Importance of Reputation of an MBA Institute

Reputation stands for value, quality and consistency. The reputation of an MBA institute goes a long way to build one’s career. Even in getting summer internships and during placements, companies prefer to recruit people from renowned institution. Quite often, older institutes are known to have a better reputation than those that have started recently.

Also, the situation is slightly different when a new campus is set up by an older, well-established institute. In such cases, the 'parent/guardian' institute certainly helps the new institute through its formative years. This help may include, but may not be limited to, faculty support, admissions support, and, most importantly, placement support.

Moreover, when it comes to salary, it has been observed that students from an institute of good repute end up grabbing the best offers than that of their peers from a less known institute. However besides reputation, there may be a few considerations one needs to think while applying.  The story is not so romantic considering the tremendous amount of pressure that these ivy-league schools put on their students during academic sessions.

If you are not used to the kind of extra pressure that high-ranking universities traditionally put on their students, you may want to consider other options. Competitiveness may work for some, yet be entirely counterproductive for others. 

What experts say is that before one considers reputation one should also think about the objective of pursuing an MBA which may be any one of the following:

• Career change from one profession to other that is completely different
• Get promotion at work
• Start a business
• Take up leadership roles or C-Level roles
• Build professional network
• Connect with Alumni for career/ business
• Company is paying for higher education (MBA)
• Personal achievement

The Industry Perception Has Changed

Contrary to the old perception, modern day recruitment has undergone a sea change and now, companies have adopted a more flexible and open-minded approach under which they tend to look-out for staff with a particular set of skills, rather than for topb-school graduates with a diploma.

The university curriculum, its teaching methods and class sizes should therefore be considered when picking a school. The elite school format, for example, suits the needs of candidates who aspire to leading executive positions by the age of 35 or 40. 

"It responds to your ego. One of the most important advantages of smaller MBAs is that they offer smaller programmes with twenty to thirty students in a class. This ensures better participation and interaction among the group." emphasizes Andrew Roberts, Director of the part-time MBA programme at Euromed Marseille School of Management in France.

On the other hand, second-tier programmes offer a wide variety of optional subjects, concentrations and cross-disciplinary programmes that is more relevant to current industry and hence offer a plethora of opportunities.

Additionally, second-tier MBA programmes with geographical access to a major metropolitan area can often entice real-world practitioners from industry to accept positions as adjunct academic staff or guest lecturers in order to remedy a perceived weakness in the programme or introduce real-life cases into the curriculum.

Another aspect one should be very careful about is the myth that costly education guarantees the highest possible salary. In a recent article in Money Magazine, Alan Krueger, economics professor at Princeton University, points out that “Over the course of their careers, students who chose not to attend the most selective schools earned about as much as those who went to the highest-ranking college.”

Though reputation is important the real success lies how you exploit your degree in the real time work and that can be done effectively only combing your education objective with the right institute that suits your career goal.