Would it look bad to quit work to go for a master's before MBA?

I am feeling excited about this program for several reasons:
1. This course sounds tailormade, from the perspective of your desire to move into education tech. You get academic learning and networking opportunities in your area of interest.
2. The course can likely land you a great job and you may decide a few months into the program that you'd rather get more work exp. before an MBA- so your plans can change. At this point if transferring from IT to education tech is what matters to you and the Harvard course gets you closer to that goal, then that's the way to go.

3. You add the Harvard brand name to your resume and that will always be valuable. And this comes at some fraction of the program cost due to the scholarship.

Continued work experience is better than quitting your job for arbit reasons. But you wish to join this program for a specific reason, and that's perfectly legit. Later, when you apply for an MBA, use the program as a part of your story to tell how it was instrumental in building a career path. You'll be a stronger candidate then.

Hi donkeylicker44,

If your short to medium term goal is a startup in EdTech, an MBA is likely to be a spanner in your plan for two reasons: financial burden of loan will make you risk averse and those two years will delay the project, which can be critical. And in today’s world (it wasn’t so true, say, 10 years back), you can learn almost everything on entrepreneurship outside an MBA program. However, if you aren’t sure about your goals, then it’s a different thing.

If you pursue only the Education program, you won’t be financially burdened (because of hefty scholarship) and, second, it’s only a year long. This option will be much better if you want to pursue entrepreneurship.

I came across the story of this guy yesterday who went to Wharton with a goal to be an entrepreneur, which he thinks was a bad decision. He has written a book on the topic (the e-copy is free), which may give you one of the perspectives. (I haven’t read it yet, but I broadly hold the same opinion on efficacy of B-schools for someone with entrepreneurial goal.)

This sounds like an interesting opportunity, from an MBA ad comm perspective I think what they will be assessing the alignment between your pre-MBA life and your future career goals and the ability of the school to help you achieve this. You check all of the boxes above. Also, if HBS is on your radar this may also be a great front and center way to explore the opportunities up in Cambridge and ultimately decide if an MBA makes sense given your goals of EdTech entrepreneurship