Latest / Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast / Episode 534: What MBA Is Right for You? Consider Program Formats, Career Goals, and ROI with SMU Cox

Transcript

Episode 534: What MBA Is Right for You? Consider Program Formats, Career Goals, and ROI with SMU Cox · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:17
  Speaker A: Welcome to the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. I'm your host, Graham Richmond. For many prospective MBA students, deciding to pursue the degree is really just the first of many decisions. There's the question of when to go, whether to step away from your career or continue working, whether to study online or in person, and ultimately, which kind of MBA experience makes the most sense for where you are in your career and your life? Today we're going to explore these questions with Radhika Brinkoff. She's the Assistant Dean of Admissions for working professional MBA programs at the SMU Koch School of Business. And I'm really excited about this conversation we're going to have because the questions that I've just reviewed here are so fundamental to figuring out what the right path is for business school. In terms of Radhika's background, I wanted to just give a quick overview. I have a feeling some of her experiences will come out as we chat today. But Radhika oversees the portfolio at SMU Cox that includes the online MBA Direct for Early Career Professionals, the online mba, professional mba, and executive MBA programs. Before joining SMU Cox, she spent her career in the private sector, including management consulting at Boston Consulting Group and roles in strategy, marketing, sales, and development at companies including Pepsi, Frito Lay, Borden Dairy, and Canyon Ranch. She holds an MBA from MIT Sloan and a bachelor's degree in psychology from Rice University. I should also mention that Radhika is an adjunct professor at SMU Cox, teaching organizational behavior. So, Radhika, welcome to the Clear Admit podcast. I can't wait to have this discussion.
• 1:52
  Speaker B: Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here today.
• 1:54
  Speaker A: Yeah. So as I kind of highlighted at the top here, I mean, you have a range of experiences and a lot of exposure to the exact kind of flavors of MBA experience that I was talking about at the start of the show here. So I just wondered if maybe, as like, kind of a starting point here, you could give us a sense as to what are you hearing, like, from prospective students today, because, you know, you oversee this whole portfolio of MBA programs that are designed for people who want to keep working while getting their degree. And so I'm sort of wondering, like, what are some of the things that people say to you when you talk to them in terms of what are they looking for from an mba? And has that changed at all in recent years?
• 2:33
  Speaker B: Absolutely. So I think the first thing that we're definitely hearing is people are really being more intentional about where they're spending their time and their money. So the biggest question is, you Know, why do I need this degree, why do I need it now, and what is it really going to enable me to do so? People are being very, very thoughtful about their decisions, as they should be. You should be strategic about thinking about an MBA fits within your overall career and life strategy. So the first thing that we really hear is, you know, what, what can this help me do with, with my career? And people are really trying to understand, you know, what am I looking for in terms of advancement. And advancement has a lot of different flavors for different people. That could be, you know, do I want to progress within my existing organization? Do I want to build my business acumen so I can be a stronger leader, lead my teams, better be more effective at the projects I'm managing? Or it could be, hey, I really enjoy what I'm doing, but I want to explore other functions or other industries to see what else is out there and how I can continue building myself within the business world. So we see a lot of people really thinking about flexibility and meeting people where they are is really, really important. And so flexibility has moved from a nice to have to a must have. And that doesn't necessarily mean I just want to show up and listen to something online, but I want the ability for my degree, my graduate education to really fit the needs of my life. So whether that's, you know, I have availability in the evenings and I want to do this part time in person, great. You know, how does that fit into my life if I'm on the road or I, you know, don't want to deal with traffic after coming back from a long day at the office? Does an online option make sense for me, but does that make sense in a way that allows me to get the full MBA experience, where I'm actually interacting and getting the classroom experience, but have that flexibility? I think what has changed significantly is, you know, the educational landscape is really different these days. There is a lot of accessibility to a lot of different types and forms of education. There are online certification programs, there is employer sponsored training and education programs. You know, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention AI.
