s certainly fine. It can be really all kinds of any of the other things. I think that applicants are too often stuck in the soup kitchen mentalities limitation and I think it’s a big mistake. Not that there’s anything wrong with working in soup kitchens, that’s fine, that’s great but there can be so much more to it. But the one thing that this definition requires is activity and commitment. Writing checks is not enough. Again, activity and commitment are critical. So if you have a lot of different interests, maybe you’re part of a band, part of a sports team and you do serve in that soup kitchen, what should you focus on? Well first of all, assuming that you’ve spent significant time on all those activities should list all of them somewhere in the application. But if you want to spotlight one then I would say choose the one that requires interaction with others and provides opportunities for you to demonstrate leadership. At the same time even with that definition, with that suggestion I have to tell you about a client that a few years ago I worked with. He had done the usual things but he in one place in his application wrote about his hobby of collecting butterflies, butterfly wings and the differences between the butterfly wings and the taxonomy and this was his passion, it was a short passage in one essay. But somebody told him it was the most memorable part of his application and I think that what made it memorable was that he was so passionate about collecting butterflies which is something that he really did on his own and alone so it didn’t kind of fit the classic definition I just gave so don’t be afraid to go away from that. There are so many hobbies and interests and forms of community service. Your’s almost has to be unique unless you talk about I did volunteer work. You say I did volunteer work; you did volunteer work like everybody else did volunteer work. My daughter right now is at a camp for kids with chronic and very serious health issues so she’s up two hours every night suctioning a child who’s I think on a respirator. So that’s pretty distinct and if she would be making an enormous mistake if she were writing a personal statement to say I did volunteer work or I worked as a counselor at a camp. She has to go and give some details to make it distinctive. Schools believe that past behavior predicts future behavior. So if you can show that you have been involved in your community however you define it, then they will believe that you will be involved in their community and they want that.”

We have another question from Adytia, he asked, “For someone coming from a non business background, what courses would help to prepare for business school?” To answer this question I asked Julie Strong MIT Sloan’s Senior Associate Director of MBA admissions, “There are a variety of ways that a student can prepare before they go to business school. Generally the courses that we recommend to students who want to do preliminary preparation are courses in financial accounting, statistics, microeconomics, macroeconomics, sometimes calculus if they hadn’t taken it in high school or part of their undergraduate career. These courses can be taken in a variety of different ways. Generally if our program is requesting a student to take a course, we request that they take it in an accredited college, community college or college in their area, could be state or private. We also allow some students to take courses online. There are a couple of programs that we’ve looked at over the years that we felt added value to the student’s preparation and we’ve approved those as well.”

And would you say that these courses directly apply to some of the things that they’re going to be doing in business school? Well generally the goal for all our students, what we tell them is that we want them to become familiar with the concepts and the vocabulary. Often times the students are very talented or have had exposure in whatever particular area that they studied as an undergrad and we just want to expose them to some of these new topics. So we don’t expect them to come in with a mastery of these topics but we want them to understand the language of those topics. We offer what we call preterm to all of our students who are coming in and we see it as an opportunity for students really to review topics that they may have not been exposed to for a long time if they’ve been out of school. So it’s a week of pretty intensive preparation of. We have accounting, we have microeconomics, and we have statistics. And I don’t know the specifics of other schools but most schools offer some type of preprogram, preparatory courses for their students as well as some schools also offer intensive summer programs, not necessarily for those students who are going to be matriculating immediately but they could be even for college juniors or seniors who are thinking about business school in the future and they’re look at kind of bridge programs in fact, I think some of them are called bridge programs.”

So if someone doesn’t have this business background, you know they’re coming from maybe the non-profit world, would you suggest that they do take some courses at community college before actually coming onto campus or do you think that that preterm course would be sufficient? “We look at each case individually. We don’t require that students take specific courses as a condition of admission or to apply I should say. We’re looking at what their strengths are in the particular area that they are working in or that they’ve studied in. However, if they don’t have any familiarity with say econ or accounting we may then require a course as a condition of admission. But generally, the purpose of that once again is to become familiar with the concepts and the vocabulary and it’s really just to set them up for success once they matriculate. We want them to hit the ground running.”

