Riz’s Rotman Blog

As requested I’m going to share my thoughts on doing a full-time vs part-time MBA at Rotman. I want to preface this entire thing by saying that my opinion is severly biased since I decided to do a full-time program:

• The age in the average full-time program is a lot lower as well as the students have a lot less work experience. I believe this is the main criteria that you should use in deciding which program is best for you (not to mention the executive program). Age and work experience factor into the likely stage of your life and career you’re in which in turn will imply which learning environment will be best for you and your life. Some of these environmental factors are discussed below.
• I can infer that being in the part-time program wouldn’t provide as immersive of an experience as I’ve had in the full-time program. In the last two years I’ve essentially lived and breathed MBA life where-as in the part-time program, since you’re working, you live in two worlds. I’m not sure what this means as far as the final experience or if it’s even important. Draw your own conclusion.
• The part-time program is organized to allow students to continue working while getting their MBA, this means a few things:
  • You can still continue earning at your current job which presents an  opportunity cost trade off between the full-time vs part-time: i.e. you earn your current salary for three years vs earning no salary for two years but earn a potentially higher salary for the third year.
  • No internship opportunity in the part-time program since it’s year around.
  • “Lower risk” in the part-time program since you will (likely) still be employed at the end of the program.
  • You can’t take certain elective courses in the part-time program since they will conflict with your work schedule.
  • Organizing group meetings with students in the part-time program can be difficult sometimes since they can’t meet in the day, generally have evening classes, and have to consider family obligations.
  • The part-time program students sometimes miss out on Rotman events simply because they are working.

There are probably a lot of other things I can talk about but what I’ve said are probably the main points. Most of the rest I’d have to say revolve around your lifestyle choices and how they should impact your decision but those are far more personal.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 8:24 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.