want to do MBA or MS in USA?

MBA in US has become a buzz word recently. Lot of people want to do it, for many reasons. The most prevalent reason is the catchy salary it offers as soon as you graduate and the career growth after that. Everyone wants to graduate with MBA from Wharton or Thunderbird or Kellogg school of business, get job in top consulting firm such as McKinsey with a signon bonus of $20000 and annual salary of $250000 to start with. Lets face it, this will come only to one in million. So, every individual have to analyze their own situation and decide whether to do MBA or not.

MBA or MS?

For the sake of example, let us assume, you have completed BE. You decided to do a Masters degree in US. But, you are confused whether to do MBA or MS. How do you decide ? There are many paths you can take for your career ahead. There are 2 most prominent ones. Technical career path — where you go like software engineer, senior software engineer, designer/architect and so on…. where you don’t manage people. These are ideal careers for people who don’t like managing other people. Come to office, attend meetings do you own job at your own timing (believe me — I have friends who come at midnight and work till 7 am and come to office during daytime only for meetings) and keep going.

Another path is — Management line after being in technical/engineering — Engineer, Sr.Engineer and Manager — where you will start managing your team — do appraisals, give pay raise, if required — like in this economy — fire people. If the second path looks more attractive to you — you should chose a MBA, if the first path brings more of you — you can chose MS. Of course, after coming to US, you have a choice of doing MBA after MS or MS after MBA — as there is no age limit.

FAQ’s – MBA in US Universities

Now, if you have decided to do MBA, there are many questions that need to be answer. I will try to tell about a few. Please do remember, there are are very general statements. Every university is different in their own way.

How many courses to finish MBA?

Typical time it takes to complete MBA is 16 — 3 credit hour courses.

What is a credit hour ?

Typically, one credit hour means 1 hour of class per week. So, a normal 3 credit hour course will be 3 hours a week, which can be 3 days one hour each or 2 days 1.5 hours or one day 3 hours.

How long will it take to complete 16 — 3 credit hour courses?

Most of the international students take, 3 courses in Fall semester, 3 courses in Spring semester and 2 courses in summer. In this way, one can finish in 2 years. This is little longer than the usual MS programs.

How about funding for MBA programs ?

It is tougher to getting funding for MBA programs compared to MS programs. MBA programs do give out full scholarships for best applicants. At the same time, cost of MBA program is also higher than the MS programs. It has higher per credit hour fees and you need to complete more credit hours than MS.

When should you do MBA ?

Most of the top schools ask for experience before joining MBA, typically it is a 3 year experience to get eligible to do MBA