At some graduate business schools, MBA students are required to choose a concentration or specialization, but at other schools, declaring a major is optional.
Business school professors and admissions consultants say MBA applicants who have a clear career goal in mind should choose b-schools that offer formal concentrations or specializations in this discipline or provide multiple elective courses in the field. For instance, MBA applicants who want to develop technical expertise in finance may prefer a school with a finance or accounting major or they might look for a school that offers numerous financially oriented elective courses.
In contrast, MBA applicants who aspire to become generalists rather than specialists should look for a business school with a variety of courses where they either do not have to declare a major or, if they must declare a major, they have the ability to take courses in multiple disciplines before committing to a major, some MBA alumni suggest.
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Kenton Kivestu, the CEO and founder of RocketBlocks, a company that helps aspiring management consultants prepare for consulting firm job interviews, earned his MBA in 2011 from Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, where he was not required to choose a major. Kivestu, who earned his MBA in general management as opposed to concentrating his studies on a particular niche business subject, says the broad focus of his MBA program was a plus, because it allowed him to take a wide array of courses, including classes in marketing, strategy and accounting.
“One of the reasons I was coming into that program and interested in an MBA in general was I wanted to build expertise across the different functions that I knew I would need experience in as a CEO,” he says.
However, MBA professors and admissions experts say that MBA applicants who are aiming to break into industries where they lack work experience can benefit from a concentration, specialization or in-depth class in that discipline. MBA applicants can especially benefit if they intend to enter a field where technical skills are important, such as the financial technology industry, also known as “fintech.”
Drew Pascarella, a lecturer of finance at Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management who teaches the school’s fintech intensive course, a seven-week series of classes that is designed to prepare MBA students for fintech careers, says that MBA applicants who lack experience in fintech but who wish to work in this field, should target business schools that offer in-depth courses in that specialty, so they can impress fintech hiring managers.
Pascarella says that he recently had a revealing conversation with one of his fintech students who was being recruited for three fintech jobs. “He described his interviews as ‘industry conversations,'” Pascarella said via email. “He was able to have those conversations by completing the fintech Intensive [course], and I know he looked like the industry insider those companies were looking for.”
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MBA admissions consultants say b-school applicants shouldn’t view MBA concentrations or specializations at institutions as equivalent simply because these programs are called by the same name.
“There are a number of factors that can differentiate programs which look similar on the surface, and knowing the difference can depend greatly on how well you know yourself as a student,” said Erin Skelly, a graduate admissions counselor at IvyWise, an admissions consulting firm, via email. “For example, if you’re making a complete career change, a concentration that has an intensive internship and practicum focus may be a better fit for you, as it will give you practical, hands-on experience — something which will be less important to a student who has already worked in the field for several years.”
According to experts, when choosing an MBA concentration or specialization, it’s prudent to select one that cultivates skills that will be useful a decade from now to avoid the predicament of getting an MBA degree that quickly becomes outdated.
“MBA applicants should consider how rapidly change is occurring across all industries, and identify an area like innovation and tech that is equally applicable to different sectors and will give them a toolkit of skills that is adaptable and future-facing,” said Crystal Grant, director of admissions at the Imperial College Business School at Imperial College London, via email.
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Keng Siau, professor and chair of the business and information technology department at Missouri University of Science & Technology, says it’s a mistake to choose a concentration or specialization that focuses on skills that are easily automated given the increasing importance of artificial intelligence in business. “You need to do something that is not going to be replaced by machines or robots in the next one or two decades, because that’d be a problem in the future,” he says.
Eric Newton, a co-founder of VooDoo Spirits liquor company and a marketing MBA student at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, says although he didn’t apply to b-school with a particular concentration in mind, he naturally gravitated toward courses in marketing once he started his MBA program.
Newton says that because of his role as an executive in the lifestyle industry, where customers are typically making optional purchases using their disposable income, it is important for him to understand how to advertise effectively. “Marketing is really huge for that industry, as it is with many,” he says.
He says MBA career services officials can often provide guidance on which concentration or specialization is most likely to lead to a particular type of job, and he says most business school professors administrators will happily explain how their MBA courses differ from those offered at other similar institutions.
However, for most MBA applicants, except for those with a very specific academic focus, it’s ideal to attend a b-school where they get to try multiple disciplines before choosing to specialize in one, Newton says. “The MBA program in general is designed to be exploratory and so, if you’re not sure, look for a school that has a wide variety of concentrations.”
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Consider MBA Concentrations When Choosing Business Schools originally appeared on usnews.com
Clarification 03/23/18: A previous version of this article was not clear that Cornell University’s fintech intensive is a seven-week series of classes.
