What It’s Like To Get An MBA Online: 10 Surprising Facts - Poets&Quants

It took a little getting used to at first — and, in the very beginning, it faced much scrutiny. But the online MBA has finally made its mark and declared that it is here to stay.

Now that the stigma has vanished and these programs have had a few solid years to settle in, some definite themes have emerged. Online programs generally provide a broad understanding of the workings of business just the same as any on-campus program (part- or full-time). Many offer specializations and electives for students to customize their experience, and most, if not all, of the leading programs have received the AACSB stamp of approval, providing quality assurance through the most respected accreditation organization in the B-school arena.

While talking to schools for our inaugural ranking of the best online MBA programs, Poets&Quants found there are other, less expected traits found under the surface of many these programs. Here’s a list of the 10 most surprising facts you need to know about getting your MBA online. If you’re a prospective student, pay attention as some of these have the potential to impact the amount of time and money you put into getting your MBA online.

‘WAIVING’ GOODBYE TO THE GMAT

The major appeal for pursuing an MBA online is convenience and flexibility. So, naturally, online MBA students tend to be working professionals. For applicants who have multiple years of professional work experience, many schools are making it easier to get an MBA degree by waiving the GMAT requirement for their online programs.

“One thing we started a couple years ago was a waiver for entrance exams,” says Christine Estoye, the online MBA program manager at the University of Tennessee Martin’s College of Business. “For students with a 3.0 undergraduate GPA and seven years or more of post bachelor’s work experience, we will review their application and submit for a GMAT waiver. For students, it becomes another box you don’t have to check.”

GMAT waivers are typically reviewed on a case by case basis and the years of work experience one must have differs from school to school. For instance, Lehigh’s College of Business & Economics will only consider a waiver if you have at least 10 years experience, University of Tennessee at Martin seven years, Hofstra six years, and University of Maryland says if someone has less than three years of work experience they’re unlikely to waive.

Another factor in entrance exam waivers is already having an advanced degree. Schools report that their online MBA programs are filled with doctors, engineers, and other professionals who not only have an abundance of experience, but they have various other degrees. For them, many schools are removing blockers by saying “Yes” to the GMAT waiver.

At University of Tennessee-Chattanooga, students can potentially bypass the GMAT if they have a 3.25 GPA plus five years of professional experience, or they can waive it altogether if they’ve already earned an advanced degree such as a master’s or doctorate. The same is the case in Penn State’s new online MBA program, where applicants with advanced degrees, including M.D., D.O. and Ph.D., are automatically exempt from taking the standardized test.

THE UNEXPECTED PRECURSOR: PREREQUISITES

Do you have an undergraduate degree in business? Any previous exposure to finance, accounting, or stats courses in your earlier academic career? If your answer to these questions is no, don’t be surprised if your B-school of choice hands you a list of prerequisite courses you’ll need to take before getting started in their online MBA program.

Prerequisites are designed to familiarize students with some basic business concepts and terms so they can hit the ground running once enrolled in the MBA program.

“There’s no way to apply the concepts if you haven’t learned the concepts,” says Richard Skolnik, dean of SUNY-Oswego’s School of Business. At SUNY-Oswego, a 36-credit program can jump to as high as 57 credits because of several foundational courses in economics, statistics, and business law that the school requires if students haven’t previously had them.

“It’s about ensuring that students are prepared for graduate course work so they’re not overwhelmed,” Skolnik says.  

Richard Skolnik, Dean of SUNY-Oswego’s School of Business

Admission is not contingent on having these courses completed, but enrolling in online MBA classes is. Many schools won’t allow you to enroll in classes until the prerequisites are complete, while others will allow you to start, but only let you get so far into the curriculum before the requirements must be satisfied.

The University of Tennessee-Chattanooga is one such case. Non-business majors must take four non-credit, online modules — which take 20-30 hours to complete — to obtain specific competencies the school feels they’ll need to be successful in the program. The subject areas the modules cover are economics, statistics, business law, and accounting and all four modules must be completed before six credits of the online MBA curriculum are taken.

The University of Tennessee-Martin is similar. Students who don’t have an academic or professional background in business can enter the online MBA program, but the school will require you to take foundational, prerequisite courses in financial accounting, statistics & probability, or operations management within the first two semesters.

Of course, prerequisite courses are not free and they are, in fact, actual course work that needs to be completed — and successfully passed. The University of Mississippi, for instance, requires a “C” grade or higher for its prerequisite courses, and at Mississippi State, having taken the required prerequisite courses, even during undergrad, isn’t enough. Students need to have received at least a “B” for the prerequisite to count.

Then there’s the cost associated with prerequisite courses. While some schools allow you to take the classes at any institution, it’s still an out-of-pocket expense that applicants should be aware of. Andrew Ward, associate dean of graduate programs at Lehigh’s College of Business & Economics, says, “Our whole program is charged on a per credit basis so if they did the prerequisites at Lehigh they would pay as they would any other class. But they’re not required to get them here.” In Lehigh’s case, students can take their prerequisite courses or equivalents at another institution and still get credit.

