Hello,
I’ll graduate this spring with an HR degree and planning to apply to the MBA program right away.
which is Fall 2010.
The application deadline is on April 1 2010
However, they are asking for the 4 year degree but I’m still in my last year being an undergraduate student. So should I send my transcript and let them know this is my last term?
OR I should first be fully graduated in order to apply?
Graduate school isn’t right for everyone, but it does have its benefits. Take a look at 5 good reasons to go to graduate school and earn an MBA. See if any of them are right for your own personal, educational, and professional set of goals.
1. Show me the money: Like Cuba Gooding, Jr. said in Jerry McGuire, “Show me the money!” Typically, MBA graduates are more marketable to companies for management positions. Management positions usually pay more in salary than staff positions. And since a lot more companies today are making an MBA a condition for employment, by earning your MBA may actually mean that you will be “seeing more money!”
2. Professional growth & development: Many students enter an MBA program after they have been in the workforce for some time. This means that they have earned real-world experience after receiving their bachelor degree. Going back to grad school may simply be a personal or professional goal that you have set for yourself. By combining your real-world work experience with the advanced skills and training that graduate school can offer you, it can help you grow both personally and professionally.
3. Become a specialist: Many graduate schools allow you to choose a specialty when you are earning your MBA. This allows you to further advance your general business skills while becoming an expert in a particular field. For example, you may currently work in the marketing department of your company as a marketing assistant. You aspire, however, to become a marketing manager for one of the divisions of your company and one of the requirements for marketing managers at this particular firm is that they have to have their MBA. You can return to graduate school and earn your MBA with a special concentration in marketing. Even if it doesn’t land you a marketing management position in your current firm, it may very well land you one in another firm.
4. Opens doors of opportunity: Earning an MBA degree can open up doors of opportunity that may not have been opened without having one. Numbers don’t lie and the numbers show that MBA graduates have an increased chance of gaining access to the position that was beyond their reach before they earned their degree. You too may be able to land your dream job by going to graduate school and earning your MBA.
5. Build a network: Sometimes being successful in business and just in life in general is about who you know versus what you know. In grad school you are introduced to all different kinds of people from all different walks of life. Your peers and your professors are great resources for you in the business world. Graduate school allows you to build your own framework of a support and contact system to build strong business relationships.
While these are 5 great reasons to attend graduate school, you may have reasons of your own that are not listed here. Take out a piece of paper and make yourself a list of the reasons why you think you want to go to graduate school, and how earning your MBA may benefit you. Make an old fashioned pros and cons list and see which side has more reasons, pros or cons. The odds are that you will probably find more positive reasons to earn your MBA degree than you will find reasons not to attend grad school.
While every individual has their own reason or reasons for choosing to attend graduate school, there are two main reasons that usually come into play. The two most beneficial reasons for choosing to attend graduate school are:
1. To pursue careers in law, medicine, and university teaching an advanced degree is a requirement.
2. Professionals who wish to advance their careers receive in-depth training and acquire advanced skills in their area of study. Sometimes the purpose of gaining this knowledge is for personal growth and development and sometimes it is for career advancement and development.
So ask yourself these burning questions. The “why” you should attend graduate school just may appear while you are going through this little self-quiz. The answers to the questions will help you to analyze your own reasons for considering earning an advanced degree.
What kind of career do I want to pursue? Does this career choice require a graduate degree?
Certain career paths do require graduate degrees. If you want to be a doctor then there is no way around it. You will have to go to graduate school. Maybe you do not know what career you wish to pursue in the long run. That’s ok. Many graduates with bachelor degrees enter the workforce to gain experience to help them figure out what they truly want to do with their lives. After a few years (or sometimes more) these professionals may go back to school to earn their graduate degree for one of the two main reasons listed above.
Am I interested and motivated by the area of specialty that I would be pursuing?
While undergraduate school requires you to choose a major, the course of study offered to you is the broad and the basic knowledge of that study area. The focus of study in a graduate program is much more narrow on a specialty or specific area of interest. If you have no desire to further explore this area of study, then graduate school may not be the place for you. If you feel motivated and excited by delving into the depths of the specialty, then graduate is an option for you.
What types of job positions are advanced degree candidates in my area of interest currently involved in?
Do a little research and find out what graduates of your area of study are doing now. What type of achievements have they made? Where are they currently working? What do their jobs entail? Many colleges and universities publish this information about their graduates. You can also find companies that have positions that you are interested in pursuing and read biographies of their officers and directors, owners, and employees. This biographical information usually lists the degrees that they hold. You may even be able to contact school alumni or professionals to ask them questions about attending graduate school with relation to their current job position, etc.
Graduate school is not a place for everyone. You have to have the desire, motivation, and willingness to learn and take on new experiences. There are benefits to attending graduate school, but it is important to make sure that they are actual benefits to your personal situation.
If a person is going to be graduating from graduate school, should they get a class ring? What if they were graduating from an online degree? Does it matter what kind of degree it is?
What about for a Master of Arts?
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I’m thinking of going back to get a Masters Degree and if I could do my classes over the internet it would be much more convienent, but I’m not sure if those degrees are worth anything.
My overall GPA is 2.35, I am trying to raise it to 2.5 by Spring 2009. My last 60 units will be about 2.6-2.7. I don’t have any research experiences nor any work experiences. What are the chances that I will get accepted into one of the CSUs for Clinical Psychology Graduate program?
