Why did I want an MBA?

If you plan on doing an MBA - the first thing that you will be asked by pretty much everyone (friends, colleagues, the neighborhood watchman and, most importantly the school that you are trying to get an admit into) is, why you want to do the MBA.

So why did I want to do an MBA? Why did I want to go back to school when I am doing reasonably well in my career at the moment. I have a family depending on me and I am not exactly in my mid-twenties where I can bravely take any decisions without worrying about any of the resulting consequences. Although it's nice to say that one should not worry about money it's pretty difficult to dismiss it.

Moreover, I would need to spend at least 2 years of my life studying - not to mention take huge loans - with the hope of making a much better income than I would otherwise. Also did I really need an MBA to succeed in my career? Do I really slog for the next couple of years while I could perhaps show the same dedication to work and succeed? Could I afford a full time MBA since I already had a family - I mean not just in terms of money, but also in terms of having to relocate without my family (I would miss two years of my son's life)!

Even assuming I wanted an MBA I had no clue as to what kind of work would I need to do to get into a program of repute? I would need to study for my GMAT again - all Indian colleges of repute require you to have a score valid for two years and it had been three years since I had last done mine. Should I go for an Indian college which would be relatively cheaper (with limited international visibility) or try for an international university? Would I want to do a part time program where I could work and allay some of the costs of the program by working or a full time program where I could get a well recognized degree with the caveat of it being part time.

All these questions bogged me down for the better part of two years. Ultimately I decided that if I wanted to make any brave decisions regarding my career I had better make them in the next five years. The only way I was going to be able to do so was if I did something that could make me ready for any job - technical/non-technical. I believe that I already had the technical angle covered - however there was the whole management/business angle. Although I have reached the lower/mid management ladder without the aid of any business degree - it will take ages for me to grow quickly. The only way to prove yourself in a new role is if you are offered it - and of course nobody will unless you have something to show that you are capable of doing so. So I decided that I had to an MBA although I had no clue as to where I could apply.

So along came the MBA@UNC. My sister had heard about this course first. The MBA@UNC contacted her back in 2011 (when they started) and asked her if she would like to apply. Unfortunately as she did not have enough work experience she was unable to apply for it. However, the program seemed to be a perfect fit for me. The best part about this course is that it is the same (not like or similar to) as a full time on-campus MBA at the Kenan-Flagler Business School in Chapel Hill - one of the top business schools in the world. The only difference between the traditional two year course and this is that the content for this course is delivered online. Although I was skeptical I figured that not only would I be able to get an MBA, I could continue working as well. This meant that not only would I be able to offset some of the tuition costs, I would more importantly remain in the job market while I studied. I was also excited about the fact that I would be able to apply and use everything I learned in class at work immediately. The clincher though was the fact that I could continue to live with my family without having to uproot and move elsewhere.

Given this I figured I'd give the program a shot and started the application process.

To be continued....

Torn between relief and regret!

To say that the last few weeks of my life have been pretty packed, could qualify to be the understatement of the year! Not only did I have quizzes, finals, and, homework due but I was also in charge of a project that had just completed development and needed to be turned over our client for acceptance testing. Due to this, not only did I have to work longer than normal hours at the office but, I was also in a constant dilemma  about when I could  eke out time to study for my exams.

Just to make things more interesting, I found out the day before the weekend of my first exam that I needed to work through the weekend to ensure that our project was defect (at least show-stopper) free. I have to admit that I didn't see much of my bedroom over the past one week. Little wonder that I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I submitted my last final for this quarter today!

Although it may seem that I am whinging here, I would be lying if didn't tell you that I have thoroughly enjoyed being a full time employee and a full time MBA student over the past two months. Despite getting about 4 hours of sleep on average (with a standard error of 3 hours) over the past 40 days (you can figure out the std deviation and confidence intervals for this from the information I have provided), I have to say that opting to set my nose to the grindstone intentionally has been brilliant experience so far.

I took two courses this quarter - Analytical Tools and Financial Accounting. I couldn't claim my academics have been stellar but, I have learned a lot of practical lessons from my classes.  These classes have given me a ton of new ideas to use at my job! For example, I am planning to evaluate how well we are estimating time and effort on our projects currently by converting old project plans into activity-on diagrams (more details later) and modeling our effort estimates on the normal/triangular/binomial distribution. At the same time, I am really looking forward to consuming bid data for past projects to see if I can discern a pattern wrt our wins and losses. This should allow me to gather some metrics on the kind of projects we bid for (our cilents' sizes and the industries that they are in). Once the legwork for collecting the data is done, I hope to create a regression model so that can be extended to forecast the likelihood of winning/losing future projects based on current data.

Given that just a couple of classes have made such a difference to the way I perceive work now, I can't wait to get started with my classes next quarter (although I am thrilled that I don't have any exams/homework due for the next few weeks).

This is my first post on this blog. Although I started this when I got in, I just have not made the effort to post anything on here. Regardless, better late than never! In the next few posts coming up shortly I intend to go back to how and when I decided to apply for this course and what I did to get in to the MBA@UNC.