University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign

[ThatBankDude]

I haven't seen anyone mention U of I - Urbana Champaign so I thought I'd add to the list. It's a top ranked school and the Gies School of Business has a strong reputation. The reason I'm mentioning them is two-fold. 

1.) They have an awesome system to ladder-up your way to your MBA. You can start on Coursera (for $49/month) and take individual U of I classes and even earn a specialization. You can then ladder these into a graduate certificate (or just take the graduate certificate on Coursera. I believe it's around 3k for the grad cert). You can then ladder your graduate certificate (which is equal to 12 credits) into their one-year Master of Science - Management degree. After that you can ladder up your Master of Science Management into your MBA (the MSM is exactly halfway to completion of the MBA) and then finish out with two degrees. It's a great system because you're making achievements all along the way by being able to showcase a graduate certificate (or two), then a MS Management degree, and then eventually an MBA.

2.) The MSM degree is 10k which is a great price for a top-ranked degree. The MBA is 20k total (or an additional 10k if you get the MSM first). It's also a pay-as-you-go schedule but you can still get student loans if need be. 

Just thought I'd share as I'm exploring this option in the coming future. I have a family member who did this exact process and I attended a webinar on it yesterday with current and former students. It looks very promising and would most likely open a lot of doors upon completion

Yeah it’s a decent program, although I think neighboring Indiana U (Kelley) is better.

People don’t talk about it here for multiple reasons but mainly because people want cheap, easy, accelerated and tend to avoid group projects.

I’m in IL and the rep for the online school isn’t as good as the in person program (MSM). Obviously the degrees are the same but there are some issues with large class sizes and tons of international students doing the online program and getting group projects done.

Had a friend transfer out of the iMBA because he said half the students were like fish out of water and should not have been there. It soured his experience. To him the school name has pull but the program did not. He went to UMich which probably has the best ranked online MBA.

An online MBA is not going to get someone without a ton of experience into a FAANG company but for a student who is older and already peaked out in their career field it could provide a small boost. The magic for hitting those insanely high paying jobs happens at T25 full time programs that have a ton of networking. A few colleagues of mine stopped working in their late 20s and went back the MBA school full time and it paid dividends. All making 300k plus.

I did not attend UMich Ross as I had already done an MBA. However, aside from Duke Fuqua (which is where I attended for my MS), Ross is one of my favorite B-Schools. Great programs for sure.