10 Surprising Facts About Online MBAs
While talking to schools for our inaugural ranking of the 25 best U.S. online MBA programs, Poets&Quants found there are other, less expected traits found under the surface of many these programs. Here’s a list of the 10 most surprising facts you need to know about getting your MBA online deftly compiled by staff writer Andrea Carter. If you’re a prospective student, pay attention as some of these have the potential to impact the amount of time and money you put into getting your MBA online.
‘WAIVING’ GOODBYE TO THE GMAT
The major appeal for pursuing an MBA online is convenience and flexibility. So, naturally, online MBA students tend to be working professionals. For applicants who have multiple years of professional work experience, many schools are making it easier to get an MBA degree by waiving the GMAT requirement for their online programs.
“One thing we started a couple years ago was a waiver for entrance exams,” says Christine Estoye, the online MBA program manager at the University of Tennessee Martin’s College of Business. “For students with a 3.0 undergraduate GPA and seven years or more of post bachelor’s work experience, we will review their application and submit for a GMAT waiver. For students, it becomes another box you don’t have to check.”
GMAT waivers are typically reviewed on a case by case basis and the years of work experience one must have differs from school to school. For instance, Lehigh’s College of Business & Economics will only consider a waiver if you have at least 10 years experience, University of Tennessee at Martin seven years, Hofstra six years, and University of Maryland says if someone has less than three years of work experience they’re unlikely to waive.
THE UNEXPECTED PRECURSOR: PREREQUISITES
Do you have an undergraduate degree in business? Any previous exposure to finance, accounting, or stats courses in your earlier academic career? If your answer to these questions is no, don’t be surprised if your B-school of choice hands you a list of prerequisite courses you’ll need to take before getting started in their online MBA program.
Prerequisites are designed to familiarize students with some basic business concepts and terms so they can hit the ground running once enrolled in the MBA program.
“There’s no way to apply the concepts if you haven’t learned the concepts,” says Richard Skolnik, dean of SUNY-Oswego’s School of Business. At SUNY-Oswego, a 36-credit program can jump to as high as 57 credits because of several foundational courses in economics, statistics, and business law that the school requires if students haven’t previously had them.
TUITION BREAKS AND SCHOLARSHIPS
Speaking of cost to invest, you may be surprised to know that scholarship opportunities aren’t just for undergraduates. Indeed, there are scholarships available for students who are pursuing their MBA online. There are merit scholarships plus assistance for military personnel, veterans, and more.
To complete Florida International University’s Corporate MBA online will cost students a total of $42,000, but applicants should be aware of scholarship opportunities the institution offers to discount that fee by as much as $10,000. The first is a $10,000 merit scholarship available to applicants with a 3.0 undergraduate GPA and four years of professional work experience. The second is an affiliate partner scholarship wherein applicants should contact the school to find out if their employer is an affiliate partner, making them eligible to receive assistance. The final is a military scholarship for not only veterans and active members of the military, but military family members are included as well.
For Penn State’s $57,000 Online MBA program, small yet helpful financial assistance is available to students when they apply by the school’s early bird deadline. Scholarship amounts usually fall between $2,000 and $5,000 and are awarded to about a half dozen students in each incoming class. These scholarships are merit-based and go to students who have demonstrated extraordinary personal, professional, or academic achievements, or the ability to contribute a unique perspective to the program.
TAKE ALL THE TIME YOU NEED … IN SIX YEARS OR LESS
Marketing and ad copy for online MBA programs will often boast the short time frame in which you can obtain your MBA. Phrases like “less than two years,” or in “just four semesters” are the usual talking points. But this is only the case if you attend classes nonstop, uninterrupted for the duration of the program — and it usually means two or more classes must be taken at a time. For working professionals, this may not be feasible.
To accommodate, most online MBA programs have built-in flexibility that will allow you to scale back on classes when you need to or even miss a semester and start back up again. In these cases, you can take your time getting through these programs, but be cautious of the maximum time limits that schools will often have. Generally, they’ll give you five or six years, but some — like Mississippi State — are as high as eight years.
THE SAME MBA, JUST ONLINE
A common perception — or misperception perhaps — is that online MBA programs are diluted, hand-me-down versions of their on-campus counterparts. Not so. If you enroll in the online MBA program at Hofstra’s Zarb School, for instance, you’re going to be taught by the same faculty members who teach in the face-to-face program and you’re going to receive the same curriculum. The only differences are that you’ll see and interact with professors and classmates virtually and the course content will be condensed. The same can be said for most of the other top online MBA programs which use all of the same on-campus faculty.
