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Joined: 20 Dec 2011
Posts: 54
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Location: United States
Concentration: Entrepreneurship, International Business
Who are the unemployed MBAs?
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31 Mar 2012, 00:33
When bad things happen to people, we all have an almost evolutionary need to create a narrative to explain why it happened, why they were at fault, and how to avoid a similar fate. A lot of time bad luck is just bad luck.
That said....
I am interested in hearing insights from people on this board (particularly those who have been to business school or are there now) about why some MBAs from top programs fail to get jobs. Given the tremendous amount of competition to get in, I am somewhat surprised that many of these top programs have unemployment rates at graduation of 10-25%. It seems particularly disturbing when I factor in the distinct possibility that an MBA program might fudge their numbers a little bit to seem more attractive. I don't know how the stats are compiled at business schools, but I do know that at law school the criteria is whether students have jobs that require law degrees. This led the University of Minnesota to simply employ their unemployed grads in the law library at minimum wage - giving them one of the best sets of employment stats in the country.
So, I guess my question is, what, if anything, are these students doing wrong? Barring events like the financial crisis, are there students putting people off with weird personalities? Do they have the lowest grades on campus? Are they incredibly ambitious and holding out for better offers? Did they get burned out on business and decide to raise families? Most critically, are they unemployed by choice (or distorted expectation) or because they genuinely do not have offers?
Would someone interested in finance at Wharton or consulting at Kellogg actually fail to get offers or would they be unemployed because they were holding out for Goldman and MBB respectively?
I would love to get thoughts on this. I feel like this is one of those issues (like the GMAT: "We accept all ranges of GMAT scores and examine applications holistically") where the relevant parties provide completely worthless information/analysis in the spirit of being politically correct.