Ask an MBA Admissions Consultant

There is a debate in international MBA community on whether it is a good plan to go for MBA now when the economy in the US is going towards recession. Jobs are scant, even the TopB-school students are finding it hard to find good internships.Given the involved costs in the MBA education, does it make for International students (India,China, Europe etc) to go for MBA inUS B-schools.

Can the admission consultant give their views on which option is better:

1. MBA 2009-11
2. MBA 2010-12
3. MBA 2011-13

Thanks

Dear Anayak,

Thanks for your post!

I must say that I don't think your question is as much about business school as it is about timing the markets - and I can guarantee you that if anyone in this discussion forum could accurately predict which year would be ideal to graduate, they'd likely be very wealthy!

Keep in mind that someone applying to a top MBA program in America now will not be graduating until the spring of 2011. That's more than 2.5 years from now. While the current turmoil in the markets is certainly cause for grave concern, I think that most reasonable people would agree that the outlook could easily be more positive in 2.5 years time.

While I cannot predict the future, my assumption is that someone who applies to business school this year and is fortunate enough to gain acceptance to a top school would likely be making a good career decision to attend.

As to your comments, I am puzzled by your claim that "even top b-school students are finding it hard to find good internships" - since current students are not yet recruiting for internships and last year's students did fine in this regard. While I certainly expect the coming year's students to feel the effect of the slowdown, I'm not aware of any data that has been released for this group as of yet.

Overall, my advice is that you go to business school when the time is right for your career - and not in an effort to 'time the market.' Keep in mind that those students who are graduating this coming year likely felt that they were entering b-school at the ideal moment - since things looked very good back in 2006 when they applied. In addition, one would hope that your interest in the MBA also relates to a desire to learn key business concepts for the long-term - something that is presumably timeless.

Best of luck,

Graham

Thanks Graham,

That really helped a lot.