What is your plan B?

Question

I assume many applicants who remain unsuccessful with their applications might stay with their employers for another year and try again next year around.

I've found the application process so time consuming that I'm basically saying "now or never".
My alternative is quitting my job, from which I'll resign before I have any positive news anyway (too long a notice period), and travel through Asia and Australia for 3 - 6 months.

Afterwards I'd ideally have gotten out of my daily routine long enough to kickstart my creativity again and either start some business up or go back to my home country and look for a new job. 
Obviously, I believe that such an abrupt break in my CV would hinder me from applying to business school again a year later..

So, what's your plan B, or in BSchool-anguage: what's your opportunity cost?

tamarbmey678 · Answer

I don't have any direct experience with Plan B, but my sister just took one a few days ago and the entire next day she felt very "yucky." She said that she was having horrible period cramps and jsut felt sick, so she laid in bed all day.

papandreu · Answer

My opinion - if you want to travel, the travel. A job can wait.

NanaYu · Answer

good question. it turns out to be asked during interviews :D

alviontaran · Answer

So a bit of context.
The company I worked for does MBA sponsorships. But things weren't looking good  (No one was getting any sponsorship)  and this was the second time I had applied  (First time I got accepted but then there were some "issues" no one could point to specifically so what ever.)  I decided I was going one way or the other.
*  Plan A-I  Sponsorship from the company.
*  Plan A-II   Finding a loan.
*  Plan B   Take 6 months of work  (A possibility in that company)  to study some subjects I'm interested in and go Climbing/Surfing/Skydiving around the country. Clear my mind and try again.

Plan  A-I  didn't work and had to find loans which turns out is not very easy. I ended up finding Prodigy Finance; Prodigy Finance is a loan provider that specifically funds students who are travelling abroad for their MBAs, and they don't require a co-signer. They have loan programmes with quite a few top business schools in Europe, the UK and the US, so depending on what business school you're going to, they may be able to help you out. I was accepted in IE and IE is one of the schools they have. 
So plan  A-II  it is. Thing is the intake starts in 5 months so why not go for plan B too? I quit my job and now use the time to study the things I want and to climb/surf/skydive with my mates.

Even if plan A-II had not worked I would have taken the plan B for various reasons. 
When things don't work; you are either missing something or doing it the wrong way and you need to take a few steps back to regroup. 
Taking time off to study helps you add more skills to your person. Skills and knowledge that could be missing in any of the steps needed to get into a BS and/or finance it.
Taking time off and travel/workout/sports helps you clear your mind.
One thing was sure is I was not going to quit. I wanted to do an MBA and it was going to happen.
I had done a similar thing back when I graduated before I went looking for jobs. I took some time off to go surfing. It helps a lot and you see things with more clarity so you can make the right decisions.

Don't quit. It is a long and tiring going through all the required exams, the application process and loans. You will stumble, you will find your self doing things several times and getting some wrong but don't quit. I fought for this two full years and many times I felt frustrated. I didn't quit and at the end it worked out for the program I wanted with the best terms for me.

So if you need to, take time off but only to try again.

Best of luck!

Andrés

zero722 · Answer

Plan B - go travel for a bit, clear my head and hopefully during my travel discover something about myself and what I want to do. Come back..get a job...

bb · Answer

Bump

MBAbot · Answer

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What is your plan B?

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