Bulldoze the business school
I recently finished an executive MBA at a top European B-school. To echo some of the comments, it was overall way easier than my initial studies (eng school), with some exceptions such as a brutal strategy assignment. There was also a sense of entitlement from some of the participants, especially those who were financed by their company. “Entertain me and give me my diploma” so to speak.<p>On the other hand, due to the executive nature of the program (average age was something like 38-39) the classes were much more nuanced, especially on topics such as HR, management and so forth - when everyone in the room has some degree of managerial experience and a few war stories to share there’s much less room for indoctrination. This was also due to European culture, which is a big part of the school’s DNA and reinforced by the mostly European cohort.<p>I did learn a lot of stuff; what will stay with me the most is what I learned about myself, through introspective assignments and interacting with other students, most of whom had very different backgrounds. But I would never have been able to do this had I taken the program as an undergrad or right after eng school. It’s true that you can’t teach common sense, you must learn it through practice. However having the opportunity to reflect on that practice, formalizing it and sharing it with likeminded persons was tremendously helpful.<p>EDIT: to constrast my experience with the content of TFA, I crossed a few MBA students in NY during a seminar. The discussion went something like this:<p>Me: so what business do you guys want to work in after graduating?<p>One of them: real estate!<p>Me: cool, any particular reason why?<p>Him: to make lots of money and retire early! (Rest of the group nod in agremeent)<p>Me: ...<p>This was in 2017 and I assume they had at least heard of the subprime crisis.