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Are you one month away from crossing the finish line and gathering your Bachelor’s degree only to hear family and friends ask you, “What’s next?” Are you fed up with your current job and mulling over the idea of getting an MBA?

As more people look towards an MBA for career advancement or change, one of the main things many think about during this time is the name of the college in which they apply to. Although prestige comes with an Ivy League MBA programs, you can still be a success in the business world without having a Harvard or Princeton degree. Instead, here are nine colleges/universities to contemplate, instead of taking a trip down an Ivy-laced road.

momlogic.com

Are you working at a business you’d like to run one day? Maybe you know you could do your bosses job? Guess what? Too bad. If you don’t have that little roll of paper that says “Masters in fill in blank of business specialty here” you’re probably not going to be considered. If you’re toying with the idea of going online for that degree, consider this:

(Wall Street Journal) — Carolyn Starks admits she didn’t know the first thing about marketing when she launched her own business last year. But she also couldn’t afford expert help.  Previously laid off from a reporting job at a daily newspaper, Ms. Starks says a friend working at nearby Elmhurst College just outside Chicago offered to introduce her to faculty in the school’s marketing department, knowing it has a program that matches students with small businesses in need of support.  The introduction paid off.  For the next five months, Ms. Starks, 49, met once a week with two senior marketing majors to identify low-cost ways to promote her start-up, a publishing firm called Storybuilders Books. In between, the students would do research on Ms. Starks’s target audience — preadolescent girls — to come up with relevant ideas. A professor at the school oversaw the project.

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By J. Smith

UCLA’s Anderson Graduate School of Management is willing to forsake the funding provided by the state in exchange for the right to act as an independent institution. If the deal is approved, the school would be allowed to function as though it was a private university, and it would save exponentially in the process. A victory for the Anderson Graduate School of Management could mean a potential victory for other prestigious professional schools hoping to cut the costs incurred by operating publicly and go private.

If Judy Olian, dean of the business school, is able to see her proposal to fruition, she will forfeit all state funding for her academic programs in exchange for “self-sufficiency.” That would grant her increased power to arbitrarily raise tuition and to pay prized professors competitive wages instead of the ones sanctioned by its larger governing body. “The rise in tuition and earnings from a presumed growth in the endowment would make up the shortfall,” CNN Money reports. “The business school would also be able to plan better without having to worry about appropriations catfights in the California legislature.”

Although the graduate school has the support of UCLA’s central administration, opponents argue that the change would be economically unfair. “The Anderson proposal, according to a faculty senate report, ‘does not account for the asset value of the school and the investment value to California taxpayers…from 75+ years of state support’,” CNN reports. “But the larger complaint is philosophical. They say ‘self-sufficiency’ is ‘privatization’ by any other name – which ought to be anathema to a school claiming a continuing ‘commitment to the public mission of the university.’”

Mission statements aside, it essentially boils down to a matter of profit. While the tax-paying community’s investment in the public university is threatened, the opportunity to double tuition dollars trumps that longstanding bond. Other schools – like the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business – went into self-sufficiency nearly 10 years ago and has since increased the size of the student body by one-third, raised tuition and fees to $52,000 and taken the reigns over its own budget, CNN Money reports.

With more schools looking to save money and escape federal regulations, universities across the country are looking to self-sufficiency as an out.

Business school still offers a safe and reliable way to riches for many. But it’s not only how hard you work while you’re in business school but also which institution you attend that’ll make a difference in earning potential. Forbes released its seventh biennial ranking of the best business schools in the land. They based their rankings on the return on investment attained by the graduates from the class of 2006 at over 100 schools. Based on their research and findings, they came up with a “5-year M.B.A. Gain.” The list is much longer but here’s just the top 9. We’ll tell you now, the top b-school in the country is pretty easy to guess.

