“I think the one-year program has done exactly what I wanted out of an MBA,” says Chang, who recently graduated with her quickie MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. A business education staple in Europe, the one-year MBA has yet to gain significant steam in the states. Yet, with the soaring costs of traditional two-year programs, the less expensive one-year option seems to be gaining ground.
These accelerated degrees certainly are not MBA-lites. Elite schools such as Kellogg, Cornell’s Johnson School of Management and Emory’s Goizueta Business School all have one-year offerings. Throw in Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business and four of Poets&Quants’ top 25 schools have a one-year option, which excludes the Stanford Graduate School of Business MSx program and the MIT Sloan Fellows Program. In total, 21 of the Poets&Quants’ top 100 MBA programs house a one-year MBA.
AN EXTENSION TO STRONG UNDERGRADUATE BUSINESS DEGREES
The path to programs like Kellogg, Goizueta, Cornell Johnson and Notre Dame are similar to Chang’s journey. Those programs essentially leverage an elite undergraduate business degree for much of the core work, allowing students to almost immediately jump into gradate-level electives. After graduating from MIT’s Sloan School of Management with an undergraduate degree, Chang spent time working at WebMD and most recently, New York City-based startup Visible Measures, where she worked her way up from being the only salesperson in a 20-employee venture to vice president of sales and marketing as the company ballooned to 150 in four years. The Los Angeles native boasts a top-shelf undergraduate degree, early career success, and is not looking to significantly jump industries.
“If you are not using the MBA as a tool to make a career change and are interested in staying in a similar or the same industry, then the one-year option becomes much more interesting,” says Matthew Merrick, the associate dean of MBA operations at Kellogg. Similarly, the Babson College one-year program is essentially an extension of a strong undergraduate business degree. “Our one-year program is structured for those who have an undergraduate business background, to leverage their existing academic foundation to complete the MBA in an accelerated format,” says Elizabeth Resker, the assistant director of graduate admissions at Babson. “There are several academic pre-requisites for the program and typically those who have a BSBA degree should qualify.”
NOT AN “MBA-LITE”
Still, Merrick says not to look at a one-year MBA as an “MBA-lite.” “It’s not a siloed version of our two-year program or an MBA-lite,” Merrick continues. “This is the full MBA experience, and we’re just giving you some credit for your undergraduate academic experiences.”
Perhaps most interesting is the sticker price of the degree when compared to two-year programs. At Kellogg, for instance, the total cost for a two-year MBA (tuition plus living expenses) is more than $186,000, but the one-year offering comes nearly $60,000 cheaper at around $128,000. Emory Goizueta’s one-year is even less, $117,000, a $45K discount to the two-year version, which surpasses $162,000. While technically not a one-year program, Columbia Business School’s J-Term — a January start-time that shortens the full-time two-year MBA to 16 months. With Columbia’s estimated yearly cost of nearly $100,000, cutting the first year in half can be an attractive option for MBAs not looking to participate in an internship.
Of course, the other side to consider is outcomes. At Cornell Johnson, only 64% of 2015 one-year graduates reported a job offer at graduation, compared to 85% in the two-year program. One-years gained ground three months after commencement, with a jump to 84% reporting offers and two-years reporting 92% with offers. However, there is one head-scratching surprise: Graduates from the one-year MBA program reported higher median salaries of $122,500, compared to $119,100 for two-year MBAs. At Notre Dame’s Mendoza College, two-year MBAs out-performed their one-year counterparts in the most recent employment report. Some 93% of two-year MBAs reported pocketing job offers with average salaries of $108,219. Meantime, just 84% of one-year MBAs held offers three months after graduation with an average salary of $100,052.
INCREASING CAMPUS INTEGRATION AND COHORT COHESIVENESS
Another hesitation for the one-year option is that there often is less integration with other options and about half a year less bonding time with classmates. These are both issues elite programs are addressing head-on. At Goizueta, Katie Lloyd, senior director of MBA admissions and one-year program operations, says the school has created “thoughtful activities” to “ensure synergy” and “help bring the two groups together as seamlessly as possible.”
