The road to Wharton

My current MBA situation is that I have matriculated at the Wharton exec program at the Philly Campus. Here's the story about how I got here.

I can remember first thinking about an MBA in about the third or fourth year of university. There was a good MBA program up the road from where I was going to school, at a place called Wilfred Laurier University. I had enough courses I could transfer to finish a FT MBA in 12 months post bachelors. The short time required seemed fairly appealing. I also recall at the time reviewing the HBS and Columbia websites and thinking, wouldn't it be nice to attend. I came to the conclusion at the time, that I didn't really feel like I was going to get much from an MBA. Plus who wanted to stay in school for another 12 months. After 5 years of engineering courses, I wanted to travel, make some ducats, and live large for a while. And so I did.

Fast forward about 10 years. Except for a few rocky years following the bubble, the career has been fairly good, but I feel like something is misisng. My wife reminds me that I always had that desire to go back to grad school. But I am married now, with a kid (one at the time), and mortgage, and car payments. No way I could go back to school full time. I do remember thinking about part time business programs funded by my company. But those programs could take anywhere from three to five years to get through. That did not appeal to me at all. I wanted immersion, I wanted networking, and I wanted it not to last longer than 2 years.

Starting in about 2004, I started researching different types of programs to see what was available. I was amazed at the plethora of programs to accomodate every budget, time frame, and schedule. There were part-time mba, evening mba, weekend mba, distance mbas, online mba, modular mba, professional mba, executive mba, one year mba programs all offered in the city I was located at. I attended cocktail receptions, lectures, open houses, and all the other types of recruitment activities that these programs offered. I sent away for the brochures and application materials. The marketing was so slick, I was hooked. I was going to get me one of these MBAs no matter what it took.

At the same time I was a little cautious. With so different types of programs , which one was the right one for me? After all, this was going to be a big investment of time and money. And with so much variaton in schedule and costs, how do I compare programs? It took me about 2 years to figure it out. I was looking to get more than just textbook knowledge from a program. I figured, for the most part, the different types of programs would cover similar course content, so I needed to look beyond the courses. What else would define a program? I came up with a list that included the quality of the faculty, course delivery, alumni network, location, student facilities and resources, career resources, school brand value and reputation, quality of the students, and ROI.

In addition, I wanted a program that would allow for immersion, opportunity to network with other like-minded individuals, an international trip to study business abroad. I sent away for many, many brochures. Some schools were local, some were in other states. I cast a wide net intentionally at this point. I was not being very discriminate yet. Interestingly enough, one factor I hadn't considered previously that played an important role in the schools I filtered out, was the dealings I had with the admissions offices. While you could argue that the admission offices are not necessarily a good reflection of the quality of the school or the potential ROI, my dealings with the different admissions offices did give me a sense of how differently schools treated their students or future students and definitely shaped my perceptions of different schools in the early going.

In the end I chose the executive MBA format because it offered the things I was looking for and careerwise, I was right about the average age for most of these programs. I found that Executive MBA programs provided more immersion, and more contact time with other students than say part time programs or distance learning programs. To me, the networking and opportunity to learn from others was a major part of the mba experience. I ended up narrowing the list to three programs, but partway through the application process, I narrowed it down to two. I started out applying to Kellogg, Wharton, and Emory. I eventually decided to drop Kellogg from my list and stuck to Wharton and Emory.

I submitted applications for both and was accepted to both. I had already made up my mind where I would go if I made it into both schools. It was a difficult decision because of the tradeoffs involved. In the end, I know I would have been happy at either school, but the Wharton brand recognition tipped the scales for me. Emory has a great brand in the southeast, but on the global scale, the Wharton name went a lot further. I ultimately see myself being fairly mobile career-wise, so the better brand name made sense. There were some tradeoffs however. Emory is a local school, while I would have to commute bi-weekly to Wharton. Wharton is also more expensive and takes about 8 months longer to complete. Then there's the philly winter...ughhh.