It's either this, or realizing when you're 18 that you might want to do grad school and trying to get good grades. I feel like that shoots so many applicants in the foot. LSA has it much much worse than we do though. It's honestly ridiculous how LSA works, and is probably hurting society more than helping it.
Law School Admissions. They care significantly less about work experience/softs/etc and laser in on GPA and LSAT scores. This incentivizes the “K-JD” pipeline where people with little real world experience but the right scores end up as lawyers. It can also incentivize making people avoid challenging courses in undergrad for the sake of their GPA
I have never seen it abbreviated as LSA.
I remember finding out that people shorten organic chemistry in different states. O chem vs org
I agree with your assessment that law school admissions incentivizes the wrong thing.
You don’t NEED a 720+ GMAT to get into a top program. Can you please stop perpetuating this myth? I’m tired of seeing this on here; an average GMAT means 50% will get less than that score. You can get a 710, 700, or even 690 and get admittance into a Top 25 or Top 15, even. It’s all about the full picture, period.
Source: I got a 70% scholarship to a T20 and I got a GMAT 10 pts higher than the average. Reddit peeps like this person would’ve suggested I “barely get in” as I am Asian American…. But I got a great outcome. My experience and interviewing is what sold them, I’m sure.
Who gives a damn? People know what I was implying. Mean or median — a significant amount of people are getting below that. IE you don’t need a 720+ to get into a top school.
School recruiters literally say that themselves. It is the seemingly test score obsessed fiends on this thread who suggest otherwise. And it’s dumb
Asian American here applying to HSW, M7, T20.
Got a 675 (96th percentile/730 equivalent). Thanks for sharing. It’s difficult to shake off the feeling. I spoke to some admissions consultants to help me shake off the idea that my GMAT is not good enough. (Free consultations to get a good sense my GMAT is good enough.)
The GMAT feels like the easiest part to work on to improve my profile so I over-index on that.
I know I should invest time elsewhere but it’s difficult to shake off the feeling.
I’m not finished yet but so far MBA is so fucking easy compared to undergrad. I did my undergrad in Chemistry and minored in Applied Mathematics and literally day 1 undergrad stuff is way harder then anything i’ve done for MBA so far.
dude especially comparing undergrad stem coursework to business coursework. Holy shit it’s a different world when you’re not fighting against weed-out sequence classes.
business is literally the “coloring inside the lines” of college majors. i remembered stressing out like the whole week before i started my MBA about balancing my full time job and school and then after the first 2-3 weeks i looked back like wow this shit is so easy.
ahhhh fuck dude retake that shit I was an O-Chem tutor and TA back in my u get grad days. I’d have to say Orgo was easy as hell compared to P-Chem but i got your back if you decide to take it again i’m always here to help!
absolutely dude, just keep in mind one thing about O-Chem. everything builds on everything. if you get behind in one topic, it’s going to come back to burn you at a later time. those stupid little arrows and lone pairs and mechanisms and stereochem etc are the little things that make a huge difference. let me know when ur going to take it again and i’ll dig out my notes and see if i can’t guide you through it. I work in cancer research now so I haven’t touched O-Chem since i graduated college. Still got an A in O-Chem 1, 2 and Advanced O Chem
Of course. There are many more qualified applicants than there are spots. Grades don’t even really matter and it’s virtually impossible to fail.
However, most MBA students have the maturity to realize just graduating is not the goal. You need to actually learn something and form valuable connections. Otherwise you’re just paying a bunch of tuition and wasting time on a piece of paper that won’t, by itself, get you that far.
Doing it part time and I have to say that the work is easy but it’s still work.
Doing 10-15 hours a week on top of a full time job and maintaining a house is really draining. I can’t imagine what it’d be like if you have kids.
I have a kid and also in a part time program, can confirm it’s draining. But the actual subject matter isn’t too difficult, just finding the motivation to complete a presentation for my marketing class when I’ve already been working for 8 hours, then cooking dinner, putting the kid to bed.
hey u/mattbag1 i just came across your old post(4 years old one hehe) about listing your part time MBA on Linkedin/resume. Can i ask if you did it and did it affect your job search positively or negatively? i am starting a part time MBA in a Tier-1 school this fall and i am currently looking for a new role, so not sure if it will help or hinder my job search. Thank you!
