Indian Institute of Management, Ahmadabad, more popularly known as the IIM-A is counted amongst the best business schools in the world and unlike the cream of b-schools (with which it shares a halo spot) that provide executive MBA programs with weekend sessions, it offers full time, residential executive MBA program wherein the participants are required to stay on campus for a year and learn all that the One Year Post Graduate Program in Management for the Executive (PGPX) has to teach them.

The program aims to prepare the senior executives and professionals to face the challenges posed by the globalization and information technology revolution that affects every realm of business activity. The program has come to gain high recognition amongst the professionals and executives all over the world, a good reason for the IIM-A to employ rigorous admission criteria to select the participants for its executive MBA program. Read more…

So far so much has been said about the feasibility of the executive MBA education, the boost it provides to the professional executive career of the EMBA aspirants, the cost of studying at the best business schools, the ways to finance the tuition fee and how it is different from online MBA education.

All said and done, it is important that we now talk about the art of juggling and effectively managing the job commitments and the part time MBA coursework, projects and assessments. Agreed, that the executive MBA program is only on alternate weekends and is not as rigorous as full time MBA program, still it requires significant level of commitment on behalf of the candidates towards fulfilling the course requirements.

Given below are a few tips that aim at helping you in juggling b-school and work in a more productive and less stressful way: Read more…

I am sure you would have noticed that the name of Harvard Business School was conspicuously absent from the list of top ranking executive MBA in the country. Well, it’s ok if you did not notice that, because we had explicitly pointed it out that Harvard does not believe in offering a seemingly diluted version of its full time MBA degree program for which it is recognized the world over. According to the head of Media Relations at the HBS Jim Aisner, an Executive MBA program is no comparison for the full time MBA program offered there because meeting once or twice in few weeks is not an idea of comprehensive MBA education.

However, the rather amusing part is that HBS indeed offers a degree equivalent of the EMBA that is offered by the Wharton School of Business, Chicago Booth, Columbia, Cornell etc. The program is called Program for Leadership, which is designed for the executive in significant management positions and aims to teach them about various leadership principles and practices so that they evolve in their professional and business career.

The Program for Leadership or the PLD as it is popularly called, is designed for executive with over 10 years of professional and business experience and is spread over four program modules that take six months to complete. Two out of four modules require on campus stay for four weeks, which means that you need to be away from your work for that one month, which should have been thought and planned about in advance.

The cost of the entire program is $40,000 and in addition to the 10 year work experience requirement at top level managerial positions, the applicants also have to furnish a letter from the sponsor or senior executive at the company, more like the letter of recommendation required to be submitted by the regular full time MBA applicants.

There is nothing like studying on employer’s allowance, right? More than anything else, it means you do not have to shell out some $100,000 to $160,000 out of your pocket at one time and don’t have to immerse yourself in education debts. Next thing, it means higher job security because a company which is spending this much amount to let you upgrade your skills is surely going to retain you for at least three to five years and capitalize thoroughly upon your knowledge and skill.

However, the last point can become a disadvantage too as an employer sponsored EMBA program would mean loss of mobility to other better companies as mostly the employers sign a bond or work contract that require the employees to remain working in the company for a period of three to five years. The new age adage that “if you are good, you will find job and only if you are very good, you will know how to get out of it” is specially relevant in the present case scenario where it becomes difficult for you to switch companies and move to a better organization that offers higher growth opportunities. Read more…

In this day and age where an MBA education is considered a direct ticket to a high paying job and is also a direct indication of six figure tuition cost, the professionals are torn between deciding to go for a high profile executive MBA that will their resume few notches higher but at a very huge cost and going for an online MBA degree that instills the traditional MBA knowledge and values in them at a relatively lower cost. Phew!

Well, I have in a very big five line sentence summarized the dilemma being faced by the professionals and executives aspiring to add value to their resume through an MBA program. Given their hectic work schedule and also the reluctance to part with a full time source of Read more…

Executive MBA programs are very costly and require proper financial planning. You just cannot wake up one fine day and decide to attend an executive MBA program worth anywhere between $60,000 and $172,000, unless and until you have plenty of money and time at your disposal.

One of the best ways to finance your EMBA education is to convince your employer to provide complete or even partial sponsorship. Before the financial crisis of 2008, most of the companies readily Read more…

In the previous post on Are you Read for an Executive MBA Program? – I, we discussed about the various things you should consider about before going ahead with your decision to pursue an executive MBA program. We talked about importance of outlining of career aspirations and goals and matching them up with the skills developed through an EMBA program, because after spending close to $100,000, the least you expect an executive MBA program to do for you is to aid you in your career development process.

Currently, we are going to talk about the tuition fee and other financial issues related to the EMBA program that you have decided to pursue. The cost of an EMBA program from an elite business school such as Wharton, Read more…

Pursuing an Executive MBA program is not a decision that should be taken casually. It is not as if that one fine day you wake up and decide that you want to go for executive MBA and inform your family, colleagues and boss regarding the same, without giving a single though to the college you want to attend or how you will pay the colossal amount of tuition fee, how you will manage your work along with the classes (come on, it is not a matter of a single weekend or month) and many other these kinds of issues.

Most EMBA candidates are professionals doing well in their chosen line of study or business and are used to what is known as well thought of decision making. Still, it is easy to fall prey to the popular trends or the current towards which everybody is heading. Before deciding to Read more…

After all the discussion we undertook in the previous days regarding the cost, advantages, disadvantages and desirability of the executive MBA programs, it becomes only natural to inquire about the best business schools offering these programs. The rankings are important because like in case of full time MBA or any other higher education Master’s degree, the relative standing of the universities with respect to each other becomes a crucial criteria for the individuals upon which they base their selection.

Given below are the top ten Executive MBA programs in the US, with Wharton’s Executive MBA programs topping the chart. Chicago Booth, Northwestern Kellogg, NYU Stern and Columbia follow close on its heels. And surprisingly, the names that are looking for, HBS and Stanford GSB are conspicuously missing on this list , for the simple reason that they do not believe in offering an  Executive MBA programs.

We read about what makes EMBA programs so popular across the world and why so many professionals, business entrepreneurs and senior management executives across the world are retracing their steps to universities offering EMBA programs, so as to add further value to their already gloriously promising careers. You know why they do that? Because, they know that,

“…the only way to survive competition is to embrace knowledge driven evolution…” It is said that your business is in trouble when is remains stagnant in face of growing competition. Similar principles apply in case of professionals also, irrespective of their chosen field of knowledge specialization. Read more…