Is an MBA Worth It? My Controversial Take After Going to Kellogg

The unpopular truth about business school, top-15 programs, and why going straight from undergrad is a terrible idea

I get asked this all the time: “Should I get an MBA?”

Here’s my answer, and it’s going to be a hot take. You don’t have to agree with me. This is my opinion, but it’s based on my own journey, hundreds of conversations, and my experience being part of the MBA recruiting team for a consulting firm.

Here it is: You should only pursue an MBA if you already have at least three years of professional experience post-undergrad AND you are looking to make a significant career pivot or accelerate your current path.

And if you do decide to go, I strongly recommend you aim for one of the top 15 business schools.

Let me break down why.

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Going Right After Undergrad Is a Mistake

First, pursuing an MBA immediately after your undergraduate degree, with no professional experience, puts you at a massive disadvantage.

I know some schools offer these 5-year programs where they push you to get their MBA right after undergraduate. They are just trying to suck as much money as possible from you.

What they don’t always tell you is that you will be competing for the exact same MBA-level jobs and internships as people who are 28 years old with five years of elite work experience at top companies.

Who do you think the recruiter is going to choose?

On top of that, many top companies only recruit MBA candidates from a specific list of schools. If your program isn’t on that list, you’re not even in the running.

It can be a huge waste of time and money.

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Not All MBAs Are Created Equal

This brings me to my second point: the importance of a top-tier school.

The hard truth is that not all MBAs are created equal. The world’s most sought-after companies, the McKinseys, the Amazons, the Goldman Sachs, the Googles, have deep, established relationships with the top 15 programs.

They have recruiting slots that are informally reserved for those students. It’s a closed system in many ways.

And you don’t have to take my word for it. Do this yourself: go on LinkedIn. Look up a dream company of yours. Look at the people in the roles you want, and see where they got their MBA.

You will see the same handful of schools over and over again.

I’m not saying it’s impossible to break in from a lower-tier school, but it is going to be a much, much harder fight. So why waste your time and money to make the journey more difficult?

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An MBA Is for Refining Your Path

But the most important reason to wait is this: an MBA is for refining your path, not finding it from scratch without any experience.

The real value of business school comes from having real-world experience to apply to what you’re learning. You can sit in a marketing class and connect the theory to that frustrating product launch you worked on two years ago.

The conversations with your classmates, who have all had their own successes and failures, are what make the experience so rich.

And that brings up another key point. A huge part of the MBA experience is what you learn from your classmates.

You are in a room with hundreds of other students who have these amazing, diverse backgrounds. They’ve managed teams, launched products, failed at startups... and they want to hear about your journey, your insights, and your expertise.

That peer-to-peer learning is what forges you into a better leader.

Frankly, going in without any real-world experience is a disservice, not only to yourself, but to your classmates.

You rob yourself of the context to fully absorb their lessons, and you rob them of a unique perspective that you haven’t had the chance to earn yet.

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What You Should Do Instead

So what should you do instead?

After you graduate from undergrad, go and explore.

Go learn about yourself and the world around you. Go determine what types of work cultures you love and which ones you hate. Find out what kind of people you want to work with.

Find out if you like physical work or being in front of a computer. Find out if you thrive in big, structured companies or small, chaotic ones. Find out if you love to travel for a job or stay in one place.

Go start that business idea you always wanted to. Go succeed and go fail.

Once you have those learnings, once you have some real scars and successes, then you can consider an MBA as a strategic tool to get you to the next level.

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Your Task

So here’s your task for this post, especially if you’re early in your career.

Your job is not to start studying for the GMAT or GRE. Your job is to go out into the world and get experience.

Your task is to learn. That is the best possible preparation for a future MBA, and for a truly great career.

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In the next post, we’ll talk about some of the challenges specific to internships and how to use them strategically.

I’ll see you there.

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Next up: The internship strategy nobody tells you

Here is the complete career playbook (all 26 posts with real-world interview, resume, and career examples) for anyone who is pivoting roles, industries, about to graduate, stuck in their current path, not sure what to do next, etc.