E-Mail This Article to a Friend Getting down to business? How to decide if an MBA program is right for you BY NINA MACLAUGHLIN

Your cubicle FEELS small. Crouched in front of your computer, you start to calculate the number of hours you’ve spent within the confines of the cube — 60 hours a week times 52 weeks times the three years you’ve been at the job — but decide that knowing the result will leave you weeping by the water cooler. Stan from finance will pat your back. Christine from accounting will do that weird giggle of hers and tell you it’ll be okay. And your boss, who’s been more than satisfied with your work and has become your primary professional ally, will pull you into her office and suggest — off the record, of course — that maybe you should start thinking about what’s next.

And you have been thinking about what’s next. It’s your second job out of college (don’t even mention the first year you spent working for your uncle’s company), and it hasn’t been all bad. You’re starting to realize, though, that you’re not satisfied, at least not at your current level, that you want to be a consultant, a business owner, on the marketing team, that you want more stimulating challenges, and, let’s face it, a bigger paycheck. So you think about trading your briefcase for a backpack, the boardroom for the classroom, co-workers for coeds. In short, you’re thinking about going to business school for your MBA.

It sounds sweet — two years in B-school resulting in a six-figure salary when you’re through — but is now the time? Given the grim state of the job market, is an MBA worth the risk of sacrificing your salary without any guarantee the economy will crawl back to some semblance of health in two years’ time? The cost of most two-year programs hovers around a hundred grand; time was when you could earn that back in a year or two. But what about now? What’s the value of an MBA these days?

"In a strong economy, an MBA is a great thing to get you in the door," says Jaime Bederman, assistant vice-president at Princeton Review, an academic-preparation-services company. But these days, she cautions against dropping everything for the degree. "For a lot of people, it’s better to hold on to the job that you have," she says. "Because of the economy, it’s more about having a job than about having the job." Five years ago, coming out of a top MBA program guaranteed you a six-figure salary plus signing bonus, Bederman explains. That’s not the case anymore. "You can graduate from the top school and still not be in the position of knowing you’ll get a job. You still have to compete for jobs that aren’t there."

Even so, those with MBAs still have more job security in the work force, are less likely to be laid off, and are less likely to suffer pay cuts than people with undergraduate degrees. Having an MBA is still considered a valuable — and increasingly necessary — asset. "It’s the new bachelor’s degree," says Bederman. It "is the new baseline in a lot of cases. It’s the minimum expectation." Which makes the MBA both more necessary because everyone has one and less valuable because everyone has one.

Wisdom used to hold that if you weren’t at one of the top business schools — Harvard, Stanford, Wharton — you were wasting your time. These days, however, employers place less emphasis on where you got the degree. Bederman references the University of Phoenix’s distance-learning MBA program, which touts convenience over reputation: you can get the degree on your own time, at your own speed, without leaving your job or paying tens of thousands of dollars. Not long ago, "it would’ve been a useless degree," she says. But in this economy, it’s an attractive alternative, allowing you to get the MBA edge without the risk of giving up what you already have.

Deciding whether an MBA is the best move for you involves reflection, analysis, and self-awareness. Ask yourself what your goals are, how business school will help you meet those goals, and what you’ll bring to the B-school mix. According to Rosemaria Martinelli, director of MBA admissions at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, being able to articulate where you’ve come from and where you want to go is one of the key factors for a successful MBA candidate. Self-awareness "is incredibly important," she says. "If you’re not self-aware, you can wreak havoc on the world."

So what else does Wharton — tied with Stanford for second place after Harvard in U.S. News & World Report’s 2004 business-school rankings — look for in an MBA applicant? "We’re looking for academic horsepower, a solid undergraduate performance," says Martinelli, as well as respectable GMAT scores between 640 and 800. Beyond grades and test scores, Martinelli looks for people "who take a combined approach in terms of their personal and professional development." She cites three "leadership prongs" as ideal applicant characteristics, including a record of success, self-awareness, and involvement in the community. If you’ve got the above, "then you’re perfect," says Martinelli. "I don’t want the application process to be a mystery. I want more people to recognize that getting an MBA might be a relevant pathway for them."

According to Princeton Review’s Bederman, an MBA is not such a relevant pathway "for people who aren’t interested in reaching senior management, or for people who are more entrepreneurial." But that’s not the case for Erik Metzroth, who decided he needed an MBA precisely because of his entrepreneurial leanings. Metzroth, 28, got his undergraduate degree in marketing from Wharton, and "while Wharton’s a great school," he says, "I focused on marketing and pretty much ignored other subjects." After a few years doing marketing for various companies, including Snapple, Metzroth realized he wanted to start his own business — a festival-production company in the DC area — and that in order to do so, he needed "to be more well-rounded." He applied to Old Dominion University, in Norfolk, Virginia, because its general-MBA program allows him to focus on subjects relevant to starting a company — subjects he didn’t concentrate on as an undergrad — like business-plan development, venture capital, and taxation for small businesses. Cost was another factor in going back to school. "In-state tuition is very cheap," Metzroth says, about $2500 per semester. And with a Wharton degree already under his belt, the low cost of tuition "was the only way to justify it."

Increasingly, more people are following Metzroth’s trajectory — going to college, getting a few years of real-world business experience, then applying to business school — as opposed to going straight from the BA to the MBA. "It’s a professional degree," says Wharton’s Martinelli, "and with no experience, you can’t understand the practical implications of the cases." Metzroth’s classroom experience confirms this. "People who didn’t work at all between undergrad and grad school don’t bring as much to the discussion table," he says.

But after two to five years outside an academic environment, test-taking and application preparation have probably been sitting in your skill-set garage, getting a little rusty while you’ve been honing other kinds of expertise. That’s where Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions comes in; the company helps people with GMAT preparation, as well as school selection and application. In terms of the GMAT, "we prep people in three ways," says Paul Kontonis, executive director of graduate programs at Kaplan, including content (making sure people are familiar with the material they’ll be tested on); critical thinking (teaching strategies for applying your knowledge to the exam); and the dire-sounding crisis prevention (familiarizing people with the format and experience of the test so that they don’t choke when the time comes to take it). An adaptive computerized exam is very different from taking the SATs with a pencil, "and it can play mind games if you’re not prepared," Kontonis says. "It can freak people out. Our people don’t freak out."

Kaplan helps not only with test preparation, but also provides admissions-consulting services. A successful application depends on another triad, says Kontonis: a good GPA, the right score on the GMAT, and compelling essays. "These three things work in tandem," he says. "If one is weak, then the other two need to stand out." Based on diagnostic GMAT scores, Kaplan guides students toward schools that might be the best match. And Kaplan offers professional proofreaders who can help in perfecting your essays. "We have former, and sometimes current, admissions officers look at the writing" and critique them for both form and content, says Kontonis.

Preparation options at Kaplan range from private tutoring "for the utmost personal attention and flexibility," to classes, to online preparation. "Our teachers and staff are prepared to give guidance" on every step of the application process," says Kontonis. And a little extra edge with your application certainly can’t hurt on what’s becoming an increasingly competitive track.

"More and more," says Metzroth, "not having an MBA will become increasingly more of a handicap." And those who imagine MBAs as money-hungry investment bankers or greedy corporate goons are simply wrong. Business school "is not just training to run a business," says Martinelli. "It’s training people how to manage their lives and resources." From the smallest nonprofit to the largest multinational, "we all have to speak the same language."

Nina MacLaughlin can be reached at nmaclaughlin[a]phx.com .