The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, but how will it affect your MBA journey?
You worked hard to get the attention of your boss and the attention of a top MBA program. Your story is compelling and your career vision inspiring. Now you’ve been accepted and have a year to prepare before you matriculate at your dream school.
What happens if you change your mind about what you want to do with your MBA degree?
A year is a long time. A lot can happen. While most people continue working, others use the time to do other things like travel, change jobs, or get a leg up in their chosen career transition. No matter how you choose to use your year between acceptance and matriculation, however, you might be one who discovers that what you advertised to the admissions committee is no longer what you actually want to do.
The first thing you need to do is to relax.
While lots of folks will inquire about what you want to do with your MBA, nobody is going to ask you on your first day of business school what your career vision was in your application. Secondly, you should also remember that plenty of your classmates will be in the same boat, so you won’t be the only one who ends up pursuing something different.
Ask yourself why?
The real test of your inner sincerity is to get to the why. If you begin to probe into why you are changing your mind, you will probably get closer to stabilization. While business school is a great time to change careers, you must remember that b-school is not magic. Employers will generally want to see some demonstrated success in your prior work history that dovetails well into your new field in addition to some solid academic performance in the MBA program before they will consider you for an internship. Depending on the kind of work you are trying to do, you can’t expect to walk right into a new career just because you are getting your MBA ticket punched.
The last thing to remember when changing your post MBA trajectory is that you may not stick to your new plan either. If you changed your mind once, you could indeed change it again. After all, your b-school adventure is still quite a ways away.
For information on how we can guide your business school application process, email us at mba@amerasiaconsulting.com or go to http://www.amerasiaconsulting.com/contact