MBA Guidance - Why is Work Experience Important?

Work Experience:

Work Experience is an important part of an MBA application. Almost all of the Top 20 US universities require 2-3 years of work experience on an average. Why do they require work experience? I am not sure of their specific reasons, but I got a few which make sense:

- Experience entails maturity: Mature people make better professionals.

- Clarity of goals: An experience individual would have better clarity of his goals than the person who is fresh out of college. Fresh graduates tend to be fidgety about their career options, if you tell them that Doing X is a great career option, they start considering X.

- Competent Program: The competence and quality of program depends upon the quality of students in the program. Experienced professionals offer specialized perspectives along with professionalism and maturity to the program. As a part of MBA program dont expect to learn everything from a text book, students learn from each other. In my MBA program, I would definitely want to work with an experienced individual because then we both have something to offer each other.

- The Genius Factor: Geniuses usually make better scientists and lousy managers. If you have excellent Acads, how would the universities know you are not a genius suitable more to technology than to MBA program? Your work experience in the corporate world allays some of these doubts and helps make you a better candidate.

- The Average Factor: Responsibility and Sincereness of a person with average/poor acads is always in question. If you have bad/average acads, only work experience can pacify these questions.

Now I hope you see the importance of Work experience for MBA programs. The next question is How much experience is good enough?.

According to me 2 years of work experience is minimum for a good university, however for Top 20 universities this has to be backed up by excellent GMAT Score, superb Profile and neat Essays (for application). Needless to say this is not an easy combination. Work experience of >=4 years relaxes these limitations a bit or actually contribute quite a lot to profile and hence Essays.

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