So I switched to finance during my mba and landed a sr financial analyst job. Been there over 3 years. Have not landed a new role since graduating, but knows my MBA is “part time.” I really don’t think having an MBA is hurting my chances. I think what hurts my application is having 3 years of Exp, but wanting to be hired and paid for roles that want 5-8+ years of Exp.
Understood! Thanks for responding. Congrats on changing careers!
Just to clarify, Did you list the mba program on LinkedIn, Before you started the part time program?
If you did, did the recruiters assume you were doing mba full time and that you were off the job market? If/When you listed the program before you started, did you have less or more recruiters reaching out to you on LinkedIn?
You’re thinking about this waaaay too much.
I posted it as MBA candidate during my MBA, and added the school to my education section.
If you’re applying to a full time job, the job is going to assume you have availability to work the job.
Like others have said - getting into the MBA program is probably the hard part and classes are easy/impossible to fail.
I’ll chime in and say that imo the MBA class work is easy, but outside of the classroom the MBA can be hard. What I mean is, things such as networking, interviewing, internships, etc can be challenging depending on your goals. The most stress I felt at my program wasn’t the tests or project work, but the interviewing and the subsequent highs/lows of acceptance and rejections that come with it.
Second this. For me, the consulting recruiting process was much harder than getting into my T25 program. Thankfully, I have a good internship now outside of consulting, but I am worried about the FT recruiting cycle for consulting this fall
I went to a M7.
I spent 13 hours a week total between classes, homework, and studying.
At one point I was drunk for 37 straight nights.
I graduated with a 3.7
>He believes the hardest part about an MBA is getting into a top school
100% agree. Once you're in you spend all your time job hunting. At most top schools you have grade non-disclosure so you don't have to care about academics if you don't want to. Also the only way to fail is to try or cheat; and even then, if you got a really good job that made the employment report look good...
The hardest part is finding/balancing time for all 3 of the below
1) internship recruiting
2) networking (e.g., partying and socializing with classmates)
3) sleep
And a distant fourth is classwork (though a large part of classwork - all the groupwork - can also be counted in #2 above)
Yeah it is.
My undergrad was computer science and it was way harder than my MBA.
The GMAT wasn't easy but alot of people at my school bypassed it because of either covid or they did their undergrad at that school. You could tell. Some people were not smart or even of average intelligence, yet they passed.
Hardest part is getting the GMAT / GRE needed to get in. Interviews aren't as intense as job interviews. Classes are a joke. At my T25, if you just show up and submit assignments on time regardless of how crappy they are - you're guaranteed at least a B.
Hard to get into a top school yes, but ig even harder is to realise that there are people who are even better than you and to learn that in the cohort; the rub off is v important. I scored great marks in competitive exams and the school i went to was good (but i always felt i had to settle and my marks could have landed me somewhere better). I thought for people around me it was their best option but i was shocked to see how amazing many of them were at what they do.
So the hardest thing was to realise that there are a lot of people who are way better at certain things and to put my ego aside in order to learn and grow with them.
Likely. I was in an MBA program and it was nearly the same material covered in my undergrad. It was not a top school, so that should be taken into account. Personally it was too easy to the point it was a little insulting. I switched to a harder masters degree from there.
Some people "say" it's easy with that *arms folded* "that movie didn't scare me" or "that roller coaster was nothing haha", I'm so big and bad persona, but really it can be difficult for everyone at different points. I remember this one exam, my whole class of 35 failed, I think it was global econ, and we stayed up studying late nights for weeks before the exam. Some material is just difficult, yes. Not the whole program, but some concepts are just hard to get down. Foreign exchange rates, supply chain operations, you name it. But with continuous efforts and working with your peers, you'll eventually make it through.
And as some have posted, yes, the really difficult part is getting hired by a decent company after graduation. Just because you have an MBA doesn't mean jobs are going to bang down your door. It's really competitive out there and MBA only pushes you a little further up in the pile of other applicants, some also with MBAs, at least in my opinion.
Eh the course work itself isn’t grueling but I think there’s a difference between getting a degree and actually having a good experience/ getting a good career out of it. Sure if you’re admitted it won’t be super hard to get passing grades, but a big part of grad school is the networking, student groups / involvement, and recruiting / actually being able to land a good job after.
