Posted by pruthvi.ashok on 08/31/13 8:26pm

   I have completed my bachelors in Electrical and Electronics Engineering in India with a decent cgpa of 6.5, but since I wasn't interested to pursue a job in engineering I switched fields onto management. I am currently working as a buying agent in the textile industry where my job mainly involves buying textile tenders from huge brands and distributing them among different manufacturers. It is an interesting job as I get to meet a lot of people and travel abroad a lot. I want to work for two years and gain a whole lot of experience before pursuing my mba. I am interested in studying in the US and want to specialize in marketing. I really want to know if an mba in marketing will help me a lot and if I have chances of getting a good college with this work experience and engineering background? I do have a score in gre of 315 out of 340. So i really want to know what my chances are.

• Posted by Thomas Graf on 09/02/13 6:30pm

  Hi there,

  thank you for your question. Let me disentangle your text a bit and comment one by one.

  First of all, doing an MBA after some years of work experience makes sense as the MBA is a degree for young professionals. It also and particularly makes sense for someone with an engineering background as MBA programs are designed so that people from all academic and industrial backgrounds should be able to follow and profit from the studies, provided that they have a first academic degree.

  Now regarding your goals, you need to decide if you want to become an expert in marketing or if you want to build up rather general management knowledge (strategy, marketing, organizational behaviour, supply chain management, finance, cost accounting, accounting, entrepreneurship etc.). For the latter you do an MBA, for the former you do a Master in Marketing that does not require a first degree in business (you can use my Master in Management Compass platform - just choose "Program Type: Master in Marketing", and "Entry Requirements: No first degree in business required" ).

  Doing an MBA "in Marketing", that is with a concentration in marketing, may make sense as well. The big advantage seems to me that it may bring you in contact with other professionals with experience - at least, that's what most MBAs do. A pure Master in Marketing may primarily have graduates as students, without work experience (though there may be exceptions).

  The question, however, is: How important is marketing knowledge for you (as opposed to general management) and to what degree do MBA programs in Marketing fulfill your goal to build up marketing knowledge?

  I recommend you to (1) take some time to clarify your own career goals in terms of what knowledge you want to build up - only marketing knowledge as one extreme, rather general management knowledge as the other extreme, or something in the middle.

  As for your GRE, you should achieve a bit more. Good business schools often require a minimum of 600 in the GMAT which corresponds to an about 62 or 64 percentile rank. This means that a GRE of 318 or more would be good.

  Best wishes
  Thomas

  By Thomas Graf
  Owner MBA Compass
  Author of the MBA&MIM eBook

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