Study in US or UK? MBA/Management Science

I currently live in the US, but my wife and I are thinking of moving to the UK. I'm also thinking of furthering my education by getting an MBA or an MSc in management science, and I was wondering if you would recommend getting that degree in the US now and then move, or work a couple of more years in the US and then apply for school in the UK?

Any advice on what to do and if you have any recommendations for universities in the UK, I would be glad to hear those as well :-)

Hi there!  I feel like I can totally relate to your situation as my wife and I were contemplating where to go for my MBA three years ago and we wished we could have spoken to someone who had gone through a similar experience for advice.  At the time I knew that I wanted an international experience and my wife wanted to live abroad.  We focused on MBA programs in the UK, because if you chose a program that is longer than 12 months, your wife will be able to work with your entry clearance visa without requiring an additional work permit.

Having now finished I can look back at the experience in a positive light and am thankful that we chose to do it here.  However, there were a number of things we weren't especially prepared for or didn't know when we decided to move, and the time here was more difficult than we imagined.  Doing an MBA whereever you are takes a lot of time and work.  If you have a partner, you'll need to prepare them for lots of late nights and weekends alone.  This is tough enough when you're home amongst friends, but so much tougher when you've brought them to a foreign country and they don't have a support network in place.

Having said all that, there are some decent MBA programs in the UK.  If you take a look at the Financial Times or other rankings, you'll notice the top ones tend to be LBS, Judge, Said, MBS and Cranfield.  Each one is quite unique in offering and focus.  So you'll have to investigate each and see which is the best fit for you.  LBS and MBS are two year programs, so your wife can work.  Judge, Said and Cranfield are not.  The other main things to consider, is whether you intend to return to the US after the program straight away, after a few years or never, what industry you currently work in/want to work in as these will require you choose one program over the other.  These are the initial things I'd consider, but if you want to speak more about your specific situation or want any additional advice, feel free to PM me.

All the best

The programme only needs to be longer than 6 months for your wife to get permission to work.

Vicky

Thank you for your responses. To make things a bit clearer, I'm a dual EU/US citizen, so the whole visa thing shouldn't be an issue. My understanding is that as a EU citizen I wouldn't really need a visa for myself, and then just file one for my spouse, but that may be a question for another board.

Neither my wife nor myself are originally from the US, so we don't have a lot of family in the US. Living in the UK would actually bring us closer to family, so we're thinking of staying there, but with also being US citizens we like to also have the option to return if that would be a better idea down the road.

I certainly understand that an MBA or any type of graduate degree would take a lot of time, but I think we both are on board with the sacrifices that would take, and I definitely see your point about it being more difficult in a new country but fortunately we have some relatives and friends that would make that easier for my wife.

I'll look up those rankings to get a better idea of some programs, thank you for the tips. Right now I'm in the IT field, but in the financial services industry, but kind of leaning towards doing something within decision sciences as well.

Another question I have, can you say anything about how school is different in the UK compared to the US or is it fairly similar? Also, what did you think of the application process? I just took a GMAT, and I got a good GPA from a decent US university, but I'm not sure how UK school looks at these things.

I found that the application process for UK business schools to be about the same as that of US business schools.  Each will have a certain criteria for acceptance that will take into account your career progression to date, undergraduate record, GMAT score, and personal interview. 

In my personal experience, I found that doing an MBA in the UK was far different from my undergraduate experience in the US.  I felt that my undergrad was more rigorous and challenged me to think, while the MBA was more answering exam questions with the professor's preferred method or solution.

I've just begun a new job in the financial services industry after having spent my entire pre-MBA career in consulting.  While the MBA allowed me to reach my goal of career-changing, I feel that by doing it in the UK, I have made it more difficult to return to the US, without taking a position that is either below my current management level or salary.  I did apply to a number of top-tier firms in the US, being ignored by those that recruit from select MBA programs only, and making it to a number of final round interviews and assessment centers with the rest.  In every interview I had in the US, my reasons for going to the UK were always challenged.  And when I would respond that I came here for international colleagues and experience, they would respond that their program (Wharton, Kellogg, MIT, HBS, etc.) was also very international and higher ranked.  Needless to say, I focused my career search in the UK and EU after running into this a few times back in the States.

It's good to hear that you do have a friends and family support group over here.  It really will makes things much easier.  During my MBA interview, the dean of administration explained to me that of the students that come over with their partners, half end up breaking up or divorcing during the course.  And while my first reaction was that this was a bit of an exaggeration, the reality with my class was not too far off.  Over a third of the co-habitating, engaged and married couples in the program split up.  About half of these people did end up dating someone else in the program, if that's any consolation.  Maybe it's not different than what may happen with people at work, but I've never come across it before so I may be overly sensitive to this issue.

At any rate, I wish you all the best with your studies.  The MBA is a really great experience and I'm glad that I was finally able to do it.

Thank you for your very informative response cal_sig! What you said make a lot of sense, since I would expect most places to prefer graduates from a school in the same country even though global experience is becoming more important.

I can see how having friends and family around would help, because those are some scary statistics about people breaking up, I wonder if there is a similar trend in the US.

I’m a bit surprised though that you found your undergrad was more rigorous than the UK MBA, I expected it to be the other way around since I thought undergrad was pretty easy here in the US, but of course it depends on the school you go to.

Do you have any other tips regarding MBA and schools? I’m putting together applications for US schools as we speak to see where that will lead.