• 4:48
  Speaker A: It's
• 4:48
  Speaker B: an MBA really has to earn a place in your career strategy and really has to make a lot of sense for you. But what we're really able to see is the people who are doing the research, who are doing the due diligence and saying, okay, what does an MBA really add? Are understanding that what an MBA has can't be replicated by all of these discrete and disparate many Forms of education. An MBA truly helps us think about business as a whole. So how does finance, how does strategy, how to marketing, how to operations, all, all connect with each other when making decisions? It also, you know, the mba, the people who are doing the diligence are saying, you know, I get the opportunity to learn from other people in that space with that conversation. I learn from professors, I get exposures to people who have worked in different functions, different industries at different levels within organizations. So we're seeing a lot of people who are looking for an mba, really seeing that value when they start asking those questions, that network the career connections, the alumni, the peers, the faculty. And then, you know, really in this day of AI where you can get a lot of data, you can get a lot of information, it really elevates the need for that judgment, that reasoning, that critical leadership, that, that critical thinking, leadership skills, all of those things that come from an MBA are really unique and elevate you on top of that. So then you can leverage all the AI things that you are learning or what you're putting into AI, but you can take it to the next level.
• 6:18
  Speaker A: Yeah, a lot of great points there. And you know, we at Clear Admit do a lot of with candidates. And you're right, we hear over and over again this theme of flexibility and this sort of expectation that it should be an option. And so that's important. And then the second big point you were making, I think that's fascinating, is this idea that you could go ahead and get kind of siloed bits of information, certificates. But when you do an mba, any flavor of an mba, the whole idea is that it's all integrated across disciplines and you know, you have that interaction with your classmates, et cetera. So before we get into the different options at smu, Cox, because I know you know a lot about these different programs that you oversee, I wonder just more basically, how should someone decide whether earning an MBA while continuing to work is actually right for them? And when might a traditional full time MBA or simply waiting a few years make more sense?
• 7:09
  Speaker B: So I think it, you know, the MBA has to fit within your current timeline and your current life. Right. I like to take a step back and say, okay, what is the career objective? What are you trying to accomplish? And first off, does the MBA make sense for that? Right. And then the second thing is, you know, what are the trade offs that you might be looking for in terms of working while getting an mba and then maybe going full time if you want to keep making money while you're getting an mba, that is one great reason to think about, you know, the professional mba. A lot of times, you know, people a little further in their career, they have kids, they have, you know, other obligations. Giving up an income is not necessarily an option.
• 7:54
  Speaker A: Right.
• 7:55
  Speaker B: If you think about what you actually need, if you need that, you know, safety net of I have that income, great. That might be a good reason to get to get a working professional mba. The other thing with a working professional MBA that is really beneficial is depending on where you are in your career, you can apply what you're learning right away. So if you are working, what you learn in class on Tuesday could be applied in a team meeting on Wednesday. You can test, you can learn, you have the ability to kind of take what you're learning in the classroom. And of course our classrooms have a lot of experiential learning and a lot of hands on real world application, but you have the ability to experiment in your own lab, in your own real world when you're doing a working professional mba. Because what you're learning, you can take and apply and test and learn and then bring back to the classroom. If you're thinking about, you know, why I might consider a full time MBA versus maybe a professional mba, that might be where, you know, hey, you know, I'm at the point in my life where I can take a year or I can take two years to fully immerse myself in this experience and I want to just be focused on this. I don't have other obligations or I have the ability and the time to do it. And then the other reason that you might want to think about, you know, a full time, two year type of program is if you truly are trying to make a very, very, very drastic career change where you might need to have an internship or you might be looking for a specific type of job where you need that internship to signal to a company a I'm interested, you have the ability to do the work and you have the ability to get the offer. So those are instances where I might say, hey, a full time MBA might make sense. Now I want to take a step back really quickly and say, if you are looking to make a career change or make a career pivot, you do not have to do a full time program. We see that happen all the time in our working professionals programs. At smu, Cox, our career management center, has been extremely, extremely productive and effective at helping our students, regardless of what format, regardless of what program they're in, make those career pivots and career changes. And we have seen not only people have significant promotion results post graduation or even within the program, which is also great for working professionals. You can advance while you're in the program because your organization is seeing that you're committed to your learning. They're going to see the skills that you're bringing. And then we also see people who have been able to pivot functions, they've been able to pivot industries, and so we see that happening all the time. So you can make those changes. In fact, it's something that we pride ourselves on here at smu Cox. Within our working professionals program. The only nuance and caveat is if you're doing something extremely specialized or something that might require that really immersive type of internship, that's when a full time program might be the best option. But that's what admissions is here for. If you don't know what you're looking for, we can talk to you, we can have those conversations and we can help guide you to the right program that's going to fit your career strategy and your career goals as well as your life stage and personal preferences.
