Which MBA?

After months of struggle with a trivial question, Part Time or Full Time MBA, I have decided to utilize some of my learning from prior posts. But, let me first analyze what the real deal is. The points below are things I understood by talking to many full time and part time current students and alums.

Further, I am thinking from the standpoint of a guy who is 30, with minimal business background at best, not an executive already and needs MBA to learn finance, strategy and running a sizable organization. This may not be relevant for an executive, who just need a degree to climb the ladder.

Why Full Time MBA?
After talking to many current part time students, some common pain points expressed were:

• No time for a detailed study of subjects - Each subject requires atleast five hours and up to 10 hrs of reading outside the three hour class. If you are taking 2 subjects per quarter then you are already engaged for two evenings for classes. Rest of the three evenings are insufficient to complete outside classroom reading/learning.
• No time for club and social activities - Well, most of the people have work related things going on in the evening. Tough to schedule group meetings / dinners / socials etc.
• Fatigue - Initial enthusiasm is soon (within 3 quarters) overshadowed by fatigue. With slight lack of enthusiasm playing people tend to miss events, avoid group meetings. After all, a minimum of 12 Hrs workday schedule is fixed. Surprisingly, everybody mentioned family commitments as well. I did not think that would be a concern as (most of the) partners understand. But, who knows how things shape-up.
• Implement B-School Lessons- I can't say alot on this, but, most of the Indian IT guys are working as some sort of programmer or team leader. There is hardly any opportunity to contribute to business side of your org. If you are in consulting, it makes your life further difficult as company is billing you for a project. So, you may not be the most appropriate guy to participate in corporate strategy development or marketing. Remember, your day is already stretched, its not going to be easy to find extra time to contribute to any organization wide initiatives or start your own business. But, this is all very personal and your org. dependent.
• Recruitment - probably the most important aspect for most of us. People said that recruitment events are mostly during the day, when you are in office. So, most of the part timers can't attend. Huge advantage for full timers. With so much going on in life, its tough to maintain contact and network with industry guys.
• Credibility and Network - FT definitely has more credibility. But, I am certain now that it is very slightly more, of not equal. You have a lot more time to network, write to people, meet with them etc.
• Super fun and not Burden-  FT is fun as well - many many events, traveling, interaction points, a lot of alcohol etc. After all ya all will be together for two years FULL TIME.

Seems like everything is going wrong with part time MBA. So, why go Part Time?

• Finances - Most of the people who are in this dilemma have 5+ years of experience and are near 30 years of age. It is a high time to get settled, start a family, have kids, take care of your parents, move out of an apartment and buy a decent house and what not! At this point imagine the cost of full time MBA - huge! Life is short, and there is so little time to fulfill all the responsibilities and lead a comfortable life. Taking the plunge of full time MBA at this point would mean shifting life events by minimum 4-5 years. 2 years of MBA and 2 Y of residual loan pay off before you can commence what you would have at the age of 29-30.
• Poor job scene for visa seekers - Well, its not a huge concern as such but with this economy and protective govt. policies, it has become a concern. If you wanna go to Mckinsey, BCG, Bain - fine, no visa issues there for full timers. But, if you plan to say start a new business, go into IB or corporate functions like strategy, finance etc. or industry jobs say in JnJ, its tough to get visa sponsorship. Again, very personal decision and also depends on how much time you have left on your H1B. BUT, the very fact that you can continue pursuing your GC and MBA parallel makes a huge difference. When you graduate out of a PT MBA program and your are a GC holder, you can easily crack one of those corporate and industry jobs.
• You can overcome everything I said about full time - The more your stretch yourself the better you become. No extra explanation needed, but, you have to be reeeaaaly... committed.

In the next post, i will apply lessons from Prof. Thaler (Chicago Booth) lecture on behavioral economics and decide on which way to go. After all, I am a consumer and need to decide what to buy.