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Brazen Careerist: Don't Get an MBA if Not Climbing Fortune 5

Published: Apr 07, 2011

 Education       Grad School       

Generation Y career expert Penelope Trunk, aka the Brazen Careerist, talks to Poets & Quants about a variety of MBA-related topics. As always, she displays the gritty candor and rapid-fire delivery that achieves a kind of ballistic effect on the reader or listener. Always enjoyable.

Here’s a smattering of things she says in the interview.

On who shouldn’t get an MBA

“For anyone not climbing the Fortune 500, [the MBA is] an albatross.”

 “If you can’t get into the Top 10, don’t go. If you didn’t get a 700 GMAT, don’t go. If you haven’t done anything amazing between the ages of 20 – 25, forget it. There are so many people splitting hairs and unsure. It doesn’t matter. You don’t have a chance to get in. The world is hard. Getting a job is hard. Should I get an MBA? That’s like asking if you should date a model or Nobel Prize winner. Forget it. It’ll never happen. It’s all a pretend conversation.“

On who should get an MBA

“B-school is for people with no ideas.”

On getting good grades

 “If you get in, tell her to work on the side. No one cares about your grades.”

On career centers

“Market the career center…Forget your curriculum”

 “There’s this crazy snootiness at MBA programs where professors are more important than the career center… the career center is where non-Top 10 B-schools can differentiate themselves.”

On women in b-school

 “If you go in at 26 and you’re a woman, you don’t have time to leverage the degree and have kids.”

“It is imperative for single women in MBA programs to date someone who is marriage material.”

“Competition for women to land spouses in New York is crazy. It’s like seven women for every three men. B-School decreases the competition.”

[Poets & Quants]

[Photo Credit: Flickr/Ed Schipul]


Related:
Harvard MBA: Don’t Get an MBA if Mid-to-Late Twenties and Decent Job
Why an MBA Doesn't Make a Better CEO

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