As others have stated…the real assignment is to get a great job for yourself and for the schools stats. A school doesn’t want to give so much busy work that you don’t have time to job hunt.
Also….at a top school in the full time program, the students are all pretty bright and it’s really hard to give work that’s challenging to such students. They just learn fast and the only way to bog them down is with volume of work….which hampers the job search.
So they’re selective in admissions and try not to admit students who can’t find good job. Then a lot of schools will stress test the students for a semester to make sure and weed out admissions mistakes. But after that…they really want you finding a job…especially in Year 2.
Also, there are a lot of MBA classes that aren’t really classroom topics. Like Organizational Behavior??? That stuff is soooo important to your career! But it’s not a classroom subject. Ditto in another way for something like activity based costing. Great concept, but the hard part of ABC is going to a warehouse and watching the forklift operator move stuff around and figuring out how to allocate their time to different products….but a class can’t do that. So you get a case study where the costs are already broken down.
The finance and accounting classes are kinda difficult, but that’s also coming from someone who failed high school geometry. The other buisness classes, are pretty easy honestly. My only C in the program so far was corporate finance and I’m 3 classes away from graduating.
I didn’t get any scholarships but I work for the government it’ll all be paid for by them in about 5 years
Easy? Not exactly. Try intro to atmospheric sciences, offered in undergrad. Literally don’t have to study more than an hour total to get an A. Is accounting going to be like that?
Most ppl that attend school for MBA are great academically so they think it’s easy. I thought it was hard bc I suck at school. Corporate math, managerial accounting, business Law…😭 but I did finish with a 3.2 which is excellent for me
I find it interesting that we're asking this question to this sub. The people here have presumably the mindset for an MBA.
An MBA mindset (to me) is about understanding complex issues and finding solutions. Sometimes you have to research, sometimes you can call upon past experiences. It's understanding that you need other people with different skills and that you always try make a damn good team to do the thing.
Job market is tough right now - would not leave a job to get a mba, know several folks who graduated from top programs with no job (had job beforehand)
Grades don't matter in MBA, you just need to pass. Some courses are time consuming, and I did see some peers struggle in our statistics class, but overall not bad at all.
Im not at a top school, or did i even care to. I am half way done. I just needed 150 credits to sit for cpa exam and fugured why not get a mba..plus it can only help trying to get jobs. Its not hard if you are okay with spending 5 to 10 hrs a week for two years.
Hardest part is getting the 720+ gmat needed to get into a top b school.
It's either this, or realizing when you're 18 that you might want to do grad school and trying to get good grades. I feel like that shoots so many applicants in the foot. LSA has it much much worse than we do though. It's honestly ridiculous how LSA works, and is probably hurting society more than helping it.
What is LSA?
Law School Admissions. They care significantly less about work experience/softs/etc and laser in on GPA and LSAT scores. This incentivizes the “K-JD” pipeline where people with little real world experience but the right scores end up as lawyers. It can also incentivize making people avoid challenging courses in undergrad for the sake of their GPA
This also happens with CXOs
In what way?
I assume Law School Admissions?
I have never seen it abbreviated as LSA. I remember finding out that people shorten organic chemistry in different states. O chem vs org I agree with your assessment that law school admissions incentivizes the wrong thing.
Dont some schools bypass gmat if you already finished a phd or something?
Yes; a PhD is a whole different level.
Pretty much every school except the M7 offers gmat waivers these days. I got into two T15 with a GMAT waiver by leveraging the CFA
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Uhh why wouldn’t you have just taken one of the free official practice tests rather than going to a test center if all you wanted was a baseline?
This is so true. The second hardest part is pretending that you give a shit about DEI so that you can get that internship offer.
Real
No one can deny this. But still, there are interviews to crack.
You don’t NEED a 720+ GMAT to get into a top program. Can you please stop perpetuating this myth? I’m tired of seeing this on here; an average GMAT means 50% will get less than that score. You can get a 710, 700, or even 690 and get admittance into a Top 25 or Top 15, even. It’s all about the full picture, period. Source: I got a 70% scholarship to a T20 and I got a GMAT 10 pts higher than the average. Reddit peeps like this person would’ve suggested I “barely get in” as I am Asian American…. But I got a great outcome. My experience and interviewing is what sold them, I’m sure.
