Vol. 38, No. 18

2-6-2008
By: Adam King

Work experience helpful, but not required

OSU looks beyond job history in accepting younger MBA applicants

Tyler Saas is not your typical MBA student with a resumé that already includes four or five years of work experience. The 24-year-old was accepted to Ohio State’s program after attending culinary school in New York and a six-month internship as a line cook at a resort.

On his way to becoming a chef, Saas took a detour to Penn State and a finance class that convinced him adding a CFO title might be more rewarding than donning a white hat. Now the second-year student is certain he made the right choice.

“I consider myself a career changer, even though I never had a career,” said Saas, 24.

Historically the nation’s top MBA schools have required students to have some corporate exposure, but Saas is part of a growing trend of which Ohio State is a leader.

A few years ago, 1 to 2 percent of MBA students nationally came straight from an undergraduate degree, but lately that’s grown to 5 percent or more, and OSU is well ahead of that curve. Of the 141 members of the current class, who will graduate in 2009, 13 percent are direct-from-undergrad students; 14 percent of the 2008 class came directly from undergrad programs.

Alison Merzel, director of admissions for the Fisher College of Business MBA programs, said this wasn’t a trend even as recently as three years ago.

“It has to do with the younger generation’s ‘I want it now’ mentality,” she said. “They feel like they don’t want to wait to go back to school because if they put it off, they won’t end up following through. For other master’s programs, that might make sense, but the nature of the MBA is such that you get more out of the program once you’ve had the real-world experience to give you some perspective. But they often don’t realize that until they get here.

“The tradeoff is whether we take younger students now because they have high potential for success, or whether we ask them to get additional work experience and risk losing them because they aren’t likely to reapply two or three years from now.”

Second-year student Whitney Kaczor, 23, said Ohio State made the right choice accepting her into the program. The self-professed math geek, who recently landed a job with a Fortune 100 firm, applied to six top-tier programs, including Duke, Columbia, Stanford and Carnegie Mellon, and some didn’t even want to interview her.

“It’s important to find a good fit both ways,” she said. “The schools that didn’t interview me, good, because they wouldn’t have valued me. That’s the main reason I ended up at Ohio State because out of all the schools, they were by far the most willing to say, ‘I hope you know what you’re getting yourself into. You’re going to face different challenges than the typical MBA student, but if you think you’re ready, we’re willing to work with you.’”

Kaczor said her classmates didn’t believe her when she told them her age, but she said that’s a testament to what younger MBA students can bring to the group discussions: An outside-the-box mentality without the corporate indoctrination.

“It’s more about how you present yourself and about maturity and confidence,” Kaczor said. “If you are articulate in what you say and can persuade other people, then they’re not going to think you’re straight from undergrad.”

The younger students often are better prepared than their older counterparts for the MBA workload, studying and test-taking since they just spent four or more years doing exactly that without a break.

“In regard to competitive benchmarking, I think I’m right along with my peers,” said Saas, who is interning at a venture capital firm. “I don’t feel inferior. But there are lots of attributes people have besides test scores, and I think Ohio State valued that.”

Ohio State’s MBA youth movement is not detracting from the school’s top-25 ranking. In fact, Jamie Mathews-Mead, senior director of Graduate Career Management, said younger students can be quite effective at landing good jobs after graduation.

“The candidates that have limited work experience work closely with our job search consultants to create a strategy that includes the development of a career marketing plan, identification of transferable skills and practice interviews which helps position students for success,” she said. “If the younger, less-experienced candidates are focused and prepared, they can definitely be successful in securing top jobs and making those important career transitions.”

Finding the stars begins in the application process, where Merzel says students have opportunities to wow her in more than one way.

“What we’re looking for is people with intellectual aptitude, leadership experience or potential, and characteristics that are reflective of an ideal Fisher candidate such as: Empathy, curiosity, vision, passion, global awareness and integrity,” Merzel said. “It’s possible all of these things are evident in a younger candidate, but we’re looking for the whole well-rounded package.”

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