How to Effectively Tailor Your MBA to Your Career Goals

Choosing the right MBA program for you involves exploring how degree offerings align with your career aspirations and the specific skills you wish to obtain. Here you'll find tips on how to best approach tailoring your MBA to your career goals. 

Pursuing your MBA is a fantastic opportunity to gain understanding across all business functions, sharpen leadership skills, and broaden your horizons through learning from other students, faculty, and external partners with different perspectives and industry experiences. What is equally important is ensuring your program of choice meets the demands of the current market and allows you to obtain the skills required to thrive in your current position or in your next big role upon graduation.

Bentley University's MBA concentrations include marketing, accountancy, finance, law and taxation, leadership, business analytics, and information systems and technology. Additionally, many of our graduate students will opt in to share four courses between their MBA and MS to complete a graduate Dual Degree.

MBA specialization tips:

1) Research individual courses to match with the skills you expect to acquire. Contact admission and academic advising teams for more information to confirm your program and concentration of interest is the right fit.

2) Don't be afraid to go in a different direction from your undergraduate studies. If you're confident in the area you majored in, adding another specialization to your profile that still applies to your projected career path can make your profile even more competitive.

3) Work with career services to ensure your specialization interest lines up with the job you wish to grow into or land. Our career development team continually provides great insight on the current job market and tracks in-demand skills that employers are looking for. 

4) You may need time to cultivate your options as a graduate student and learn more from other students and faculty before jumping into your focus area. Especially for younger professionals, it is okay to confirm a specialization after you take your first few foundation and core MBA courses.

5) You can prioritize individual electives over a concentration. If you are a more seasoned professional and are set in growing in your current role, you may find that selecting individual courses as electives and forgoing a concentration is the best route to ensure you get exactly what you are looking to accomplish with your MBA.

Our admission team at Bentley is happy to connect if you have questions about how Bentley's MBA program can help you reach your educational and professional goals. We encourage you to schedule a consultation with us to learn more.