University of Utah MBA

I've been thinking a lot lately about the value of an MBA. I remember being in the position a few years ago of not knowing whether to pursue the MBA, and if I did where I should go. So this post may be boring to my normal readers (thanks to both of you) but I think I would have found this valuable. So first a review of the David Eccles School of Business (DESB)at the University of Utah and then a review of the value of an MBA from a musicians perspective.

I am attending the day program/full-time program, whatever you want to call it, with a health services administration (HSA) certificate. The staff and professors are incredible. I have to say that 95% of the professors are genuinely passionate about what they teach and are good at teaching. Anyone who has been in a classroom would know that is a really high percentage. Everyone in the school has the opportunity to be as involved in clubs and networking as they want to be. There are tons of events all of the time that students, faculty, and staff attend.

The facilities are generally very good. The CRCC, which is the main business building, is really nice. The other buildings are pretty old and need to be updated. The good thing is that almost your whole first year is spent in the CRCC, and the bad thing is the rest of your classes can be anywhere on campus. The HSA classes especially are at least a (free) shuttle ride away. I'm not sure where the campus is on the "most beautiful campus" list, but it was about #7 when I started and that is completely true. The surroundings are amazing and if you love the outdoors, you can't find any better place to be.

The core classes are very good. I think it is a good selection and a broad introduction to management. If you're looking for in depth study, you'll have to use your elective credit to find it. As a musician coming in with just a minor in business from BYU, I was a bit worried. I found that they were great about helping people catch up in every subject. This was great for me, though it was a bit boring and repetitive for those of my classmates who were finance or accounting undergrads. The first year schedule is basically planned out for you. One of my biggest complaints is that a lot of the good electives are held at night in conjunction with the PMBA classes. If I wanted to take night classes, I would have done the PMBA program in the first place! There are also a lot of scheduling conflicts among what I thought were the best classes, so I didn't get to take all of the classes I would have liked.

The biggest complaints I have heard from my fellow students is that the DESB does not do a great job of helping people find internships and jobs. I am not sure if this is the case because the DESB doesn't help enough or if Utah is just a tough market to find an internship in. My suggestion is if you think you're going to get an MBA, start looking into internship opportunities before you even apply. Start asking people you know for opportunities because hoping to get the Ford internship is a bit of a stretch, though you never know. With one semester left, I know a lot of people who are still looking for a job.

That's generally it. Let me know if you have questions about the school.

Getting an MBA turned out to be a great investment for me, though it is not going to pay off immediately. In general, if you're looking to score the $80,000+ job right out of school, you should probably have at least a $70,000 job going in, or go to a top-tier school. I don't think the U of U has a good enough reputation to put you in a higher tax bracket. When I started school, it was basically for two reasons. All of the people in music and the arts in general that I worked with didn't know much about business and I didn't want to be like that. I also did not ever want to get to a promotion opportunity and have my boss say, "if you had an MBA we'd for sure take you, but since you don't, you're basically stuck where you are." I still think those are pretty legitimate reasons, but not the most valuable thing I'll take away from school. If you're a musician or some other non-business person, an MBA will make you think about things like you never have before. I can honestly say that 6 or 7 times in my education I have thought, I will never think about accounting (or finance or operations management) the same way again. In some ways, I think my education was more valuable for me than my business friends because I was so business illiterate when I started. It remains to be seen if I will be able to translate this education into a truly "valuable" experience, but if nothing else, this program made me think new things.

Again, let me know if you would like to know anything about b-school, the U, or anything else. Hope this makes your decision a bit easier!