Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

Dear Bradley,

The choice must be yours, but if you were to buy and then read, re-read and read a third time the top ten marketing books on Amazon.com and take notes along the way, you'd learn as much as (if not more) than any student on the top masters course in advertising and PR, and you'd probably be more employable.

It's not one's qualifications that matter, its how one applies one's knowledge. By all means go for the course if you think it's right for you, but you'd be taking on an additional $25,000 - $50,000 of debt before you apply for your first job out of college, which might not be the best way to begin your career.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
The Direct Response Marketing Guy™
Princeton, NJ, USA

The MBA has a dramatic hierarchy. The top twenty schools cost a fortune, and you get the return on the investment too. But earn an MBA at a second tier school, let alone one which, if it were ranked at all, would come in at, say, # 600, and you do not have much.

My recommendation is to work in advertising and PR off of the Bachelors with a lot of reading, using a saltshaker as appropriate, e.g. with "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Al Ries and Jack Trout. You have three outcomes:

1) You love the industry, hit the C-suites or start your own firm, never look back.

2) You are medium about it, and now, with significant work experience, have a much more muscular application for a serious MBA.

3) You hate it, decide on another path in life entirely, without having wasted a fortune on graduate business education.

Regards,
JH