At the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, nurturing classmate bonding goes to another level. Students of the one-year IBEAR MBA program are incentivized to live together in an apartment complex seven miles west of the downtown Los Angeles campus. Program Director Richard Drobnick predicts about 40 of the 55 students currently in the program — and their families — are living in the complex. Students are given a subsidy of $18,000 for a two-room spot and $12,000 for a one-room place. However, Drobnick says those amounts are decreasing to $12,000 and $9,000, respectively, for next year’s cohort.
“We offer subsidies to attract our folks to live in one complex,” Drobnick explains. “It reduces the stress on spouses. It gets the Korean children, the American children and the Chinese children to play together. The students can come home from class at 6 or 7 at night, have a meal with their family and go into study groups without the transportation costs.” Drobnick says the living situation has helped foster life-long relationships and created an “incredibly intense community.”
TWO TYPES OF ONE-YEAR MBA STUDENTS
While the IBEAR program’s graduating class boasts an average age of 33 and work experience of 10 years, Kellogg’s population is more akin to the traditional two-year MBA population. So much so, Merrick admits not being able to always tell them apart. “I can’t tell the difference when I talk to them,” he says. Full immersion into two-year clubs and extra-curricular activities is one of the major draws for one-year students at Kellogg, Merrick believes.
“When I see them around the cafeteria or wherever, the degree of integration the 1Y students have with students in other programs is really high,” Merrick insists. “I think the reason some students come here when considering other schools is they get the full Kellogg experience compared to the two years.”
It was certainly a draw for Chang. “I knew the program was going to be supportive of my career path and also inclusive,” says Chang. “But I don’t think I understood how inclusive and how much the program, faculty and peers are really focused on doing what is best for each individual student.”
Chang was able to participate in the school’s highly popular KWEST (Kellogg Experiences & Service Trips) program–a weeklong trip in which second years lead about 25 incoming MBAs on a service and bonding excursion before the term begins. “The moment you come on campus, you have this community already,” Chang says of the trip. Chang has also held on-campus leadership roles, serving as co-president of Kellogg Entrepreneurs Organization and marketing director of Kellogg’s Women’s Business Association. “I think you get the same experience you get from a two-year MBA, but you also are able to take advantage of all the opportunities at Kellogg,” Chang believes.
GOIZUETA REVAMPED ONE-YEAR PROGRAM THREE YEARS AGO
Community is also an advantage at Goizueta, says Lloyd. While students are subjected to a more intense course-load and don’t get to participate in an internship or semester abroad, Lloyd says students in Goizueta’s one-year program enjoy different perks. “With a smaller class (with an annual intake of 66 students), we are able to offer unique leadership training, networking opportunities, and experiential learning activities like company field visits and a client project in their first semester,” she says.
Even with not having an entire semester abroad, graduating one-year MBA Amanda Pegues says she was able to travel to seven different countries during her year in Emory’s program. Pegues, who came into the program with about six years of experience and degrees in economics and international studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says the one-year option was the better fit. “I felt like the opportunity cost of being out of work for two years was too high for me, but I really wanted the opportunity to focus and dedicate my time as a full-time student,” she says.
Lloyd says about three years ago, the school had a revamp of the program to help students feel like they were getting more of a “full MBA experience.” This included changes in the way Goizueta marketed and delivered the program. “We used to focus more on the undergraduate academic experience that applicants were bringing to the program and we shifted to place more of an emphasis on professional backgrounds and career aspirations,” says Lloyd. Also, Lloyd says the school added “several enhancements.”
“Specifically, the program now starts with two-weeks of on-boarding,” Lloyd begins, “which provides team-building exercises, academic boot camp sessions, and opportunities for the students to meet their new classmates, faculty, staff, and extended members of the Goizueta community. Then, the academic portion of the program begins.”
