Hi everyone, I am currently a senior technical consultant in IT (digital security industry). Taking a MBA is always a part of my life plan. After 3 years in the consulting role (previously working in manufacturing plant), I felt that the interest of taking MBA was kept growing. However, I have some concerns for taking MBA. Please read the items in below.

1. My background is from Electrical and Electronic Engineering, will there be any problem in studying the business courses? I mean the understanding for business concept.
2. My company currently placed me in Singapore and my job role required me to fly frequently (except weekend). Are there any uni or colleges offer the weekend classes for part time MBA?

Hope some bros here can give me some advise. Thank you very much.

Hi Cybermaster98,

Thanks for you advise. The information is very useful for me to consider whether I should enroll for MBA. My key role in my currently is supporting the pre & post-sale activity. I always heard the sales manager or my MD sharing the business strategy/marketing strategy plan when we are working on a project. Being a technical consultant, I also need to act as a project manager where I do need to manage resource, project timeline, and etc. Thus, I was thinking that I maybe can learn the management skills, business and marketing strategy from the MBA.

Bro, please correct me if my mindset was wrong as I really keen to learn something from everyone of you. Thank you.

Hi bro,

Thank you for your advise. You are telling the same thing like my MD told me before. He suggest me to strength my soft skills as I am always at the front line. He also share me the importance of the soft skills apply to my job while facing the customer. Is MBA a good choice to grow my soft skills set? My sister (she was holding a PHD in Economy) also told me that MBA required the student "think and see the things" from different dimension. Is that true?

Thank you Kiawin. Your advise are very useful to me.

Good Luck. I am currently part-time studying my MBA in NUS. The life is as busy as hell where I never thought the MBA is that much difficult. I am here to disagree for those who always said everyone can study MBA. This is extremely not true. Anyway, if you want to study part time, be prepare to accept the busy life as it is really hard to balance the study life and working life. However, once you able to follow the foot steps in the learning journey, you will very much enjoy it.

Hi, the NUS part time MBA offered up to 30 months to complete. Mine one is 24 months. If you would like to take the NUS MBA, you are required at least 2 years or more of full time working experience especially in managerial roles. Furthermore, you may also need to take GMAT before the application. If you are shortlisted, an interview will be conducted by the business school.

It is not easy to work and study at the same time, time management is the key as MBA required a lot of reading. For me, I scarified my all my holidays including weekend, and my sleeping time as well. If your job not require traveling (to oversea), then, it will be better. Otherwise, it will be very difficult as the workload for MBA is heavy as well. The school uses every methods to test the student knowledge such as assignment, group work, exam, small group discussion. But trust me, it worth it.

Good luck.

This post has been edited by sian840424: May 17 2017, 10:42 AM

I am taking part time MBA and I am in the final semester. My job is more to technical pre-sale. Yes, I worked very hard. Sometimes, I really feel like want to give up. When taking MBA, the most difficult part is reading as it needs time, no shortcut at all. more working experience would definetely helps you especially the managerial experience. My personally opinion is MBA is a life changing course to me. It's hard to tell you by word. But what I want to tell is it worth it.

First thing you need to ask yourself, why you want to take MBA. If you can answer it, go ahead! If you don't, better take the professional courses which really helps you. Good luck

BTW, I am Malaysian! Please get your employer to be your referees. if you are working in a big cooperate, your chance is higher! It is not about the money, the school select the student!

This post has been edited by sian840424: May 17 2017, 09:57 PM

Hi mate,

Great to hear that you have the such plan to enhance your skills and knowledge. Before you make the decision, I need to give my advise to you before you enroll the MBA program. Please check my question in below and answer to yourself.

1. How much can you scarify for your time with family and personal time?
2. How well is your stress management if you would like to enroll the part time MBA?
3. How much money are you willing to invest for the MBA program?

All the questions in the above are what I am experiencing now. I am currently a final year (i.e. semester) part time MBA student in NUS (Singapore). What I want to share to you is that I had totally scarified all my personal time (e.g. annual leave, holiday, public holiday, happy hour, any kind of traveling trip) since I enrolled the MBA program about 2 years ago. If you are thinking that doing an MBA is easy, I can tell you that it is not. So, please think twice before enroll the MBA program.

The second question is quite critical, this is depends on your job nature. I am working as a Snr. Tech Consultant where I have to travel to difficult country almost 2 weeks a time. If your have a lot of traveling, please think carefully. For my case, I have to keep getting the approval from the school to not attending to the class. Although the school allow us to do that, but this is the huge lost for us as we miss the moment where everyone to work together as a team for certain projects and assignment. And this create a lot of pressure to me when I am doing my assignment as I miss the moment where I suppose to work with my coursemate.

The last question may not related to you. But if you are looking for a reputable MBA program, the fees is not cheap. For me, this question is also one of my stress coming from as it is really pricey.

Note: Please forget it if you are just looking for an online MBA program as it deviate the main purpose of how the MBA program should deliver to the student.

Hope this can helps you. Good Luck and enjoy learning.