Business School Research

You would expect Money to be the primary motivation for prospective students to pursue an MBA. Not Really! According to 2012 Prospective Students Survey conducted by GMAC, Job Opportunities is the number one factor that motivates undergraduate to pursue an MBA program. Find out the top 12 Motivations for an MBA.

Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad is one of the most renowned B-schools in the Asian region. While a lot has already been said about ISB’s infrastructure, the quality of its faculty, and its affiliation with other top b-schools, this article seeks to present an insider’s view of some of the other things that make ISB a great school to attend.

Find out what an alumnus has to say about ISB

MBA Scholarships can be full or partial. A full scholarship covers the whole university tuition fee but not usually the living expenses.

Find out the type of scholarships and the criteria for getting one!

Location is a factor: A university may have top-notch facilities and highly renowned academic staff and still be the wrong choice for you. Research shows that location is a prime factor when it comes down to picking a business school. Make sure that you are comfortable with the geographic area in which the university is located. For example, if you are bound by family or otherwise you may opt for a school that is closer to home. If, on the other hand, you are looking for an international and diverse milieu as well as new cultural experiences, an overseas MBA may be a good option.

The industry you want to work for may also determine your choice of university location. If finance and investments are your prime interests, then you’ll be advised to choose a university in one of the cities where the markets are based – New York, London, Frankfurt, Paris and Tokyo. It is important that you pick the geographic area that best fits your needs as you are likely to spend longer than two years there – a large number of MBA graduates decide to stay and pursue their career within the area of their alma mater.

Your reasons for pursuing an MBA may differ – a change of professional venue, gaining an advantage in a rather tough market, a bigger salary or a better job placement. Yet, before you get down to filling out those applications, there is one important question that you should ask yourself. What qualifications do you want to acquire? Making a realistic and a clear-sighted assessment of the professional skills that you want to develop or improve will help you gain a clearer vision of your future career track.

Boosting your Career with an MBA: The MBA is a gateway even during a gritty recession when the bursting of the mortgage bubble and the bank collapse in the US, for example, tipped the scale of the work/life balance. In the business world, obtaining an MBA degree still gives you a chance to move to a higher job position as you acquire a different level of management skills.

Prospective MBA students have indeed been knocking on the doors of international business schools, continuing a trend that started in 2008. The pay-off has been quite tangible.“Recent MBA participants have gone on to work for over 300 companies in more than 60 countries,” says Jake Cohen, Dean of the MBA programme at INSEAD, while 10% of the students at IE Business School (ranked 3rd in Europe and 8th worldwide by the Financial Times) start a new venture after graduation.

“I personally decided to go to IE Business School because it was always a dream of mine to found my own company, and as IE has a very strong focus on entrepreneurship, it was the ideal choice for me,” says 2007 MBA graduate Bernard Niener.

According to a recent study, the highest rates of return were found for the second-tier public business schools. The rate of return for Michigan State (Broad) was 42.72 percent. For Illinois (Urbana-Champaign), it was 42.33 percent, and for Iowa (Tippy), it was 39.7 percent.  Contrast this with the rate of return for Harvard Business School, which was only 19.7 percent. The University of Chicago (Booth School of Business) was in the last place with only a 13.4 percent rate of return.

How the Study was conducted?

The new study estimated the rate of return for the top 30 MBA programs and 15 second-tier MBA programs in the United States by comparing the cost of degree acquisition with the incremental post-MBA income over an expected work life of 40 years. Tuition and fees and two years of foregone income were used as the cost of the investment. The incremental salary was calculated and used as the investment’s cash inflows.

Reasons for high ROI for Second Tier Public Business Schools

According to the study, these high returns can be credited to two distinct aspects of their programs.

One of the best ways to get the most out of any campus visit is to take advantage of the opportunity to visit campuses while school is still in session. Waiting to tour a business school (or any grad school) during the summer months is almost a complete waste of time. Here is why!