Our listener, Adytia also asked if applicants with a non-business background could strengthen his or her candidacy by taking business related courses. Julie Strong in an email said, “Yes, applicants with non-quantitative backgrounds that take courses in accounting, finance and economics can show increased interest and commitment to getting their MBA degree.” Thanks Adytia for sending us your questions.

Our next question is from Sundit, the question is, “For a student with an IT background what sorts of job opportunities are there if one were to get a MBA in general management, strategy and/or entrepreneurship?” To find the answer to this question I spoke with MIT Sloan’s Sue Kline, Senior Associate Director of Career Development, “There are a number of options with this background in looking at those areas. So one might be and we have students who’ve gone into IT rotational programs in multinational companies. Another is going to a business development or a program management role in a technical company. Sometimes students go on to do IT consulting or strategy consulting and then individuals with those kinds of interests and backgrounds may also think about at times going into a technical start-up company, for example a software or hardware organization and doing a variety of roles including product development.”

Now can you explain IT rotational programs? What is that exactly? “Sure a number of companies have programs for sort of high potential individuals and they’re MBA development programs that are targeted for people coming in who want to have a career in information technology and they would come in, work for the company for 18 months to two years in a developmental program where they may rotate through two or three different areas of the company and ultimately get a full-time regular job with the organization in an IT capacity.”

What steps do they need to take? I mean is there any sort of advice that you have if someone has this background and wants to go into these roles? Should they take certain classes? Get a certain internship during the summer? So when someone decides sort of what roles they’re interested in, there are a lot of ways to gain experience and knowledge to get into them. So one for example, as you mentioned is getting an internship in the summer in a company that they’re interested in, in a function that they’re interested in. We have a very active entrepreneurship center here for students who are thinking about the entrepreneur route, they may very well want to get an opportunity with a start-up for the summer. Depending on where your interests are, you would want to take classes that support your interests. For example, a class in high tech marketing and then do activities, joining clubs in getting the jobs that would help position you full-time after school.” Thanks Sundit for your question.

Our final question comes from our listener, Aaron, he asked, “Is there a chance for a consultant to enter in the investment banking industry?” Again MIT Sloan’s Sue Kline, “Yes it is possible. We certainly have students who do that and they would get involved with learning about investment banking. Taking the appropriate finance courses if an individual doesn’t have them, visiting Wall Street, preparing for the interviews and ultimately the goal would be to have a job during the summer between their first and second years in investment banking because many of the investment banking opportunities come from the summer interns for full-time employment. So we would recommend the goal would be to get a summer internship.”

At the Chicago Graduate School of Business, investment banking is a very popular career choice. I talked to Julie Morton, Director of Career Services about how their students are making the switch into investment banking, “Investment banking is indeed popular. Investment banking as an industry draws 45% of the class but that encompasses students going into M&A roles, corporate finance roles, sales and trading, research roles within investment bank, just in the last couple of years we’ve seen students interested in private wealth management as well again falls under the industry of investment banking but the skills that are required for all of those different jobs are actually quite different and quite unique. So yes the industry draw is huge but the functional interest is fairly varied within that industry draw.”

Okay so someone that comes from a different background, they can go into investment banking without having that experience? “Yes they can. Yes they can.” So it’s just a matter of revising their resume and taking the finance courses and things like that? “Yes I think it is a matter of taking finance courses for sure and getting the knowledge and revising their resume. And I guess revising their resume I would put under a broader umbrella of really making sure that they are speaking to and that they have the skills and that their describing those skills in language and terminology that makes sense to future bankers. I mean obviously if you were an analyst in investment bank, you don’t have to do that translation exercise so that’s easier. It’s easier for a banker to pick up your resume or have a conversation with you and understand very quickly what it is that you did because the banker does that everyday. So therein lies no translation. Whereas if you were a brand manager before you need to do some translation and you need to make sure that that’s clear when you sit down to talk with the banker or write your resume or have an interview or you know just having a post cocktail party chit-chat kind of thing with a banker.” Thanks to our listener, Aaron for sending us that question.

We plan to do another Q&A program in the future so please keep sending along your questions and suggestions for show ideas to info@mbapodcaster.com.

For more information, advice and to register for your weekly MBA podcast, visit mbapodcaster.com. I’m Janet Nakano for MBA Podcaster. Be sure to listen next time on another topic to help you succeed in your MBA application process and life beyond. Thanks for joining us.