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Thank you to the more than 300 people
who participated in this poll. Please note this archived
poll was conducted during 2000, when the economy was
a bit different than it is now. Here are the results
and our original analysis.
Question: What
career path do you plan to pursue after completing your
MBA?
Our
thoughts on the post MBA career goal poll results
Venture
Capital
Venture capital is a hard
field to break into regardless of where you go for your
MBA. As a result, we are not surprised this received
the fewest number of votes.
Investment Banking
Investment banking has always
been a favorite career choice for new business school
graduates, particularly from schools such as Wharton,
Columbia, University of Chicago, and NYU/Stern. Be well
aware though that new investment bankers from the top
MBA programs really do work very long hours. For some
reason there seems to be a persistent myth that the
I-bankers don't pull frequent all-nighters. Expect to
work at least 100 hours a week if you
join a large, "bulge bracket" investment bank.
Fortune 500 Companies
The traditional Fortune 500
companies may not appear to be glamorous, but they will
likely continue to attract a large number of MBAs for
many reasons such as their relative stability and the
large scales they can bring to the projects they undertake.
Business planning, corporate finance, and investor relations
seem to be the three most favorite destinations inside
the Fortune 500s for newly-minted b-school graduates.
Internet/Hi Tech
Although the dot com start-ups
had never become that popular with MBA students, we
were still nonetheless surprised that more respondents
did not select Internet/Hi Tech as their post business
school career choice. While we are in complete awareness
of the current market unfavorability towards e-commerce
companies, we still believe that there is a viable place
in our global economy for dot com companies with solid
business models. (If you sell a product at a negative
gross profit margin, then yes, you will eventually lose
your source of financing and go out of business.)
Consulting
Consulting has
been a very popular career choice for new business school
grads for quite some time. Despite the current slowdown,
there are signs that consulting is poised to begin making
a major comeback within the next 1 to 2 years. If you
choose to go into consulting, you can expect relatively
long hours (about 60 to 70 hours per week) and heavy
travel (about 4 days a week for firms without a large,
local client base). Nonetheless, the experience and
the learning curve this profession can provide by getting
a chance to work on a lot of new, challenging projects
– many of which have never been previously undertaken
– attracts many new graduates to this field.
If you would
like more information on the post-MBA career options,
you may click
here to see our reviews on various venture capital,
consulting, and investment banking books.
We do consult
our clients on MBA career opportunities and we do advise
our clients on the feasibility of their future career
goals. We also help them select the best business schools
based on their career objectives, as well as many other
factors, and offer them advice to help them achieve
these goals.
Email us
to learn more about how we can help you.
We update our
poll periodically and we will continue to archive the
results of the previous polls so you can see how other
business school applicants voted on those topics as
well.
Do you have
an idea for a poll topic or any comments on our analysis?
Please email us
with your thoughts.
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