• 11:01
  Speaker A: Okay, terrific. Yeah, and I think that that's really clear and I will say I've known a number of people who've gone off and done part time or professional type programs. I'm always surprised to hear, you know, they, you know, leave their job midway and do something, you know, because they get an offer at another company. I've always thought of it as, you know, you're right. A lot of changes can happen even while you're pursuing the degree. One thing I wanted to ask you, just in brief, here is the kind of timing. So, you know, how does someone determine whether this is the right point in their career to pursue an mba? And yeah, just like what should they want to be different on the other side of the degree? Yeah. So how do you know when it's the right time?
• 11:37
  Speaker B: I think the perfect time is when you're ready and when you're willing to commit to it. That being said, there are some, there are some nuances to when an MBA might make sense. So for instance, you know, you want to have had at least enough work experience or enough exposure to the working world for an MBA to make sense for you. For a couple of reasons. One, you want to be able to come into the classroom and you want to have, you know, productive discussion, productive debate and you want to be able to add value to what is being discussed. And if you've never seen, you know, what happens in a team meeting or if You've never seen how a manager potentially leads his or her team. You're not going to necessarily have as many perspectives to add when you start talking about leadership and management. Now we have different programs that meet people at different work experience levels. And work experience is not just the number of years that you've worked, but it's also the experience exposure that you've had.
• 12:33
  Speaker A: Right.
• 12:33
  Speaker B: So for instance, you know, our traditional programs, our professional MBA and our online mba, typically we like to say you should have had about two years of work experience to come into those programs. Now we see a wide variety of ranges. You know, between, you know, two and eight to 10 years is typically what we see in kind of our part time professional MBA program. And then, you know, within our online MBAs, similar, you know, five to eight years is typically what we see. What's great about our portfolio is we also have the executive MBA program and that's for mid to senior level, you know, career professionals, people who have had some management experience, who have had some leadership experience, have managed large projects, budgets, things like that, and have a little bit of an elevated, maybe exposure to business. If you're looking at an executive mba, we typically look at people who have over eight years of experience. Like I said, the years of experience less important than actual on the job type of experience is what you've gained. And then the other thing that's great is we actually here at the SMU Cox School of Business have the online MBA direct program, which is for those early career track professionals. Because some people are ready to get a jumpstart right away. They know this is what they want to do. They know they need an mba. They know that, you know, to get to the types of roles that they're trying to get to, you know, three, five years down the road that they already want to have this degree on their resume and they want to signal to leadership that, hey, I'm a go getter, I'm high potential. I want you to consider me for these types of roles. And what's great about that particular program is it's slowed down slightly. So our typical programs run about 21 to 24 months. That program runs 33 months because we know that when you come in early, you are not going to have as many years of work experience experience. You might have just graduated college, you might have just had internships. So as long as you're working full time, we slow that down a little bit. So that way you can get that MBA experience, but you're also getting the work experience at the same time. So this is where the MBA programs really will meet people where they are. And we will guide you into the right program based off of the amount of experience that you have. Because we want to make sure that you have enough experience to get the most out of the experience experience for yourself, but also to add value to your cohort in your classroom.
• 14:57
  Speaker A: And I think so. I think you've done a terrific job of kind of outlining these different program offerings in your portfolio at SMU Cox, because we have on the one end of the spectrum the online MBA direct for early career professionals, as you were just describing, slightly longer program that allows people to accumulate some work experience while they're in it. But then you also have your, I guess you could say more traditional online mba. You have the professional mba, which is an in person, part time offering. Right. And then you have the executive mba. So there's a really good kind of range there. And I wondered how do you, as an, you know, as an admissions team and you know, looking at this portfolio of programs, how do you know that someone's right for one of them versus the other?