THINK YOU’LL BE FLYING SOLO? THINK AGAIN
When exploring online MBA programs, the terms synchronous and asynchronous are two terms you’ll want to familiarize yourself with. These terms refer to the format in which the online MBA material is delivered; whether it’s on your own time, on your own schedule with weekly deadlines and assignments to meet (asynchronous) or it’s at set times on set days of the week wherein everyone logs on for class via a live session (synchronous).
There’s a tendency to think — expect, even — that whether synchronous or asynchronous, online learning is mostly a solo experience, but this isn’t the case when you’re getting an MBA online. While you may never have to set foot on campus, you can always expect large amounts of group work.
“Group projects would be in our international course, for instance, where we ask students to research the business environment for a country then make a recommendations on whether to invest or not invest,” says Dean Skolnik from SUNY-Oswego. “In marketing, they’ll often do community-based projects such as one where there was branding for a local town and the students worked together looking at ways to elevate the town’s profile.”
WHATSAPP, GOOGLE HANGOUTS, AND OTHER TOOLS TO FAMILIARIZE YOURSELF WITH
Of course with group projects and virtual learning teams comes the need for seamless communication. But if you think you’ll get by with just email and old-fashioned phone calls, guess again.
With tools such as WhatsApp, Google Hangouts, and Facebook groups being the norm, today’s online MBA students need to be both tech- and social media-savvy to keep up.
“There are 100 different connectivity tools you can use to communicate,” says Gunnar Bergeson, an online MBA student at Arizona State. “During orientation, most groups said we need to keep some standards for how we’ll keep in touch. If we need to share info or share research, it’s Google docs. For face to face meetings where we need to talk, Google Hangouts seemed to be the best and has worked perfectly. For daily communication, this was a little interesting. Some people like to use texts, some like email. We experimented, and gave WhatsApp a try. You can share documents, pictures, etc. I would say it accounts for 90% of our communication.”
PACK YOUR BAGS AND STUDY ABROAD
Just because an online MBA program is virtual and done through distance learning technology doesn’t mean the importance of international business is ignored. You might be surprised to find out that international travel is an option in many programs and, in some, it’s even a required part of the curriculum.
At Hofstra’s Zarb School, they’ve linked a study abroad trip to its required international business course. The experience involves a week and a half cultural immersion, company visits, and more. In 2016, Zarb’s online MBA students traveled to Tokyo and Seoul and, most recently, students traveled to Dubai and New Delhi.
Kaushik Sengupta, associate dean of business graduate education at Zarb and the school’s Online MBA Program director, says the international trips involve a slightly more extended assignment where students are in partnership with an overseas business. “Students work on an assignment before the trip then they present their findings to the company when they get there,” Sengupta says. “We did this with Dubai this year. But we want to expand it next year. Typically, there are six to eight company visits. We’ll probably move to less visits, while making the trip more experiential.”
TIME COMMITMENT
Although convenience and flexibility are the main attractions for online MBA programs, don’t let these factors blind you to the amount of time you’ll need to invest. According to most students, it’s considerably intense when you’re carving out 16-20 hours per week in addition to a regular 40-hour (sometimes more) work week.
“It’s a pretty significant time commitment,” says Kate Klepper, associate dean of graduate business programs at Northeastern University's D’Amore-McKim Business School. “For just one course, students are typically actively engaged five to six out of seven days of the week. Discussions, readings, and other deliverables are all a part of a given week.”
2016 alumnus Curtis Webb, who did D’Amore-McKim’s online MBA program while maintaining 50-hour work weeks, says the time commitment for each class was 20 hours a week. “Most of that time was early mornings, late evenings, weekends. If you’re determined to get through it and be successful, you find all this time you didn’t know you had.”
MIX AND MATCH ONLINE AND IN PERSON
Finally, our most surprising fact about getting your MBA degree online: If you just can’t decide between a traditional, in-person program or going the online MBA route, you can do both.
At the University of South Florida St. Petersburg’s Tiedemann College of Business, the school’s online MBA option was introduced in 2010 with the cornerstone of it being the ultimate form of flexibility. Here, students are empowered with freedom to switch between online and in-person courses based on preference, interest, and personal schedule.
“It is absolutely optimized for the working professional who wants the option to occasionally tap into online courses or vice versa,” says Eric Douthirt, Tiedemann’s director of graduate programs and executive education.
The Flex MBA program at Lehigh University’s College of Business & Economics is similar. The program, which is synchronous in style, puts students in the driver’s seat when it’s time to decide where and how they’ll attend class. Showing up to campus, logging in from home, work, or travel, or a combination of all the above options; all of it is left totally up to the student. Add to that a decide-as-you-go format as students are free to toggle between in-person and online learning from week to week and semester to semester.