EMBA or part-time MBA won't help you much in career change

They are mostly for career-enhancers who want to stay in current tracks.

Students in full-time MBA programs have much better career placement opportunities overall. Companies love to woo them, especially now, when the job market is booming.

However, a few part-timers at my school do get into other industries/functions, such as previous marketers becoming management consultants or IT engineerings becoming equity researchers. Based on my personal experience, I find them to be within the top 5-10% of part-time students, whereas the same job opportunities may be open to top 30%-50% of full-time students.

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To answer your questions:

1: Is 37 too old to start an MBA and a life in business ?
-- No, as long as you still feel like learning new tricks and working with people of diverse backgrounds. Some of the MBA students who made successful career transfers are in their mid- or late 30's. So, you are not that much of an outlier.

2: How is the likelihood that I will get admitted by those schools, given that I have no business background?
-- Hard to tell, without knowing more about you. But many of my classmates (I'd say 1/3 at least) had no previous "business" experience. They were programmers, scientists or government officials. Still, many make their way into the business world through MBA. No one has returned to the non-business world, as far as I know.

3: What can I do with an MBA at close to 40? Can I still start a career in the financial industry, like Wall Street? Bored by high-tech. No too interested in doing starting a company.
-- Sure, as long as 1) you look and feel energetic 2) you have good interpersonal skills 3) you are passionate about the career and 4) you have all the hard and soft skills required for the job.

Well, 40 is not that old an age, and remember, you can't turn 40 again, only get older! :)

Good luck.

所有跟帖： 

• 回复：EMBA or part-time MBA won't help you much in career change -dcresley- ♀ (77 bytes) () 01/05/2007 postreply 20:09:51

• Very informative post! Cases of the par-time MBAs in my company -newfei2008- ♂ (503 bytes) () 01/05/2007 postreply 20:13:39

• Yes a lot of part-timers can change positions -ChicagoGSBMBA- ♀ (77 bytes) () 01/09/2007 postreply 09:38:31