• 15:35
  Speaker B: Yeah, you know, we take a really customized approach when we try and match people with programs. So there's a couple of things that we look at is, you know, one, what are you looking to accomplish out of the mba? All of these programs are going to have you, you know, walk across that stage with a big smile and a diploma with a SMU Cox, you know, mba. But if you are looking to, you know, say, for instance, if you're in middle management and you're looking to signal to your organization that you're ready for that VP level position or that director level position, or even that CC suite level position, an executive MBA might be the right signal for you. The other things that make a lot of sense are really your personal preferences. How do you like to learn and work? What works best for you? We know you have a life, we know you have a job, we know you have other obligations. And so how does this fit in to what you're looking for? So for instance, like I mentioned before, if you need that additional flexibility, if you can't be in the car, driving into a local area, you know, to the school on a weeknight because of traffic, because of family, because of other obligations, but you can get home and you can get on your computer or you're you, you know, you're in a sales job or you're in some type of job where you're traveling all the time and you're going to be in a hotel room and you don't know where you're going to be. Well, then, you know, the online programs might make a lot of sense for you just because of your personal needs and how they fit into what's going on in your life. And what I love about our online programs here at SMU Cox is our classes aren't just classes where you're taking information or you're just listening to people lecturing at you. Our classes for our online programs have what we call this synchronous component where you are actually sitting in the classroom. You might be virtually doing it, but you are sitting in a classroom with the professor engaging with people in real time. So it's the exact same thing as if you were sitting in the actual physical classroom, but you're doing it in a way where you can take it wherever you are, whether that's at home or on the road. Second is your learning style. Some people just need to actually be in a physical space with people. Some people focus better that way. Some people feel more comfortable interacting, feel more comfortable raising their hands, having those types of discussions in person. Then we would say, hey, you know, a professional MBA or an executive mba, which are, you know, part time on campus, might make more sense for you. And then the other is like, you know, it really does come down to schedule as well. You know, like we have some people who look at our professional MBA and who look at our executive MBA and say, hey, you know, I could go either way. You know, there's people with all sorts of experience in the professional mba. There's people with all sorts of experience in the executive mba. But for me, you know, weeknights work better or, you know, coming in, you know, twice a month for a half day Friday and a full day Saturday. That just works better with my work schedule, with my travel schedule, or that works better for my family, that works better for my, for my management team at work. And then the last thing I'd like to just say is like, you know, if you need that flexibility, but you also like some of that in person aspect. What's great about the SMU Cocktail online MBA Direct for the early career track professionals as well as the online MBA is you can do that online, but you also have access to everything that we do on campus. So, you know, just because the evenings don't work out for you on a consistent basis, you can still come on campus, work with our career management Center. You can come to, you know, interact with clubs, events, things like that, do everything on campus. Just when it fits your schedule so you don't have to pick and choose or preclude yourself from some of those on campus experiences. And like I said, you don't have to know the answers. That's what admissions is here for. We want to talk you through it. We'll have conversations, we'll look at your resume. We'll help you kind of overcome having to make that decision yourself. If you, if you're not sure, just come talk to us. That's, that's, we want to help you and we want to guide you. That's our job.
• 19:51
  Speaker A: That's terrific to hear. Just because I do think some candidates might feel like, oh, you know, I kind of like both of these programs or even three of the different, you know, there could be a lot of, as you've just gone over, there are a lot of possibilities of, you know, ways to do this. And they might feel like if they come to admissions saying, I kind of like this one, or maybe that, that maybe that would be a bad signal to send or something because they're, you know, seem uncertain. But it sounds like that's totally fine, you're happy to work with them. And I'm hearing that. What should be driving this choice, though? Just in some of what you kind of indicated here, it sounds like you have your personal kind of preferences in terms of how you learn, what's your preferred learning style, but then obviously the constraints that might be in place because of your work or travel or where you're located. And so it sounds like there's a little bit of a balancing act there. It is nice to hear this idea that you're expressing about online still giving people access to some of the on campus experiences and interaction with career services, et cetera. So that's all terrific. One thing I have to ask you about is work life balance. We talk a lot on the show about full time mba. And so one of the things that always is curious to me about part time MBA and all these different offerings is that, you know, you're working and so you have to balance the degree with your job. And I'm wondering, like, what do prospective students tend to sort of underestimate about that balancing act? And you know, what separates the students who really are able to manage it successfully?
