by Vivianne Wright
A stolen dream?
For students that attended college during the Pandemic, the undergraduate experience was not exactly what they had signed up for. Incoming college students that graduated from high-school 2016 onwards were affected at least for a semester, resulting in a whopping 112 million students on average.
Although these college graduates are part of a generation where social media is ubiquitous and a world where a large part (if not most) of their daily social interactions are – as Jonathan Haidt defines in his book “The Anxious Generation” – disembodied: where they do not require physical presence but rather just a language, having to attend remote classes and graduation ceremonies (if they were lucky enough not to have missed out on that completely) just felt like they were missing out on an important milestone in life.
The value of embodied experiences
The college experience for most students is supposed to happen in person: it is the turning point into adulthood, which nudges students into carving their own paths of financial independence. Much of that path is modeled by example – seeing and experiencing your seniors’ transition into the job market and being able to interact/network with the school community play an important role in preparing the student for what’s to come.
Yet, during COVID, students were cut short of these embodied experiences, and entered a job market environment that was drastically different from what it had been just a few years back. It is safe to say these students were not fully prepared to study and thrive in an online class setting, let alone engage in a job market that looked discombobulated as well – where even their superiors had to adjust to new ways of selecting, training, motivating and retaining their employees.
In short, newcomers to the job market bring as part of their portfolio both a disrupted college experience and a disembodied professional network, and that has resulted in a growing trend of professionals seeking out ways towards fulfilling such gaps.
Alas, the MBA enters the room.
Traditionally, obtaining an MBA from a prestigious Business School such as HBS, Stanford or Wharton had been considered a way that aspiring leaders were able to fast track their careers, carry a “badge of excellence” and obtain an edge that allows them access to job opportunities that are not available to the general public.
Despite recent backlash that question whether the 200k sticker price is worthwhile, the ROI offered by Top Business Schools seem hard to refute: even during the worst periods, MBA Employment reports for the Top B-Schools show that recent MBA graduates are doing just fine with Median Gross Salaries of 140 to 170k, usually demonstrating close to 100% increase from median pre-MBA salaries.
A Second Chance
Yet a feature that seems to be more recent with prospective MBA candidates is a bit more intangible: it’s the possibility of a second chance at the college experience they had hoped for. Since full-time US MBA programs are 2 year long commitments, candidates feel they get enough time to live out the in-person experience this time. For many, it is also the first time they will be actively increasing their professional network, given the chance to finally be face to face with a diverse and interesting set of professionals.
While before COVID usually candidates would only find out about this MBA “super-power” once they were already on campus interacting with other students, the post-COVID sub-set is craving the connections even while they are still studying for the GMAT.
In the classic words of 60s singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell…You don’t know a good thing ‘til it’s gone…MBA newcomers seem to have figured that one out.
Vivianne Wright is a Harvard alumnus and Admissions Director at MBA House GMAT Test Prep and Admissions