If you have graduated from an online school with a degree in psychology, I would like to know if it was difficult to find a job. What school did you graduate from and was it APA acredited? Did you achieve a Master’s or Doctorate degree? Was it very difficult to find a job in your field after graduating from an online school? Where are you working now, and in what area of psychology? Thanks, your answers will help me in my decision about going back to school!
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I did my graduate degree through an online program and then went on to do my post graduate degree from a recognized school, there weren’t any issues but recently the local franchise through which I did my graduate program closed their operations and just to ensure that all is good I tried to get my credentials verified from the University and they refused to acknowledge the degree. Though I have a post graduate degree from another University but I am still concerned because while I have a Masters degree I don’t have a Bachelors degree anymore! Please suggest what should I do? Should I register myself into another bachelors program and if I do so, what will be the standing of my post graduate degree or is there any other option which I can opt?
As Rensselaer celebrates its transformation over the last decade under The Rensselaer Plan, the Lally School of Management & Technology is celebrating a similar transformation. Today’s Lally is a very different school than the Lally one may have known in the past.
In keeping with Rensselaer’s leadership in “the application of science to the common purposes of life,” Lally’s focus on the strategic management of technology leverages the strengths of RPI, and serves a key purpose within the Institute. As Rensselaer’s business school, Lally connects the technological innovation emerging from a major research university with commercial enterprise and an understanding of global markets, so that new technologies can reach industries and consumers worldwide. Indeed, it is often through business enterprises that technology can “change the world,” and that research innovations can accomplish societal benefit.
In implementing the goal of achieving excellence as a world-class business school, Lally has undertaken a series of changes in the last five years that have strengthened both our faculty and our curriculum.
Not surprisingly, the world is beginning to take notice. We, at Lally, are proud to report that the Lally School is now ranked as a leading business school in publications such as Business Week, U.S. News & World Report, Entrepreneur magazine and The Princeton Review.
For three years in a row, Business Week has ranked Lally in the top 50
undergraduate business programs in America. Lally ranked #36 overall in Business Week’s 2009 Top Undergraduate Business Programs, and #21 for academic quality (tied with Cornell).
Business Week’s 2009 Specialty Rankings put Lally at #7 in Ethics, #7 in Calculus, #9 in Sustainability and #12 in Quantitative Methods.
U.S. News & World Report America’s Best Business Schools 2010 Ranked Lally in #27 in Entrepreneurship.
Entrepreneur Magazine’s MBA Student Survey ranked Lally in the Top 15 Business schools in Operations
Princeton Review named Lally to its “301 Best Business Schools: 2010 Edition”
Lally received an Eduniversal 4 Palmes Award as one of the Top 1000 International Business Schools
Rensselaer has achieved distinction by focusing on its unique strengths. At Lally, we have achieved success with a similar focus on interdisciplinary studies, interactive learning, and technological entrepreneurship. In addition, Lally has continued to expand our global reach and impact. Key elements of our success have been:
Building a dynamic, world-class faculty: Hired eighteen new faculty members since 2005, creating a teaching team of pre-eminent scholars and rising stars.
Creating Unique, Interdisciplinary Graduate Programs Building on Rensselaer’s Technical Strengths Lally has launched new graduate programs in Financial Engineering and Risk Analytics (with 5 Rensselaer departments) and Technology Commercialization and Entrepreneurship (with 12 Rensselaer Departments and Albany Law School) to train the next generation of entrepreneurs and leaders to respond to complex and changing markets.
Expanding our Global Reach and Impact Recognizing that technology is the global ‘language’ of the 21st century, Lally offers a growing portfolio collaborative programs with enterprises and leading academic institutions in the Indian sub-continent, China, Europe, and the Middle East. We welcome a truly international student body and equip our students with the skills to work and compete in a global marketplace.
Supporting an “Innovation Ecosystem” for Technology Commercialization and Emerging Entrepreneurs Lally strives to create an environment that fosters innovation, entrepreneurship and technology commercialization. Lally offers not only relevant coursework, but also connections with the entrepreneurial business community and a dynamic group of entrepreneurs in residence, as well as other out-of-classroom experiences. The Severino Center, our flagship Center of Excellence for entrepreneurial education, has built a local university-community Severino interest group (the “SIG”) with over 900 community members in the Capital District, with similar groups underway in the Silicon Valley and Europe. Lally has also developed a ‘living laboratory’ to support student entrepreneurship and technology commercialization that is called the Innovation Ecosystem, which includes a full spectrum of programs such as the Tech Launch Pad course, the SIG Breakfast and lecture series, Idea2Business, the pre-seed venture plan workshop, the Entrepreneur of the Year celebration, and the Lally Innovation Competition for MBA scholarships (http://www.lallymbacompetition.com).
Cultivating Thought Leadership in Management of Technology Programs like the Lally Innovation Series bring noted industry experts such as New York Stock Exchange Chairman Marshall Carter to campus to speak with Lally students and the Rensselaer community on current business challenges. Lally has also launched two new Centers of Excellence to further research in finance and international business: the International Center for Financial Research and the Center for Global Business and Political Economy.
Anticipating Business Education Trends: In response to market demand and changes in the global economy, Lally continues to innovate by creating accelerated and flexible graduate management degree tracks. For example, Lally has developed programs for early identification and recruiting of leadership talent, admitting a select group of recent undergraduates, as our top-tier competitors do. As part of this effort to recruit top undergrads, Lally continues to expand our co-terminal programs for Rensselaer undergraduates. For established executives, Lally has recently streamlined the Executive MBA program, allowing working professionals to earn an MBA in just 17 months. Finally, we have recently developed a 51-credit hour MBA format, which will allow qualified students to earn an MBA in as little as one year.