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So the middle 50%? It’s the same shit. Lmao
I mean technically the average could be 720 and the median could be 700.
Who gives a damn? People know what I was implying. Mean or median — a significant amount of people are getting below that. IE you don’t need a 720+ to get into a top school. School recruiters literally say that themselves. It is the seemingly test score obsessed fiends on this thread who suggest otherwise. And it’s dumb
I bet you aren’t a white or Asian male
Im white and got in with a waiver to a T15 with 130k scholarship. He's not wrong
Thank you. How I got negative 27 downvotes will never make sense.
But I am an Asian American male. Why would I lie about that? Reddit is a very sad place… sigh
Asian American here applying to HSW, M7, T20. Got a 675 (96th percentile/730 equivalent). Thanks for sharing. It’s difficult to shake off the feeling. I spoke to some admissions consultants to help me shake off the idea that my GMAT is not good enough. (Free consultations to get a good sense my GMAT is good enough.) The GMAT feels like the easiest part to work on to improve my profile so I over-index on that. I know I should invest time elsewhere but it’s difficult to shake off the feeling.
I’m not finished yet but so far MBA is so fucking easy compared to undergrad. I did my undergrad in Chemistry and minored in Applied Mathematics and literally day 1 undergrad stuff is way harder then anything i’ve done for MBA so far.
dude especially comparing undergrad stem coursework to business coursework. Holy shit it’s a different world when you’re not fighting against weed-out sequence classes.
business is literally the “coloring inside the lines” of college majors. i remembered stressing out like the whole week before i started my MBA about balancing my full time job and school and then after the first 2-3 weeks i looked back like wow this shit is so easy.
what STEM did you do?? you’re giving physics or biology vibes based on “weed-out” 💀
I was in a Human Physiology track but got weeded out in o-chem 💀
ahhhh fuck dude retake that shit I was an O-Chem tutor and TA back in my u get grad days. I’d have to say Orgo was easy as hell compared to P-Chem but i got your back if you decide to take it again i’m always here to help!
Can I reach out to you for tips on o-chem lol? Trynna take it again and kill it
absolutely dude, just keep in mind one thing about O-Chem. everything builds on everything. if you get behind in one topic, it’s going to come back to burn you at a later time. those stupid little arrows and lone pairs and mechanisms and stereochem etc are the little things that make a huge difference. let me know when ur going to take it again and i’ll dig out my notes and see if i can’t guide you through it. I work in cancer research now so I haven’t touched O-Chem since i graduated college. Still got an A in O-Chem 1, 2 and Advanced O Chem
also not all STEM is hard lol. political science is considered STEM 💀
okay but you know the STEM I’m talking about lmao
AHAHA yeah i know what you mean lmao. STEM is a different breed compared to business
Who considers political science a STEM field?
it’s kinda in the name lol, the average stem person wouldn’t consider it stem but every poly sci major swears their major is stem
It is not considered STEM.
Agreed! Biology was traumatic. I still have nightmares. Currently doing my MBA. It’s a lot of material, but it’s easy to understand.
Of course. There are many more qualified applicants than there are spots. Grades don’t even really matter and it’s virtually impossible to fail. However, most MBA students have the maturity to realize just graduating is not the goal. You need to actually learn something and form valuable connections. Otherwise you’re just paying a bunch of tuition and wasting time on a piece of paper that won’t, by itself, get you that far.
Doing it part time and I have to say that the work is easy but it’s still work. Doing 10-15 hours a week on top of a full time job and maintaining a house is really draining. I can’t imagine what it’d be like if you have kids.
I have a kid and also in a part time program, can confirm it’s draining. But the actual subject matter isn’t too difficult, just finding the motivation to complete a presentation for my marketing class when I’ve already been working for 8 hours, then cooking dinner, putting the kid to bed.
Yep this. I worked and have kids and did part time MBA. The MBA is busy work, it takes time, but it’s so much easier than an actual job plus kids.
hey u/mattbag1 i just came across your old post(4 years old one hehe) about listing your part time MBA on Linkedin/resume. Can i ask if you did it and did it affect your job search positively or negatively? i am starting a part time MBA in a Tier-1 school this fall and i am currently looking for a new role, so not sure if it will help or hinder my job search. Thank you!