TUITION BREAKS AND SCHOLARSHIPS

Speaking of cost to invest, you may be surprised to know that scholarship opportunities aren’t just for undergraduates. Indeed, there are scholarships available for students who are pursuing their MBA online. There are merit scholarships plus assistance for military personnel, veterans, and more.

To complete Florida International University’s Corporate MBA online will cost students a total of $42,000, but applicants should be aware of scholarship opportunities the institution offers to discount that fee by as much as $10,000. The first is a $10,000 merit scholarship available to applicants with a 3.0 undergraduate GPA and four years of professional work experience. The second is an affiliate partner scholarship wherein applicants should contact the school to find out if their employer is an affiliate partner, making them eligible to receive assistance. The final is a military scholarship for not only veterans and active members of the military, but military family members are included as well.

For Penn State’s $57,000 Online MBA program, small yet helpful financial assistance is available to students when they apply by the school’s early bird deadline. Scholarship amounts usually fall between $2,000 and $5,000 and are awarded to about a half dozen students in each incoming class. These scholarships are merit-based and go to students who have demonstrated extraordinary personal, professional, or academic achievements, or the ability to contribute a unique perspective to the program.

The online MBA program Arizona State’s W.P. Carey School of Business offers a Double Devil scholarship for those who already have an ASU degree

Another opportunity to be on the lookout for when applying to schools: alumni perks. If the school you’re interested in is also your undergraduate alma mater, there may be financial assistance or tuition breaks available to you.

Pam Delaney, director of graduate admission and recruitment at Arizona’s W. P. Carey School of Business, says, “For our online program we have about nine scholarship designations and a ‘Double Devil’ scholarship for those who have received a previous ASU degree.”

Likewise, Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business offers a Double Husky Scholarship where alum can obtain a tuition scholarship of 25%.

TAKE ALL THE TIME YOU NEED … IN SIX YEARS OR LESS

Marketing and ad copy for online MBA programs will often boast the short time frame in which you can obtain your MBA. Phrases like “less than two years,” or in “just four semesters” are the usual talking points. But this is only the case if you attend classes nonstop, uninterrupted for the duration of the program — and it usually means two or more classes must be taken at a time. For working professionals, this may not be feasible.

To accommodate, most online MBA programs have built-in flexibility that will allow you to scale back on classes when you need to or even miss a semester and start back up again. In these cases, you can take your time getting through these programs, but be cautious of the maximum time limits that schools will often have. Generally, they’ll give you five or six years, but some — like Mississippi State — are as high as eight years.

This is also important information for students who are funding their education with help from their employer. If the employer has a yearly cap on the amount of tuition they’re willing to pay, this could impact how quickly a student can move through a program. So, knowing the maximum amount of time a school allows becomes a critical detail to have.

THE SAME MBA, JUST ONLINE

A common perception — or misperception perhaps — is that online MBA programs are diluted, hand-me-down versions of their on-campus counterparts. Not so. If you enroll in the online MBA program at Hofstra’s Zarb School, for instance, you’re going to be taught by the same faculty members who teach in the face-to-face program and you’re going to receive the same curriculum. The only differences are that you’ll see and interact with professors and classmates virtually and the course content will be condensed. The same can be said for most of the other top online MBA programs which use all of the same on-campus faculty.

THINK YOU’LL BE FLYING SOLO? THINK AGAIN

When exploring online MBA programs, the terms synchronous and asynchronous are two terms you’ll want to familiarize yourself with. These terms refer to the format in which the online MBA material is delivered; whether it’s on your own time, on your own schedule with weekly deadlines and assignments to meet (asynchronous) or it’s at set times on set days of the week wherein everyone logs on for class via a live session (synchronous).

There’s a tendency to think — expect, even — that whether synchronous or asynchronous, online learning is mostly a solo experience, but this isn’t the case when you’re getting an MBA online. While you may never have to set foot on campus, you can always expect large amounts of group work.

“Group projects would be in our international course, for instance, where we ask students to research the business environment for a country then make a recommendations on whether to invest or not invest,” says Dean Skolnik from SUNY-Oswego. “In marketing, they’ll often do community-based projects such as one where there was branding for a local town and the students worked together looking at ways to elevate the town’s profile.”

In Babson College’s Blended Learning MBA program, incoming cohorts typically fall in the range of 70-72 students, but upon starting the program, they are broken into smaller groups. The learning groups, as they are called, are made up of five to seven students and they remain intact for the first eight courses of the program — completing assignments together, presenting group projects, and more. Students then form new learning groups to finish out the remainder of the curriculum.

Adding to the group work dynamic is the fact that online MBA programs are made up of students who are spread out at various points across the world. “One student recently spoke about working with a classmate who was in India and another in China and the need to coordinate across multiple time zones,” says SUNY-Oswego’s dean. “What was morning for them was evening for another student on the other side of the world. What’s nice about this is it models what we see in business environment as we collaborate with colleagues who are in different parts of the world.”

