Hi Sanket,

“Experience counts wherever you go”

I have come across a number of aspirants who are often in a doubt of whether doing an MBA with more than 2 years of experience is a good option or not. To such aspirants, my only advice is that experience counts wherever you go. You only feel old from your body and not from your experience. So, without giving more focus on experience, one must have a belief in oneself that learning is perennial and not just an age bound characteristic.

There have been a lot of success stories in the past of people doing great pursuing MBA in a somewhat late educational age of their life. This might be because they wanted to have a good amount of experience behind them before joining for an MBA degree or maybe a late realisation of their career path. The trend of ‘fresher’ or ‘zero experience’ is quite common in India as compared to the other countries. This is simply because most of the foreign country’s colleges prefer experienced students for their MBA program rather than fresh out of undergrad. In India, other than ISB Hyderabad, not many colleges preferably ask for rich experience. ISB prefers students who have a rich experience behind them, approximately between 2 to 5 years for their MBA program. Apart from ISB, Great Lakes Chennai has a mandate of minimum 2 years of experience for a candidate for its one-year PGP program.

There are few psychological biases regarding the same,

1. MBA students over 3 years of experience will find it more difficult to get jobs than below such experience candidate
2. The salary jump for above 3 years will be lesser than it would be for 2 or below experience candidates
3. Older MBA students will not fit into a class that has a lower average experience

Before you clutter your mind with such biases, let me show a table of average age and work experience for MBA of different universities. I am pretty much sure, you will come out of such biases after going through the table below.

Note: These tables are representative lists. Please refer to the official pages for changes and updates.

An executive MBA is not a much hit in our country as compared to a full time MBA and hence most of the people in their late experience ages prefer a full-time course. There are several reasons for these aspirants to choose the full-time course as like freshers. This will include a full-blown immersive MBA experience, expanded career opportunities, to become a part of elite alumni network and off-course a good paying profile.

To improve your admit chances, for a B-School admission, show good amount of confidence in the perspective of business and show high level of maturity in your answers. Let them know that your grey streaks of hair are actually a result of wisdom and prosperity that you gained in your worthful experience. Believe me, there are not many who would see the corporate world in the way you see it.

All the very best!!

Dear Sanket, with India giving birth to as many start ups as possible in the recent times and Companies opening their branches in India, Management Graduates have opportunities like never before. Management Graduates have opportunities in almost all sectors. I am not sure what other Post Graduation you have in mind. But off late, MBA has been on the forefront in terms of opportunites and scope. Now that there are specialisations in Project Management, Entrepreneurial Management, Product Management, when they said world is a big stage, may be this is the right metaphor to describe the Management opportunites in India.