Work Experience
The next component deciding the fate of MBA applicants is work experience. Here lies the eternal debate of how much work experience is good enough for an MBA candidate? For starters, internship is not considered as part of work experience. Gradudate schools demand candidates to get hands-on experience in any industry by working as full-time employees. According to experts, most of the US universities require a minimum of two to three years of work experience. It is likely that fresh under-graduate applicants with no work experience may be accepted in universities. However, preference is always given to candidates with solid work experience. Your chances of being selected greatly improve if your work experience is relevant to the MBA specialization that you have chosen for yourself. Most of the business schools demand a resume from the applicants. The following tips provide you with the general rules to apply in writing your resume:- The objective of the resume is to highlight your strengths and presenting admission committee with solid evidence of your credibility as a professional in the business world.
- The resume should be preferably one page long.
- You must list all the jobs you have undertaken in your career, starting from the very latest. The resume should cover all the major roles and responsibilities performed by you in each organization.
- Provide basic information against each job such as type of firm, dates of employment, and the scope of the operations for each organization for which you were employed. This will greatly assist the committee in assessing your application.
- Be concise and accurate about the information you give out in your resume.
- Emphasize on any promotions, perks and achievements you may have got in your career. This adds another plus point in your MBA application.
In the section below is the minimum work experience required for some of the major business school MBA programs:
| Gradudate School | Accepted Work Experience |
| Carnegie Mellon University | 4.2 years |
| Columbia Business School | 5.0 years |
| Cornell University | 5.0 years |
| Dartmouth College | 5.0 years |
| Duke University | 5.8 years |
| Harvard Business School | 4.5 years |
| Michigan State University | 5.0 years |
| Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | 5.0 years |
| Northwestern University (Kellogg) | 5.2 years |
| Stanford University | 4.0 years |
| University of Chicago | 5.0 years |