• 21:18
  Speaker B: That is a phenomenal question. And, and I think, let's, let's be honest, you know, if you are working full time and doing a part time, you know, MBA or working professional mba, you are going to be busy. And you need to know that and be committed to it, but it's a couple of years of your life. It's not, you know, your entire life that you, that you're taking on this, this commitment, right? And so what we like to tell people is think about this as maybe another part time job that you're taking on in addition to whatever family life you have going on, in addition to your full time career. So what's going to be really important is kind of setting those boundaries and protecting your time and your mental energy. Right? Like you need to go into this with a clear understanding of what is my plan and how am I going to make this work. And so that comes down to a couple of things. One is, I think before you even get started, if you have a family, if you have a spouse, if you have a partner, I think you need to have a real conversation with them about, hey, this is something that I really want to do and you need to get them on board. If you don't have that familial support, whether it's your parents, whether it's your spouse, whether it's, you know, a partner on board, you're, you're never going to be successful. Right? So I think it's important to make sure that you make sure your support systems are aligned. If you've got friends, you know, say, hey, you know, I might be doing a little less social stuff on the weekends because I'm catching up on homework, but that doesn't mean I care about you any less than I hope you'll support me on my journey. I think the other thing is you have your work, your work family or your work leadership, right? I think it's important to get them in on the conversation early and say, hey, I am really interested in pursuing this MBA for my development and you really want to highlight what's in it for them, not just what's in it for you, to make sure you get them on board. Because if you're doing a working professional mba, look, you're getting all these skills, you are learning from other people, you are going to be able to apply that and that's going to make you a better worker, a better leader, a better manager. And so if you can bring that into the workplace and even share some of what you're learning, then there's a lot of, I guess, what's in it for the organization. The second is really having a clear view of how you're going to plan and prioritize what's going on. So a lot of folks that are successful say, I have gone into my calendar. And I've kind of said I'm going to block these times out, whether it's nights that I don't have class, whether it's, I'm going to go to a library all of Saturday and just knock out all of my work. But they have a very clear plan of how they're going to attack the course load and the classes or the class responsibilities outside of school. And the very last thing that I would add is when you're a working professional, you know, sometimes you're going to have to figure out what really needs all of your extra time and what can kind of, you know, you can just get by with. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. But for instance, you know, if you have a really strong marketing background, maybe you spend a little bit less time in those marketing classes and really double down in finance and operations because those are new skills that you're looking to build. So kind of understanding what those trade offs are and where you lean in and maybe where you pull back based off of content, based off of expertise, maybe based off of where you're passionate and want to add value. If you're a marketing professional, that can add a lot of value to those group projects and you really want to, you know, teach your team. Maybe you spend more time there because you're more passionate about it and it helps you become a better marketer in, in the real world, I would say that's, that's kind of where those trade offs are going to be really, really important for you in terms of making some of those decisions. And that also helps kind of protect your time a little bit there as well.
• 25:17
  Speaker A: Okay, so a lot of good things to consider in terms of balancing this. But you know, obviously people do it all the time and it sounds like, you know, you've given us a really great blueprint for that. Let's talk a little bit about career impact. And I know you did mention some of this earlier in our discussion, but there's sometimes a stereotype out there that part time MBA students are primarily looking to just kind of move up in their existing company, get that promotion. But I want to know a little bit about what you actually see. And because it sounds like from some of the things you said earlier, people are pivoting, they're changing jobs, they're doing all kinds of things and accelerating as well. So yeah, just would love to hear a couple of comments on that.
• 25:53
  Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Like I like to say, in the working professionals programs, we are in the business of change. If you want to make that change. You can absolutely make it happen. One caveat to that, you have to be committed to wanting to make that change. That change is not just going to happen because you want it to. You will have to meet with careers, our career management center early. You will have to put in the work. You will have to have a clear view of what you want to do or a clear view of how you are going to figure out what you want to do. So I say that and in terms of this is a team exercise in order for you to see the outcomes that you or in order for you to manifest or actually accomplish the outcomes that you want to accomplish.
• 26:38
  Speaker A: Sure.