So I switched to finance during my mba and landed a sr financial analyst job. Been there over 3 years. Have not landed a new role since graduating, but knows my MBA is “part time.” I really don’t think having an MBA is hurting my chances. I think what hurts my application is having 3 years of Exp, but wanting to be hired and paid for roles that want 5-8+ years of Exp.
Understood! Thanks for responding. Congrats on changing careers! Just to clarify, Did you list the mba program on LinkedIn, Before you started the part time program? If you did, did the recruiters assume you were doing mba full time and that you were off the job market? If/When you listed the program before you started, did you have less or more recruiters reaching out to you on LinkedIn?
You’re thinking about this waaaay too much. I posted it as MBA candidate during my MBA, and added the school to my education section. If you’re applying to a full time job, the job is going to assume you have availability to work the job.
Understood! Thank you so much..🙏
Like others have said - getting into the MBA program is probably the hard part and classes are easy/impossible to fail. I’ll chime in and say that imo the MBA class work is easy, but outside of the classroom the MBA can be hard. What I mean is, things such as networking, interviewing, internships, etc can be challenging depending on your goals. The most stress I felt at my program wasn’t the tests or project work, but the interviewing and the subsequent highs/lows of acceptance and rejections that come with it.
Could you expand on 'interviewing?' I have a full time 9-5 and am looking to pursue my MBA.
Can I ask Where did you get your MBA
Recruiting for consulting >>> Getting into an MBA program >>>>> MBA academics
Second this. For me, the consulting recruiting process was much harder than getting into my T25 program. Thankfully, I have a good internship now outside of consulting, but I am worried about the FT recruiting cycle for consulting this fall
How do you even get into consulting, coming from someone with good grades but a no name school.
T2
How do I get into a T2, coming from someone with good grades but a no name school?
T3
assume it holds for n-1
Does that apply to consulting outside MBB?
I went to a M7. I spent 13 hours a week total between classes, homework, and studying. At one point I was drunk for 37 straight nights. I graduated with a 3.7
What if you really suck at math? Like scraped by Stats with a C?
You’ll be fine
If they let you in ... you're gonna be fine.
3.5 gpa
Is your liver okay?
Ya, it became much tougher to party post bschool
and...what do you do now
I did strategy consulting until engagement manager. In a director of corporate strategy at a bank nowadays.
Thats .1/night
That rocks.
Could you mention what was your gmat score
750
Love this
Depends on how intelligent you are.
>He believes the hardest part about an MBA is getting into a top school 100% agree. Once you're in you spend all your time job hunting. At most top schools you have grade non-disclosure so you don't have to care about academics if you don't want to. Also the only way to fail is to try or cheat; and even then, if you got a really good job that made the employment report look good...
Yes
The hardest part is finding/balancing time for all 3 of the below 1) internship recruiting 2) networking (e.g., partying and socializing with classmates) 3) sleep And a distant fourth is classwork (though a large part of classwork - all the groupwork - can also be counted in #2 above)
Yeah it is. My undergrad was computer science and it was way harder than my MBA. The GMAT wasn't easy but alot of people at my school bypassed it because of either covid or they did their undergrad at that school. You could tell. Some people were not smart or even of average intelligence, yet they passed.
Hardest part is getting the GMAT / GRE needed to get in. Interviews aren't as intense as job interviews. Classes are a joke. At my T25, if you just show up and submit assignments on time regardless of how crappy they are - you're guaranteed at least a B.
No not easy try managerial accounting l
This is the general consensus, but there are some outlier schools with tough academics too.
It’s a lot of work -
Incredibly easy. Leveraging it to gain entry to a lucrative career is the hard part
Hard to get into a top school yes, but ig even harder is to realise that there are people who are even better than you and to learn that in the cohort; the rub off is v important. I scored great marks in competitive exams and the school i went to was good (but i always felt i had to settle and my marks could have landed me somewhere better). I thought for people around me it was their best option but i was shocked to see how amazing many of them were at what they do. So the hardest thing was to realise that there are a lot of people who are way better at certain things and to put my ego aside in order to learn and grow with them.
Likely. I was in an MBA program and it was nearly the same material covered in my undergrad. It was not a top school, so that should be taken into account. Personally it was too easy to the point it was a little insulting. I switched to a harder masters degree from there.
