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What's the return on investment from attending one of the world's top business schools?
Studying at a renowned business school is a time-consuming and financially challenging commitment. But it's also a sure-fire way to burnish your CV/resume, boost your income potential, and set you on a steeper career path. Insights spoke to five business school graduates in Europe, the USA, and South America, to find out what drew them to their specific programme. They all agree on one thing: the networks built at business school pay lifelong dividends.
With his feet firmly planted in Silicon Valley's booming tech scene, and an engineering degree from the University of California, Berkeley under his belt, Gunjan Bhow wanted to get a better understanding of business life outside the technology bubble. That's why he chose the Harvard Business School for his MBA programme in 1997, smack in the middle of the first Dotcom boom. "I looked at Stanford, but wanted to broaden my horizon. Harvard has a global reputation, a history of leading corporate thought across not just the US, but outside as well," says the India-born, seasoned tech entrepreneur, who has worked as a senior executive at global companies like Disney and Amazon, and also served as Global Chief Digital Officer at the Walgreens Boots Alliance.
One of Bhow's accomplishments during his time at the Ivy League university was to coordinate a novel trip by business school students to Silicon Valley, dubbed "WesTrek", to allow them to meet start-ups and venture capitalists. "My fellow students wanted to participate in this boom, but fast-moving, innovative companies in California had no ideas or structures for reaching out to Harvard graduates, nor the patience to work with the lengthy processes of a venerable institution. So, in true entrepreneurial fashion, we made the connection."
For all his planning acumen, Bhow says he was less methodical when it came to networking, one of his key goals for his MBA. "This environment attracts extroverted people who all had their own, often very focused networking strategy. I approached it more socially, hanging out with people I liked." The connections he made shape Bhow's career path to this day. "I left the school with ten or 20 very close friends and another 50 to 100 I know very well and can rely on with any business query."
Still based in Silicon Valley, but now serving on the boards of global companies like the BBC and Bupa, Bhow to this day relies on his network to find answers and valuable input: "The Harvard name opens doors. Questions about whether you want to connect with someone with expertise in an area; determining whether you can trust someone to do business with; or if they're worth your while or reliable, all vanish once you see that they went to the same school."
Kansas-born Firth wanted to take her interest in food security and equality to the next level after earning a bachelor's degree from a small liberal arts college. "My goal was to attend a large, research-focused institution outside the US - a place with a truly global perspective," she recalls of the decision-making process.
In the end, Firth settled on the famous LSE, where she was pleasantly surprised to discover that only about a quarter of her class hailed from the UK. "So many of my classmates, and later-on colleagues, came from non-Western countries, and brought their work and personal context into the conversation. The depth and breadth of this one-year programme really impressed me."
Firth, who graduated in 2009, stayed on after earning her master's degree and taught at LSE and other universities before finishing her dissertation in London in 2020. Today, she works as a facilitator and trainer of justice and multicultural transformation at Visions Inc., an international non-profit based in Massachusetts. "I always envisioned becoming a professor, but through the process of getting a PhD decided not to go onto the academic job market. I wanted to work for a non-profit," Firth says. "Getting credentials from a place like LSE didn't increase my income opportunities, which are not that lucrative in the non-profit world to begin with, but it does raise your marketability and instantly opens doors."
She, too, sees the network effect as having the biggest lasting impact. "The professional, academic, and social relationships I built have really remained my network as an adult. My professional network, which spans the world, is almost entirely built from fellow students I met while at LSE."
For Stephan Heinz, the choice of an MBA programme five years into his career as an aviation consultant was due to his father's advice. Heinz senior had graduated from INSEAD in 1972, and had told his son over and again that his time at the business school in Fontainebleau, an hour south of Paris, had been the best year of his life. "What better recommendation can you get than from your own father?" Heinz says. "I didn't apply to any other schools and liked the fact that the programme was international and only one year long."
INSEAD let him start at its Singapore campus for four months, then complete the remainder of the one-year course in France. "I was going into it to build a network, and my experience far exceeded my expectations. You meet people from all over the world, coming from different industries, and we had plenty of time to travel. Going to places like Malaysia or Myanmar makes network building outside the classroom very powerful," Heinz recalls, who visited more than two dozen countries during his programme.
Out of his class of roughly 80 students, he says he is still in close contact with about ten alumni from around the world, and will be inviting 50 of his INSEAD contacts to his wedding in 2025. After graduating from the school in 2018, Heinz returned to his familiar line of work in airline consulting in São Paulo, before joining a start-up that was building an LGBT business community platform, where he launched their diverse e-learning programmes. "If you meet someone who also graduated from INSEAD, no matter how senior their position, you have an instant connection that transcends hierarchies and geographies."
When the time came to find sales prospects for the Swiss start-up he co-founded in 2008, Rico Wyder knew exactly where to look: the printed directory of alumni of the famed HSG, which included their mobile numbers. "As a graduate, you can approach anyone on an informal, first-name basis, and C-level managers will refer you to the right person. Many were willing to help an underdog," he recalls.
In 2006, Wyder was one of the first graduates of a newly created bachelor's programme at HSG. He watched many of his classmates not pursue a master's degree but instead return to their start-ups. He, too, made a strategic decision to postpone an MBA degree until later in his career, and instead went to work for three young companies in Singapore. He returned to Switzerland in 2018, where he is currently head of sales for Skillable, a learning solutions provider. In 2020, Wyder made good on his earlier decision and earned a double master's in marketing and sales at SDA Bocconi in Milan and Esade in Spain. "In hindsight, the gap between the two programmes was a bit too long," he admits. "Five to ten years would have been better."
The network Wyder built up during his time at HSG is paying off to this day. "People in my class are now in their 40s and are successful. We maintain our connections, whether it's asking somebody for advice, helping out a young founder, or becoming an angel investor." While having a degree from a renowned business school is still important, he adds that it is no longer the only criterion when looking for the right talent. "It's a shortcut that signals you can get things done and find solutions. But sometimes, four years with a big tech giant will also prepare you for that."
When she was a teenager, Karen Huebscher already knew she wanted to combine her interest in natural sciences with the business world. The desire to bridge the two led her to first earn a PhD in natural sciences (molecular genetics) at Zurich's ETH, followed by a postdoc at the University of Cambridge (UK), before taking a job with the Swiss pharmaceutical multinational Novartis.
Having moved to a management role in investor relations, the time had come for Huebscher to find a suitable executive MBA programme to gain the necessary business skills. "My first choice was IMD, which offers a two-year executive programme. I went there to gain deep and broad skills for a successful career and to have classmates who already had some real-world exposure. I focused on finding the best executive MBA rather than a full-time MBA," she recalls.
Completing the demanding programme while holding down her corporate job was a life-changing experience. "Getting a better understanding of finance, marketing, organisational structures, supply chain, and human leadership challenges was just one part. Beyond this the programme made you question yourself, pushed you to be clearer about who you are and about your aspirations in life. It also made you somewhat humble as you realised that achieving your ambitions required an innate willingness and ability to engage in life-long learning, and that business success was most often a result of great teamwork."
The bonds she forged at IMD transcend continents. "It's incredibly valuable, particularly at the outset of your career, and you make new friends whom you can openly ask for advice in the face of problems for decades to come," says Huebscher, who has built a successful executive career in the life science industry, and today holds multiple board seats at listed and non-listed companies, as well as at her old business school.
