The world of graduate management education is rich with choices – there are thousands of programmes, varying in emphasis, audience and quality.

So, when you are choosing a programme -MBA or Master’s - it is very important to be clear about what you want from a programme and to assess how far the various options meet your needs. Most importantly, Do your research.

Hopefully, this `Rough Guide to MBA and Master’s programmes’ will give you a starting point.

MBAs – to advance or change your career

As a general rule, MBA programmes are all about general management. They cover all the disciplines that you need to know in order to understand business and perfect your skills as a manager. Expect to cover: Finance, Marketing, Organisational Behaviour, Strategy, Economics, Accounting, Ethics and CSR – and so on. Often (but not always) schools expect significant work experience. On full time courses you will typically see an age range of around 23 to 30 in the US and 26 to 35 in Europe. Many of the participants are looking for some sort of change. They want to turbo - charge their career or switch sectors, roles or location.

In the US the majority of full time MBA programmes are around two academic years of study. In Europe, the norm is shorter – around one academic year.

Master’s programmes – to kick start your career

Generalist Programmes

Master’s programmes can be generalist too – especially the “pre-experience Master’s programmes”. You will study very similar subjects to an MBA –but, obviously, the participants will not bring as broad or as deep a range of professional experience to the classroom.

Generalist Master’s are increasingly common, especially in Europe, and are often aimed at younger students and emphasise preparation for a career. They can be as short as one year or as long as two or three.

Specialist Programmes

Specialist Master’s programmes do what you would expect from the name. They are focussed on a specialist areas of study –perhaps Finance; Accounting or Marketing. These programmes can be `pre-experience’ and aimed at people who have recently completed a first degree or who have little work experience. They can also be `post-experience’ – attracting people with similar amounts of work experience to MBA students – who want to immerse themselves in a particular area – to really drill in to a given set of knowledge and skills.

For many people, a specialist Master’s degree is their only post graduate degree. Others take a specialist Master’s and then return to do an MBA some years later. Others may earn an MBA first and study a specialist Master’s later in their career.

Quality Counts

Whatever programme suits you best, it is important to make sure that it is of the highest quality.

You probably already look at school web sites and read each school’s literature. However, have you checked to see whether a school is accredited (perhaps by AACSB; AMBA or EFMD)? You may also want to review various rankings,(noting that they all have different methodologies – some better and some worse.

The really well prepared candidate recognises that if there is one single thing that will impact the quality of his or her experience in a programme it is who you sit next to – the quality of fellow students.

So, it is especially important to look at admissions requirements. Are they rigorous? Do they test the right things? Does the school use an admissions test that has been designed specifically for business schools, like the GMAT® exam (see www.mbac.com) which is used by almost 5,000 programmes (MBA and Master’s degrees) in some 2,000 schools worldwide?

Julia Tyler, GMAC ®
Vice President, Europe, Middle East and Africa.

(Note the views in this article are the author’s alone.)