Is An MBA Worth It? These Class Of 2019 Certainly Think So
When Astrophysics comes up, you probably picture Stephen Hawking or Neil deGrasse Tyson. They are geniuses concerned with the ethereal – the kinds of people who pop up on The Big Bang Theory. The last place you’d expect to find them is in the business school.
Except at Rice University.
That’s where you’ll meet Swati Patel, who has been pursuing both an MBA and a Masters in Space Studies with a concentration in Aerospace Engineering. Boasting a Bachelor’s in Astrophysics, she spent the past year-and-a-half interning for Boeing, working on issues related to International Space Station. Come graduation, she will continue with Boeing, focusing on spacecraft operations for its Defense, Space and Security arm.
Swati Patel is one of a hundred members of the Class of 2019 who were honored among our Best & Brightest MBAs of 2019. For the fifth consecutive year, Poets&Quants celebrated the MBA students who are “the leaders who rally, the mentors who champion, the visionaries who awaken, and the volunteers who shoulder the heaviest burdens.”
To compile this year’s Best & Brightest MBAs, P&Q reached out to over 70 of the top business schools across the global. Overall, P&Q received 243 nominations from 67 MBA programs, including Stanford, MIT, INSEAD, Wharton, and the London Business School. The P&Q editorial team then whittled down the list to 100 MBAs, judging candidates on three criteria: extracurricular activities, academic and professional achievements, and the insightfulness of the responses. Overall, 56 candidates were women, with another 34 hailing from outside the United States. As undergrads, they majored in everything from Biochemistry to Gender Studies. Come summer, you’ll find them spearheading major projects at the likes of McKinsey, Google, and JP Morgan Chase.
Then again, the class was already pretty impressive even before they returned to campus. Take Neethi Johnson. Before joining Ohio State’s Fisher School of Business, she co-authored a $2.5 million dollar grant to alleviate homelessness in Central Ohio. It was the genesis of the Navigator Program, which provides the homeless with vocational training and behavioral healthcare through partnerships with community mental health centers and Goodwill. Three years old, the program has already helped house 2,500 adults.
“Ultimately, the program has proven to sustainably solve a serious social problem by tapping into public-private partnership and provided new chances to so many of members of the community who need it most,” she says.
Johnson wasn’t alone in making a proverbial “dent in the universe” before business school. As a contractor for the U.S. Department of State, Wharton’s Medora Brown was part of a team that helped open diplomatic relations with Myanmar. In Nigeria, Rice University’s Dapo Orimoloye spearheaded the design of the largest fibre-to-home network, along with designing Vodacom’s broadband wireless network in the country. As an officer aboard the USNS Comfort, a floating military hospital, Jennifer Francis, a University of Washington MBA, organized a medical initiative that provided surgical operations to 1,265 patents across 11 nations.
Vito Errico, who served in the U.S. Pentagon before joining the Yale School of Management, believes his biggest achievement was also his most fundamental as a U.S. Army Troop Commander. “Not losing a single one of my soldiers during a 12-month deployment to Kandahar, Afghanistan,” he says. “It was a very difficult time in the war, and despite some close calls, we were able to bring everyone home safely.”
These Best & Brightest MBAs carried this momentum onto campus as well. At the University of Virginia, Allison Shimamoto chaired the Darden Resilience Initiative Committee, a program designed to boost mental health and wellness at the school. “We put on workshops focused on teaching meditation and mindfulness, panel discussions on student resilience stories, yoga and dance sessions, replaced First Coffee with green pressed juices and healthy treats, and even hosted an animal therapy event – Yappy Hour,” she writes. “The moments when my classmates share how the work we’re doing is changing their lives keep me excited to continue the work.”
That spirit of service continued with the University of Florida’s Nicolas Ramos. He helped to organize two bingo nights at Hope Lodge to provide “some moments of levity” to cancer patients. As MBAA Class President at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, Marshelle Slayton’s agenda ranged from building a new website to increasing sustainable practices at events. In addition, she launched the “Secret Compliment Pass,” where students receive anonymous compliments from classmates to boost their morale.
Of course, the Class of 2019 didn’t always need to achieve something big to learn something new. That was the case for Dartmouth’s Sophia Cornew, who partnered up with a MD-MBA classmate to start a tech platform to better track high-risk patients after their discharge.
“In a few short months, we went from sitting together in front of a big whiteboard wall asking ourselves “What problem do we want to solve?” to getting in the trenches of building a venture together along with our team,” she explains. “We sat in Dartmouth’s Emergency Department waiting room for hours interviewing patients. We profiled potential customers and identified their needs. We labored over determining the appropriate business model and, finally, pitched our venture to hundreds of people. While we ultimately decided not to pursue venture funding, I’m proud of what we built together.”
The Class of 2019 is equally excited about their prospects. Despite many sacrificing two years of their career and six figures in income, none of them regret the investment they made in their careers and themselves as MBA students. “It’s hard to run the traditional “return on investment” math for business school,” admits Stanford’s Geoffrey Calder. “The investment is immediate and measurable, but the return is harvested over decades in ways that can make attribution difficult. That said, I am confident that what I’ve learned, the people I’ve met, and the perspective I’ve gained will all make me considerably more effective at work. Further, life is about experiences and I can’t think of a better two-year journey than the one I’ve been on here at Stanford. That alone has made it worth the price of admission.”
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