WHATSAPP, GOOGLE HANGOUTS, AND OTHER TOOLS TO FAMILIARIZE YOURSELF WITH

Of course with group projects and virtual learning teams comes the need for seamless communication. But if you think you’ll get by with just email and old-fashioned phone calls, guess again.

With tools such as WhatsApp, Google Hangouts, and Facebook groups being the norm, today’s online MBA students need to be both tech- and social media-savvy to keep up.

“There are 100 different connectivity tools you can use to communicate,” says Gunnar Bergeson, an online MBA student at Arizona State. “During orientation, most groups said we need to keep some standards for how we’ll keep in touch. If we need to share info or share research, it’s Google docs. For face to face meetings where we need to talk, Google Hangouts seemed to be the best and has worked perfectly. For daily communication, this was a little interesting. Some people like to use texts, some like email. We experimented, and gave WhatsApp a try. You can share documents, pictures, etc. I would say it accounts for 90% of our communication.”

Chelsea Coursey, a May 2017 graduate from the online program at Southern Illinois University Carbondale’s College of Business, backs up Bergeson’s account. “Because it’s virtually so easy to stay in touch with people nowadays, we had all different forms of communication,” Coursey recalls. “We had a Facebook group we maintained to touch base and that we still use, phone numbers to text, video conferences, video lectures, and of course email. I communicated much more in the online cohort probably than I did during my undergraduate degree in a more traditional setting.”

PACK YOUR BAGS AND STUDY ABROAD

Just because an online MBA program is virtual and done through distance learning technology doesn’t mean the importance of international business is ignored. You might be surprised to find out that international travel is an option in many programs and, in some, it’s even a required part of the curriculum.

At Hofstra’s Zarb School, they’ve linked a study abroad trip to its required international business course. The experience involves a week and a half cultural immersion, company visits, and more. In 2016, Zarb’s online MBA students traveled to Tokyo and Seoul and, most recently, students traveled to Dubai and New Delhi.

Kaushik Sengupta, associate dean of business graduate education at Zarb and the school’s Online MBA Program director, says the international trips involve a slightly more extended assignment where students are in partnership with an overseas business. “Students work on an assignment before the trip then they present their findings to the company when they get there,” Sengupta says. “We did this with Dubai this year. But we want to expand it next year. Typically, there are six to eight company visits. We’ll probably move to less visits, while making the trip more experiential.”

At other schools, international travel isn’t required, but it is an option. Mississippi State offers a three-credit Study Abroad class and trip each year, which can serve as an elective while Northeastern University students may take part in an International Fields course where students — alongside a faculty member — study abroad for one to two weeks.

TIME COMMITMENT

Although convenience and flexibility are the main attractions for online MBA programs, don’t let these factors blind you to the amount of time you’ll need to invest. According to most students, it’s considerably intense when you’re carving out 16-20 hours per week in addition to a regular 40-hour (sometimes more) work week.

“It’s a pretty significant time commitment,” says Kate Klepper, associate dean of graduate business programs at D’Amore-McKim Business School. “For just one course, students are typically actively engaged five to six out of seven days of the week. Discussions, readings, and other deliverables are all a part of a given week.”

2016 alumnus Curtis Webb, who did D’Amore-McKim’s online MBA program while maintaining 50-hour work weeks, says the time commitment for each class was 20 hours a week. “Most of that time was early mornings, late evenings, weekends. If you’re determined to get through it and be successful, you find all this time you didn’t know you had.”

To help students determine whether online, distance learning is the right format for them and to prepare students for the realities of a distance learning program, Mississippi State offers an assessment tool called SmartMeasure that helps applicants assess whether distance learning and/or learning in a technology rich environment will be a good fit for them.

MIX AND MATCH ONLINE AND IN PERSON

Finally, our most surprising fact about getting your MBA degree online: If you just can’t decide between a traditional, in-person program or going the online MBA route, you can do both.

At the University of South Florida St. Petersburg’s Tiedemann College of Business, the school’s online MBA option was introduced in 2010 with the cornerstone of it being the ultimate form of flexibility. Here, students are empowered with freedom to switch between online and in-person courses based on preference, interest, and personal schedule.

“It is absolutely optimized for the working professional who wants the option to occasionally tap into online courses or vice versa,” says Eric Douthirt, Tiedemann’s director of graduate programs and executive education.

The Flex MBA program at Lehigh University’s College of Business & Economics is similar. The program, which is synchronous in style, puts students in the driver’s seat when it’s time to decide where and how they’ll attend class. Showing up to campus, logging in from home, work, or travel, or a combination of all the above options; all of it is left totally up to the student. Add to that a decide-as-you-go format as students are free to toggle between in-person and online learning from week to week and semester to semester.

“In addition to the students who are seated inside the physical classroom, we have distance-learning students on their computers and can see the classroom, the other people online, and the faculty member. They can interact with the classroom as if they were sitting there,” Lehigh Associate Dean Andrew Ward says. “Inside the room are several monitors so the in-person attendees can see the students who are joining us virtually. It is very much a live classroom and is as close as you can get to being in a face-to-face setting.”

DON’T MISS P&Q’S DEBUT RANKING OF ONLINE MBA PROGRAMS

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