Hi,
I am a very experienced business person and would like to obtain a distance MBA. I have about 2+ years university that is greater than 10 years old and have little to any interest in obtaining or finishing the lower level degree.
Your filters for selecting a school does not include the opportunity to find schools with no bachelor requirement. I know it is possible to present a situation to the school directly, but curious if you know of any off-hand that might accept these types of students.
Thank you for your time.
Short answer: in the US, accredited MBA programs require a finished bachelor’s. The rare exceptions are negotiated one-off for senior executives. So the real question isn’t “which MBA will waive it” — it’s “what’s the fastest legitimate way through the bachelor’s.” That path is shorter than you’d think.
Degree-completion programs are built for exactly your situation. Old university credit generally still counts toward general education, even decades later. With two-plus years of credit, finishing in about two years part-time is realistic. Our bachelor’s completion directory lists these programs, and once that’s done, any MBA on the affordable list is open to you on normal terms.
I need some advice. I did two years of my BA at Bard College and didn’t like the experience. I was studying to be a scientist, but realized that wasn’t for me. I’ve since decided that I want to pursue a degree in Business Administration with a focus in marketing. I would strongly prefer to get my MBA now, rather than wait another two years to finish my BA first. I want to get moving with my career. I’ve found a school that allows this, Heriot-Watt Business School at the University of Edinburgh, which was ranked 43 in 2011 one mba site.
However, my uncle says that people won’t hire me if I have a Heriot-Watt MBA without first completing my BA. Would you say that’s accurate? Do I have no choice but to complete the BA first in order to be competitive in the job market?
Thanks so much in advance for the advice,
Owen
Thank you very much for the reply. I hold several industry standard certifications and have hundreds of hours of such coursework at Universities and National Organizations.
No interest in taking coursework from a foreign entity as like you said, too many irregularities in language.
My IQ is 130+ and my SAT’s were quite high when I did take them so I don’t think my limitations would be intellectual capacities, but just the slow dealings of working with the university structure. 🙂
I guess next step is GMAT and identifying a few schools. 🙂
Thank you again.
Thanks for provide information about Online MBA
Hi Owen,
I moved your post to where we have discussed the MBA with no bachelors and HW before so you can see the chain of discussion.
Heriot-Watt is indeed a world class business school respected the world over — not just in Scotland. You won’t have a problem getting hired with a HW MBA with NO BA or BS degree. The MBA will carry you. There are, however other problems with attempting the HW distance MBA without a BS or BA in business. I’ve discussed these before on the forum. 1) there is a very high failure rate in the HW distance MBA program when admitted without the prepartory formal undegrad business courses like stats/econ and accounting– this is NOT any easy program and you must pass the competency exams to move thru the HW program; 2) If you are an american yhou will find the courses at HW very challenging as they use UK terminology rather than north american terminology. HOWEVER you can enroll in a course and test the system to see if you like it. If you don’t pass the first level competency exams they’ll not let you continue on. Getting a job will NOT be an issue if you get a HW MBA. No worries there!
Vicky
[b]Owen wrote:[/b]
[quote]I need some advice. I did two years of my BA at Bard College and didn’t like the experience. I was studying to be a scientist, but realized that wasn’t for me. I’ve since decided that I want to pursue a degree in Business Administration with a focus in marketing. I would strongly prefer to get my MBA now, rather than wait another two years to finish my BA first. I want to get moving with my career. I’ve found a school that allows this, Heriot-Watt Business School at the University of Edinburgh, which was ranked 43 in 2011 one mba site.
However, my uncle says that people won’t hire me if I have a Heriot-Watt MBA without first completing my BA. Would you say that’s accurate? Do I have no choice but to complete the BA first in order to be competitive in the job market?
Thanks so much in advance for the advice,
Owen[/quote]
That’s very interesting.
Thanks for the follow up.
If you test well you could very much improve your chances of admission to a good online MBA program with a good GRE or GMAT score in hand.
Try a sample GRE/GMAT and see what your ballpark score may be.
Every profile in our online MBA directory states the average or recommended GRE/GMAT scores for the program. These vary also.
This topic of an online MBA with no bachelors degree is often discussed online but in all my 20+ years of working with adult students I have only seen one student get admitted to a good MBA online program in the USA with no bachelors degree.
He did this by having a great business record — founded 2 companies, one publicly traded — and submitting GMAT scores on par with the other applicants. He was also looking to study entreprenurship which is a more open major than say accounting, which relies on a great many formulas, rules and procedures.
Having a solid resume with other learning credentials on it will also help.
Keep us updated!
Vicky
Hello,
There is no such regionally accredited creature in the USA at present.
You may wish to try some of the European Online MBA programs. The one with the best reputation for admitting online business students with no formal bachelor degree is Heriot-Watt University, a leading residential Scottish business school.
Their Edinburgh Business School (EBS) is a top tier European business school. HW, like several UK distance learning schools, will admit adult students who do not yet hold formal bachelor or first degrees.
They admit such students provisionally. They will let you enroll in a few courses and if you pass those courses they will formally admit you to MBA study.
I would caution you however that this is a competitive school so the courses are tough. If you have no had formal training in accounting, finance and other academic business areas like economics you may struggle to understand the academic course language you will encounter. HW courses assume you know standard business formulas and theory in areas like microeconomics.
If your business skills were learned in the trenches these courses may be as hard for you as learning a foreign language. In addition, if you go the European route you will be exposed to European business ideas and terminology which is not the same as North American business modeling and terminology. This will make your studies more challenging.
The other option is to try and petition an American business online MBA program to let you in with no bachelors degree.
The reality is that almost any program which might consider this type of petition will want you to submit scores on an exam like the GMAT to show that you have the academic skills in math and formal quantitative reasoning to compete at the grad level.
If you have street smarts, but are short on book/ theory learning, you may not do well on exams like the GMAT/GRE.
I wish I could be more encouraging BUT there is such a difference between business street smarts and academic business knowledge that it may be hard to bridge the two and fit yourself into an academic MBA structure in the USA.
If others have been successful at getting into an American MBA program with no bachelors OR have tried the HW distance MBA let us know. Your experience tips would be helpful!
Vicky Phillips
Founder Get Educated