• 26:38
  Speaker B: That being said in our at smu, Cox, we like I said before, if you are looking for that advanced career placement within your organization, across all of our programs, you know, we see people who are looking to make those changes. You know, upwards of 80, 90% of people across programs are able to get those, get those promotions post graduation. You know, we see significant amounts of people making those career pivots, whether it's within function or within industry. And those vary a little bit across program. Not because one program is better or worse than the other, but different people have different needs and have different goals within organizations. Right? And so we see such positive ROI from people saying, hey, you know, I wanted to make this switch from, you know, this industry to this industry. We absolutely see that happen. We see people jump from companies all the time if they're interested in making, making those types of jumps. They leverage our team to really make all of that happen. And they're doing so successfully. Across all of our programs. We have this incredible managing your career class where we actually help people understand, even if you're not ready to make a change right now, but you might be thinking about it three, five, eight years from now, what are the skills that I need? How do I build a resume? How do I negotiate an offer? How do I make sure that I'm well prepared for an interview? Whether that's because it's, you know, behavioral, whether it's case, whether it's technical, we help you with all of those things. So we give you all the tools in your toolkit to make those changes, regardless of whether you're looking to do it now or looking to do it later. So if you're coming into a working professional program and you say, I want to make a change, our answer to you is absolutely, we can connect you with alumni who have done exactly what you've done before. We can connect you with people within organizations that can help guide you to make that step. We can set you up with a mentor who is within the field that you are interested in. So it's not just about the numbers, it's also about the resources of what we offer you and the fact that when you come to SMU and you leverage our career management center, you're not just getting that for the time that you're in the program, you're getting that for life and you're getting that support forever. Because sometimes you're not ready to make a change when you're in the program, but you're ready later. We'll know that we're always here to support you and we want to see you continue to be successful while you're in the program, after the program and, and we want to see our SMU Cox family continue to thrive no matter where they are in their careers and when they're looking to make those types of changes.
• 29:19
  Speaker A: So you know, you talked a little bit just as you were kind of going through this. You were talking a little bit about obviously it's more than the numbers but you did mention roi and I always that got me think about the investment that one makes in this kind of journey. You know, between tuition or you know, you know, student loans. There are all kinds of things that candidates might be considering. And you know, I just wondered how, how does someone evaluate the ROI for a working professional mba? Because obviously one of the big considerations when you're going to a full time MBA and you're quitting your job or something is oh my gosh, I'm without any salary. But I'm assuming that the fact that you continue to earn while you're in a working professional type program really boosts the ROI on degree. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
• 30:02
  Speaker B: Absolutely. So like you said, it's not just a tuition versus salary calculation at, at this point because you are continuing to earn while you are getting the mba. There is a cost to getting an mba. It is not for free and there is an investment. So you do need to kind of start with okay, what is the tuition? How am I going to pay for this, what am I financing? What are the other costs? And then you know, take into account the fact that you are continuing to work. So how does that change things? You're retaining your income, you likely have benefits within your company and you're continuing to accumulate professional experience while you're here. Then I like to say, okay, let's look at the potential career value over time. And that is not Just the first job or salary after graduation. We ask people, you know, when they're coming into an mba, what are your short term goals, what are your long term goals? And as you think about it, there's, there's the short term goal, like, okay, did I get that promotion coming out of the mba? Was I able to, to pivot into that function or that industry that may pay differently or better went, you know, straight out of the mba, great. But there's also the long term potential. You know, what is this going to give you access to in the long term? What roles, what advancement, mobility, leadership opportunities are you going to get? And how does that add value? So, you know, if you're building out your spreadsheet and you're trying to, you know, understand what you know the value is, there's a lot that, you know, you can't necessarily, necessarily quantify that really does add to this roi. You're building a network both with our alumni, with our peers, with organizations that hire from and like to see people coming out of the SMU Cox community. You're building confidence. I will tell you, one of the biggest things I got out of my MBA was additional confidence. I now know that I have the technical skills in some of these areas. I have a better integrated business knowledge. And I've learned from people not only within the organization that I worked in, but also from different functions, different industries, different companies. And that just adds to what I can bring to a workspace. And so that confidence is great. You have incremental business acumen that you didn't have before. You have access to the faculty and what you've learned from them and the access to the Career Management center both while you're there and going forward. So there's the value of that on an ongoing basis that can be extremely influential. I will tell you, so many of the jobs that I've had and I've had a pretty interesting and different career path has come out of my network. Whether it was, you know, at mit, that Career Management center, whether it was at bcg, that alumni network. I will tell you, I work at SMU today because of so many of the folks that I had gotten to know within the community who worked at SMU, who advocated for me. So there's so much within that network and those some intangible aspects that they need to think about. And just the overall ability to say, I'm an SMU Cox alum and have that MBA on your resume is also just something that has so much value that I don't know that we can necessarily quantify, but I know over and over and over again, alumni and current students tell us. That opens up so many doors for me. And I feel so proud to be a part of this community, both while in the program and after the program, because of everything that it has done for me. And we're all, you know, reaching out, picking people up, taking them along with us as part of that community. And that's really something special and something that I really just can't explain. You have to experience.
