The changing face of the part-time MBA a la Investment Banking

The full time MBA program has always been a vehicle for students to change careers. Now, however, with cut throat competition, peer pressure and of course the proverbial carrot at the end of the stick: Money/moolah/rokda whatever you want to call it, is causing most students to switch careers into something lucrative. Let’s be honest here: you may embellish your altar ego with all the selfless rhetoric in your essays depicting the altruistic self that you are and how you want to change society etc (no harm in doing that, don’t get me wrong), but deep down inside your solipsist self knows why you are applying to b-school.. doesn’t it ?

According to the school stats, 57% of the Evening Students are from a non-finance background. (I took the liberty to include industries such as Engineering, Consulting, Information Systems, Project Management, Telecom in the so called ‘non-financial’ bucket and hence monikered students from these industries as career switchers). This number is even higher for the Weekend Students. Competition is forcing students to move into other fields like banking (and consulting). People are trying to get into part time mba programs to (1) make a career switch (2) do this without any downtime (like enrolling in a full time program), because of their strong belief that they will switch careers with ease?

The next time you attend class (il est: if you are a GSB student), ask the person sitting next to you if that student is trying to switch careers. My informal experiment revealed every 1.21 students out of 2 want to switch careers and every 0.82 student(s) out of 2 want(s) to switch careers into banking.

<Digression>What makes me think that the average Indian part-time student is trying to jump ship. As I mentioned above, ask around in your class. Also, if you are from Aamchi Mumbai (yours truly is !!), then you would have noticed that from the Bandra Kurla complex to Nariman Point (which has been the quintessential banking district so far), the sentiment for investment banks opening shop is very bullish. India is still roaring on the banking side. Deals are still being done a plenty. I’ll post a treatise on this later<end of digression>

Truly, even if 50% of such students want to get into banking, then that’s a big amount of career switchers. But does that mean they are driving the appropriate vehicle to do so vis-a-vis the part time program?

The part time program is structured around the fact that employers sponsor the education to some extent and hence do not expect the student to jump ship right away. But that is the truth. There are still students who do come into the program in the hope that the MBA will help them climb the corporate ladder. But they are soon engulfed in the glamor that is IB. This is either from the reputation of the school or just exposure to actual salary figures that the people in this field make. As a result, their first instinct IS to jump ship. Some of them with visa regulations (viz. H-1B etc) are not as fortunate however. The rest do all they can to get into banking. However the biggest hurdle for a part timer is the fact that they are not allowed to attend the OCR (on campus recruiting) for internships, herewith referred to as OCR-I . This is not the same as the OCR for full time jobs (herewith referred to as OCR-J), in which the part timers are allowed to, along with the full timers. If a part timer wants to attend the OCR-I, he/she will need to heavily network with the companies the student is interested in getting into. Then, if and only if, the company decides to interview this part timer, they will express their wish to meet the part timer on campus. This is the only way one can attend the OCR-I. However the timeline on this system is skewed. The OCR-I starts from late Nov-Feb during the first year. Most of the companies are done hiring the interns by Feb end. Which means that the part timer needs to start hobnobbing with companies as soon as they are admitted into the school. However because of the inherent nature of the part time program, the student is not aware of this until March/Apr the following year. Because that is the timeframe a naive part timer has to endure before going through the epiphany that IB it is. But by then it is too late to apply for internships for the upcoming summer (which would be their first summer in school) and one has to then forego their first summer and try hunting down an internship next summer.

So how do you get around the system: if you want to get an internship during your first summer (and you are a part timer), then it’s your effort all the way. You cannot be perceived as risk averse for a banking job. You need to show you have taken risks. For starters, quit your job and get an internship if you are that serious ( am doing something similar and you can read about it here). Attend all the banking events at school, attend the under-emphasized workshops given by the wonderful hard-working staff at the GSB Career Services. Talk to people and keep refining your resume. Get upto speed by fine-tuning your lingo/IB-speak. Remember.. all odds are against you given the current state of the economy and the dismal fortunes of the deal business. In the US, Leveraged Finance is down 82% this yr, while announced M&A is down 64% and fee income from private equity firms is down 74% (according to data from Dealogic). Also remember that banks may have overhired this year and will not necessarily hire dozens next year. So the onus is on you. Make an informed decision.

Either ways, in my opinion, the bottom line is: the GSB Career Services has to have a tighter integration between the full-time and the part-time recruiting programs. Although the OCR-J tries to bridge the gap between the two programs, its the OCR-I that creates a big divide between the two.