9. Darden School of Business at University of Virginia

Charlottesville, VA

Famous Alumnus: John R. Strangfeld, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, and President of Prudential Financial

(Businessweek) — After graduating from the University of Kentucky in 2009 with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, Nick Such accomplished the near-impossible: He somehow managed to get accepted into the MBA program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, which accepts about 6 percent of applicants, a tiny fraction of whom are, like him, fresh out of college.  Two years later, as his two-year deferral was coming to an end, he did the near-incomprehensible: He told Stanford thanks, but no thanks. A fledgling entrepreneur, Such had hoped an MBA would be a good way to advance his career. But after forging his own path, he decided to defer his MBA indefinitely and backed out of the Stanford GBS Class of 2013 at the beginning of August.  “An MBA would be an incredible experience, open a lot of doors, and probably change me as a person for the better. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from that environment,” Such says. “But I came to the decision I’m way too excited about what I’m doing now.”

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by Evette Brown

Most people realize the profitability of attaining a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) from one of the top-ranked business schools in the country.  MBA graduates from Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, and other top schools should expect to generate seven-figure salaries at some point in their career.  Recent research commissioned by Bloomberg Businessweek has officially confirmed that a MBA from an ivy-league business school is lucrative with an average base salary after two years of $126,000.

Here comes the surprise.  In a 20-year career, graduates of ivy-league MBA programs are almost guaranteed to net $1 million more than their peers from lower-ranked B-schools.  According to PayScale, the company that Bloomberg Businessweek utilized to compare salaries, graduates from the top 57 MBA programs earned an average of $2.4 million in the course of their 20-year career.  On the higher end, Harvard Business School graduates tended to earn the most with $3.3 million while graduates from Dartmouth University’s Tuck School of Business had the least salary growth with an average pay of $172,000.

The margin is much more extreme than some experts projected, but Ken Hugessen, an executive compensation expert isn’t surprised by the extreme range.  “If you’re at a top school, you must be pretty smart to get in, he told Bloomberg Businessweek. “You’re a stronger breed of cat from day one. That will follow you throughout your career.”  Overall, MBAs are still profitable, but the choice of business school is as crucial to success after the program.

(Wall Street Journal) — U.S. graduate business schools are losing their iron grip on the thriving market for international M.B.A. students.  At the 25 U.S. graduate-business programs that award the largest numbers of degrees to international students, applications for the 2011 fall semester declined 4%, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Council of Graduate Schools, based in Washington, D.C. Although international applications to all American business schools rose by 4%, that figure paled in comparison to the 12% growth in international bids to U.S. programs offering degrees in engineering and physical and earth sciences, the survey said. Business-school deans attribute the relatively sluggish growth to a growing number of high-quality competitors overseas.

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Supermodel, talk show host, and media mogul, Tyra Banks is never quite done reinventing and reforming herself. Just when we thought we knew what was next for her, she’s gone and surprised us again. Tyra is currently enrolled in classes in business. But get this, she’s not just enrolled in any old school, no she’s attending Harvard’s Business School.

Yup! The 37 year old is taking an executive education course targeted toward entrepreneurs. Good for her!

Graduates of a good MBA program always have access to the best jobs in the market. It not only makes them stand out but also gives them that edge over many other qualified applicants, Masters of Business Administration or MBA that equips students with the required skills to make crucial business decisions, understandin g the working of major corporations and empowers them to start their own company is among the most highly sought after program in the world. An MBA degree is not just a desirable advantage but an essential qualification in today’s industry.

Renowned business schools are known for churning out the best business leaders and CEOs in the industry. With over millions of degrees being awarded each year, the popularity of the program only seems to be following an upward trend with time. International businesses are also seeking the business expertise and prowess of overseas working professionals and executives. This opens up a gateway to incredible opportunities in different parts of the world. MBA graduates have a broad outlook and they truly understand the concept of globalization. An MBA in finance or marketing provides the required support to help you carry out your responsibilities in acclaimed organizations and accompanies across the globe.