• 33:35
  Speaker A: Yeah, I'm so glad that you're commenting on that stuff, just because I think that there is a tendency to focus on the raw math of getting an mba and, you know, how much does it cost? What's the job? And what's so interesting is, you know, when I talk to MBA alumni, you know, they. They rarely say, oh, yeah, I spent this, and this was my first job out of school, and, you know, or this was the pivot I made, and this is how much I earned in the first couple years. It's. It's a much broader focus than that, and it often is about the relationships and the network and all the things that you've just listed. So, Radhika, I just. I want to ask you one more question. We'd love to get, just in closing here, your thought. You know, a lot of people who listen to this show are young professionals with a few years of experience, Right. And many of them know that an MBA could be in their future, but some of them aren't sure, like, when or should they leave work to do it, you know, or just, you know, do a working professional mba. And so I wondered if you just could give us, like, one bit of advice for that crowd. What should they be thinking about right now?
• 34:36
  Speaker B: Yeah, if you're thinking about an mba, I think the best thing that you can do is get more information. So this is where I'd say, even if you're just thinking about it, even if it's just, you know, starting to hit your radar, you can start having conversations early and start building kind of your set of data and insights to determine whether this makes sense for you. So I'd say, if you're thinking about it, start talking to admissions, have them guide you, and have a conversation with you about why you might be thinking about an mba, why it might fit within your career. Is this the right time for you? What does your resume look like? And we can help guide you to say, yeah, you know what? I think this might be a really good time for you. And here's why and here's the program that might make the most sense. You don't have to do this alone. If you're thinking about getting an MBA, talk to people who have gotten MBAs before you. I spend so much time on the phone with people explaining how my MBA experience was life changing for me, how it opened doors for me and why I thought about it at the time that I thought about it and why the particular program I chose was the right fit for me. But other programs might be the right fit for them or, you know, why they should consider an mba. Or maybe, you know, an MBA doesn't make sense until they have a better solidified view of what they want, want to get out of it. So I have those very open and honest conversations. So talk to other people who have gotten MBAs. I'd say the other thing is if you're thinking about an mba, talk to people within your organization, your leaders, your management. See what they think about it and if they think it might be a good use of your time. So the biggest thing I can say is if you're thinking about an MBA but you're not quite sure yet, start having conversations, start learning about how you might want to, to do this and start saving because there is a cost regardless of whether you're doing it full time or part time and start understanding how you can realistically make it happen. It is 100% worth it. The ROI is there. There is so much. I mean, the friends, the people that you are going to get to interact with, even from a social perspective, outside of all of the other positive benefits that I listed are going to be there for you. So if you're thinking about it, start getting the information and when you're, and you know, even if you're not sure you're ready, take the leap. Push yourself. An MBA is going to be a challenge. And the first step to challenging yourself and helping yourself grow is maybe talking to an admissions person, submitting an application and seeing if this is right for you.
• 37:10
  Speaker A: Yeah, that's terrific. And I think, you know, it's just been, yeah, it is, it is a bit of a leap that you take, but I think you're right. Push yourself. And those conversations are so critical. We've done a lot of research with candidates and we find that just talking to current students or recent alums has such an impact on one's journey through this process. So, Radhika, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your insights into all of the key decisions that go into finding the right type of MBA experience. It's been really great chatting, and I'm sure that our listeners have a better understanding of the options that are available to them at SMU Cox when it comes to all these different working professional programs. So really appreciate you making time today.
• 37:50
  Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much and I hope to see Yalls applications soon.
• 37:54
  Speaker A: All right, that's going to do it for this episode of the show. Stay tuned for our regular weekly episodes, and please remember to rate and review the Clear Admit podcast wherever you listen. Sam.