GMAT BEATERS NEED NOT APPLY
While programs like Kellogg, Cornell, Goizueta, Babson and others generally attract a younger and more domestic population, USC’s IBEAR is geared to an entirely different graduate student. Drobnick advises applicants to make sure they know which school is the best fit and to target schools accordingly–or, look past the rankings. “To go to Emory or Northwestern or any of these other one-year programs, it’s just a mistake,” Drobnick says of the older, more international students attending the IBEAR. “It’s a mistake because our incoming class has an average student who is 35, with 11 years of working experience.”
The biggest draw of USC’s program, Drobnick believes, is the classroom learning experience. “If you go to a program with 27 year olds, you’re not going to learn a lot from them,” claims Drobnick. “I’m not saying 27 year olds at Emory or Northwestern aren’t good, strong people. They just don’t have the same work experience to bring to a classroom discussion.”
Consequently, Drobnick says for admissions into IBEAR, work experience trumps pretty much everything else. “If you have a 720 or 750 GMAT, that’s nice, but if your work experience is running a restaurant, don’t apply to us. We don’t want someone with 10 years of experience that just flat lines.” Also, don’t apply if your an American with no ambition or plan to be engaged in international business. “We turn a lot of people away that on paper look good. But we want Americans who have ideally lived overseas and speak a couple languages,” Drobnick continues. “If not that group, we want Americans that say, ‘in my future career, I really want to get involved with doing business with the world.’ And that’s a small set of people.”
INFLUX IN JAPANESE AND KOREAN MARKETS
While GMAT scores for incoming students in two-year programs continues to soar well into the 700s, the elite one-year programs tend to have median and average GMAT scores in the 600s. Since input stats of one-year programs are not included in B-school rankings, it also allows more slack in accepted GMAT scores and other metrics. Acceptance rates are almost always more generous in one-year programs as well. Stanford’s MSx program, a great option for “older” professionals aged 30 to 34, accepts about one in four applicants. That contrasts with the puny 6.1% acceptance rate for its two-year program.
Drobnick also believes rankings shouldn’t be considered as much for one-year programs. Despite a $4,500 security deposit, Drobnick says the IBEAR regularly loses four or five international students each class to brand-name programs like Stanford’s MSx program and the MIT Sloan Fellows Program. “Internationally, the Stanford and MIT brands are stronger,” Drobnick admits. “Especially in the Japanese and Korean cultures, brand will trump quality of experience. And I think the quality of experience in our program beats all of them.”
In the most recent applicant cycle, Drobnick laments losing two Japanese bankers to higher-ranked Emory Goizueta–just because of B-school rankings. “They come and have a great experience and meet with our alumni in Tokyo and then we get this pointed letter from the guy,” Drobnick begins. “It says, ‘I’m really sorry, I really want to be in your program. But the HR manager of the bank says I have to go to a higher ranked program.” Interestingly, Lloyd mentioned without prompt a new emphasis in courting Japanese and Korean students. Both cited renewed sponsorship interest in Japanese and Korean companies as reasons for the influx.
TWO SIMILAR PROGRAMS AT KELLOGG
At Kellogg, Merrick is less concerned with rankings and losing students to rivals. He’s more attuned to making sure the market knows the one-year program exists. “We want to get the word out that this is an option for students bringing a lot of academic experience to the table and are not concerned about internships,” he says. “They get the same Kellogg experience that a two-year student can get.”
For Chang, who was looking at both two-year and one-year options, Merrick’s latter thought rings true. “I wouldn’t look at it as different programs, it all feels like the two-year MBA,” she says. The engagement Chang has experienced is exactly why Merrick believes applicants should look at the program he has directed for the past eight months.
“What makes us so strong and differentiates us as a program is we are not just about the transaction of getting your MBA,” Merrick believes. “We offer the Kellogg experience which starts with our focus on the customer, gets students to work in a collaborative environment, and engages students inside and outside the classroom at very high levels.”
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Source: http://docphy.com/business-industry/higher-education/best-one-year-mba-programs-u-s.html
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