Some argue that
management doesn’t necessarily qualify as a profession but if the recent trends are any indication, there is still a good number of people applying for management courses worldwide. Take the
GMAC 2009 Application Trend Survey for example, 2009 witnessed a 30-40% increase in applications across business schools. A management degree however is nothing short of an investment which in most cases have been providing a decent,if not good, return. The investment is not just in terms of money but time and effort too.
A typical person considering a management degree has to in most cases have about 2-3 years of experience to begin with and a decent enough GMAT score as most of the colleges set those are a preliminary selection criteria (at least the top ones do). GMAT scores are valid for 5 years and so some individuals decide to take it right after graduating college – ‘in the flow’ so to speak. Some other decide to wait it out and take it just when required. While having a GMAT score is not mandatory while applying to a college, without one you are not going to be able to get through so taking your exam at the right time is probably a very wise move. But this is just the beginning. With the base criteria now worked out, you have to figure out what colleges to apply to. Even the pool of colleges to select from depends on what stream of management you want to pursue. For example if you want to pursue a more specific stream like International Business then your pool may now consists of
Thunderbird School of Global Management or
Hult International Business School while if you were thinking of a more general MBA your selection ‘pool’ may sometimes vary. There are plenty of college rankings on the Internet done by some pretty recognizable names that are said to enable you to make your decision easier – word of advice though, don’t go just by the rankings.
Now say after a few intense sessions of research you did narrow your school list down to say 5 we then begin the actual process of application. All institutions have a number of “rounds” where they invite applications each with its own deadline and the general rule is the earlier you apply, the better your chances of getting into the college of your choice. There is a lot of competition and most of the good ones have their yearly rosters filled up by the first few rounds so timing your application and more importantly dispatching your application packet so it gets to your institution well within the stipulated deadline is of utmost importance. Application packets usually vary from college to college but it generally contains the following
- resume
- previous academic certificates (in some cases attested copies will suffice)
- a statement of purpose (an essay with reasons why you are pursing this endeavor)
- essays (one or two essays from a pool of questions that you can choose)
Most institutions consider the packet holistically before arriving at a decision to accept or deny an applicant. So even if you think you don’t have high enough GMAT score to qualify, you just might get through if the other areas of your application are much more solid. And furthermore, these applications for each of these 5 colleges that you chose aren’t cheap either. With the good colleges demanding over $100 for the privilege of just applying to their college coupled with the cost of making copies, getting them attested and dispatching them on time, you are looking at quite an amount.
But wait, we’ve only reached the half way point at this time.
Now that you’ve applied, here comes the wait. Days, sometimes weeks and even months to know if you have been accepted or not – and while this time is hard enough as it is, the relentless questioning from friends and family does nothing to alleviate any of the anxiety. Then one day you get an email (if you’re college sent you a regular postal mail instead, you might want to consider talking to them about going green first). As your reach to click the email your brain revs up to intense levels and if you got prematurely excited and yelled out, the presence of others (friends and family) makes the whole event pretty much more excruciating than it needs to be. The subsequent frown or joyous scream (the mischievous ones try to mask one with the other before revealing the true sentiment) generally gives it all out but more often than not, others insist on wanting to read the email or mail themselves.
It’s all good so far but the thrill and excitement quickly dies out when you realize that you now have to make a lot of arrangements to prepare yourself. First there is the question of finances – some of us aren’t born rich or have rich aunts or uncles who offer to fund the education. Well some of us don’t even have half of the stratospheric amounts lying around. Then there is the question of scholarship – well that’s a whole different story. Thus begins the process of loan seeking and fund raising mostly in attempts to show the embassy that you DO have what it takes financially to survive the duration of the program. The loan process isn’t all that stress free either when you start reading the fine print and all its caveats and you realize that you are pawning your soul but you set those feelings aside and print your name on the dotted line and you are finally all set. But then you have to worry about a visa if the college isn’t in your own country. This is another scary obstacle cause your future now lies in a random stranger and his stamping contraption. You nervously make arrangements for arriving at the embassy all dressed to impress and hope to hear the magic words “Congratulations. You’re approved”. Unless you screwed up paper work or genuinely gave the official reasons to doubt the veracity of your statements, you should be good to go. Prior to this meeting or in some case after, you get your tickets and now are all set to depart.
But wait, before you depart you have to make sure you have the necessary wardrobe elements depending on your arriving couture’s weather patterns. Also in some of them you need to wait a while before some of the basics like a bank account can be opened so you have to account for that and if you don’t have family or friends who can take care of you when you arrive, you are pretty much on your own and that brings with it its own set of problems. If that wasn’t enough, now you are in a new place, new friends, new systems, new weather, new eating patterns – essentially a new temporary life. For some, the additional component of giving up a regularly paying job to now having to live on essentially a ‘starving graduate’ budget can be all the more traumatizing. As days turn into weeks, some cope with the new system better than the rest. At the end of the day you are looking to garner a specific set of knowledge which you hope will land you a higher position in the corporate ladder and thereby more earning power, a better capacity to clear up any associated debt, and more importantly the possibility of achieving everything you dreamed of. Now if you are married and/or have children your dynamics are compounded and just piled on top of all of this.More often than not, the pre course setup and its associated costs balloon to unanticipated levels so having a buffer amount to counter this jut goes a long way.
So why then do people actually go through all this trouble? Because it gives you a chance to achieve the possibilities of your dreams – your very own ‘pursuit of happiness’