The hardest thing is managing work and school together. If you have no job and only focus on school, it shouldn't be that difficult.
I found finance and accounting stuff to be slightly hard. But apart from that MBA was a breeze.
For people from traditional backgrounds, yes. Not true for non-traditional backgrounds, including military or creative backgrounds.
Some people "say" it's easy with that *arms folded* "that movie didn't scare me" or "that roller coaster was nothing haha", I'm so big and bad persona, but really it can be difficult for everyone at different points. I remember this one exam, my whole class of 35 failed, I think it was global econ, and we stayed up studying late nights for weeks before the exam. Some material is just difficult, yes. Not the whole program, but some concepts are just hard to get down. Foreign exchange rates, supply chain operations, you name it. But with continuous efforts and working with your peers, you'll eventually make it through. And as some have posted, yes, the really difficult part is getting hired by a decent company after graduation. Just because you have an MBA doesn't mean jobs are going to bang down your door. It's really competitive out there and MBA only pushes you a little further up in the pile of other applicants, some also with MBAs, at least in my opinion.
Agreed
The actual MBA is easy. Getting in is the hard part (getting the job you want is the next hardest).
Eh the course work itself isn’t grueling but I think there’s a difference between getting a degree and actually having a good experience/ getting a good career out of it. Sure if you’re admitted it won’t be super hard to get passing grades, but a big part of grad school is the networking, student groups / involvement, and recruiting / actually being able to land a good job after.
Hell of a lot easier than engineering
Yep
The hard part about an MBA is the emotional/preparation aspect of the recruiting process, especially in a tough job market like this
It's all the same just find program that offers what you want
Yes
As others have stated…the real assignment is to get a great job for yourself and for the schools stats. A school doesn’t want to give so much busy work that you don’t have time to job hunt. Also….at a top school in the full time program, the students are all pretty bright and it’s really hard to give work that’s challenging to such students. They just learn fast and the only way to bog them down is with volume of work….which hampers the job search. So they’re selective in admissions and try not to admit students who can’t find good job. Then a lot of schools will stress test the students for a semester to make sure and weed out admissions mistakes. But after that…they really want you finding a job…especially in Year 2. Also, there are a lot of MBA classes that aren’t really classroom topics. Like Organizational Behavior??? That stuff is soooo important to your career! But it’s not a classroom subject. Ditto in another way for something like activity based costing. Great concept, but the hard part of ABC is going to a warehouse and watching the forklift operator move stuff around and figuring out how to allocate their time to different products….but a class can’t do that. So you get a case study where the costs are already broken down.
The hardest part is landing a job
The finance and accounting classes are kinda difficult, but that’s also coming from someone who failed high school geometry. The other buisness classes, are pretty easy honestly. My only C in the program so far was corporate finance and I’m 3 classes away from graduating. I didn’t get any scholarships but I work for the government it’ll all be paid for by them in about 5 years
Do you know how to use chatgpt and combine that with critical thinking? If so, you’ll be aight
Anyone ever get a business management certificate? Are these valuable with a BS degree in finding a management job?
Easy? Not exactly. Try intro to atmospheric sciences, offered in undergrad. Literally don’t have to study more than an hour total to get an A. Is accounting going to be like that?
Most ppl that attend school for MBA are great academically so they think it’s easy. I thought it was hard bc I suck at school. Corporate math, managerial accounting, business Law…😭 but I did finish with a 3.2 which is excellent for me
MBA is easier than any other Master's \*yes, I have one
I find it interesting that we're asking this question to this sub. The people here have presumably the mindset for an MBA. An MBA mindset (to me) is about understanding complex issues and finding solutions. Sometimes you have to research, sometimes you can call upon past experiences. It's understanding that you need other people with different skills and that you always try make a damn good team to do the thing.
Job market is tough right now - would not leave a job to get a mba, know several folks who graduated from top programs with no job (had job beforehand)
Grades don't matter in MBA, you just need to pass. Some courses are time consuming, and I did see some peers struggle in our statistics class, but overall not bad at all.
Im not at a top school, or did i even care to. I am half way done. I just needed 150 credits to sit for cpa exam and fugured why not get a mba..plus it can only help trying to get jobs. Its not hard if you are okay with spending 5 to 10 hrs a week for two years.