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If you can’t get into a top-five MBA program, don’t even bother
By Jay Bhatti — January 15, 2013
Jay Bhatti is an investor and advisor to startups in New York City. Previously, he was the co-founder of the people search engine Spock.com. He also worked as a product manager for Microsoft. In 2002, he received his MBA from the Wharton School.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal wrote an article questioning the value of an MBA but I could have already told you that. As a graduate of the 2002 Wharton MBA program and a member of the Wharton Admissions Committee as a student, I get a lot of aspiring MBA candidates asking me the following question: “What do I need to do on my application to get into an MBA program?”
However, before candidates can even ask me that question, I ask them: “Why do you want an MBA and what schools are you applying to?”
The sad reality is that an MBA is not as valuable today as it was 30 years ago. Stanford University published data stating that from 2005 to 2008, over 94% of graduates had jobs by graduation. However, since then, only about 75% of graduates had jobs lined up at graduation. Stanford is a top MBA program, so you can imagine it being worse at other schools. In fact, 21 schools that are ranked by US News & World Report said that for the past few years, nearly 50% of their graduates did not have jobs at graduation.
https://qz.com/42233/if-you-cant-get-into-a-top-five-mba-program-dont-even-bother/