2021 Spring Guide To The Best Business Master’s Experiences

If you graduated with a degree in the liberal arts and are finding it tough to land a desirable job in business, a specialty master’s degree may well be your ticket to a great job and career.

That’s because today companies expect newly hired employees to make a contribution from the start.  A business master’s degree jump starts a graduate into a corporate job. The days are long gone when more companies scooped up students who majored in English, political science and philosophy and put them into training programs. Cutbacks in management layers of the 1980s and 1990s did away with many of those entry-level jobs.

This simple fact is why specialty master’s degrees in management, business analytics, supply chain management, finance and accounting, have experienced explosive growth in recent years. More often than not, these are so-called pre-experience degrees, meaning you don’t have to bring years of full-time work experience to get into one of these programs. They allow deep dives into popular business disciplines that make you job ready.

A FOCUS ON MAKING SURE YOU LAND A JOB

Many of these programs are also open to professionals with some work experience who want to make a job or career switch and need the additional educational credential, help of career coaches and mentors, along with an alumni network to make that transition. And increasingly, candidates for these specialized business degrees can take them online while they continue to work in their current jobs.

What makes these programs attractive is the career support you’ll get at a top business school. It’s also no secret that the best business schools devote considerable resources into getting you a job. Unlike university career management centers, which have been notoriously understaffed and unhelpful, B-school career officials are one of a kind. The focus on making sure you land a job out of school is a crucial ingredient in the secret sauce of what has made business education so popular in the world.

With Matt Symonds, Poets&Quants hosted the first CentreCourt admissions event for these programs in 2020, bringing together deans, admission directors, career management officials, and alumni of the programs for a series of panel discussions, fireside chats and interviews. We’ve done it again for 2021. The sessions provide a unique opportunity to learn everything possible about these programs. You’ll gain practical insights into what the schools are looking for from the admission officials of the programs, what career doors these programs open for graduates from career management directors, and how these degrees impacted the careers of alumni.

Here’s our handy 2021 spring guide to those compelling conversations: