Generalization Vs Specialization

As addic­tive as busi­ness week (a big time­waste) or gmat­club mba forums have been dur­ing the appli­ca­tion process, I guess its time to move on to the next part. After putting months into fig­ur­ing out the right career objec­tive state­ments etc and then get­ting the final admit, I am more inter­ested in read­ing what cur­rent stu­dents have to say — to fig­ure out what mis­takes not to make. And thus I came across this gen­uinely insight­ful post from Orlando.

My Dad says your value doesn’t depend as much on what you do as it does on how well you do what­ever it is that you do. Going an extra step and pay­ing atten­tion to details start becom­ing increas­ingly impor­tant. It also raises a impor­tant con­cern — how much spe­cial­iza­tion should I aim for? It becomes a trade off between play­ing safe and show­ing extra con­fi­dence in yourself.

Going back to Class XI, I took both Biol­ogy and Math­e­mat­ics because I wanted to keep both options open (Indi­ans would under­stand). By some luck and extra effort, I cracked both Med­ical and Engi­neer­ing entrance exams in India. But at this point, I had to make a choice. Now lets see, what did I gain — abil­ity to hedge my posi­tion (a backup which makes me laugh now, I was back­ing up my option to be a doc­tor by another to become an engi­neer! I know how ridicu­lous it sounds now. These streams are world apart, one shouldn’t just become a doc­tor because he couldn’t be an engi­neer and vice versa. But for­give me for ram­bling, that is the issue with Indian soci­ety and edu­ca­tion sys­tem, I’ll save it for some other post.) What did I lose? — I could have cracked a bet­ter exam if I had focused on only one stream. And I know whole ‘entrance exam’ mania in India is also crazy but just a point that if I was focused enough, I could have gone to a bet­ter college.

Why am I won­der­ing now? All the major B schools pro­vide spe­cial­iza­tions for MBA. Stern allows up to 3, same for Kel­logg and so on. Even if you don’t tar­get spe­cial­iza­tion per se, I am talk­ing about tak­ing elec­tives. Obvi­ously there are lim­ited elec­tives you can take, so how would you want to spread it out? I was talk­ing to a Media pro­fes­sional who is an MBA and very very inter­ested in sports like me. He said sports man­age­ment is such a niche field that even if the school pro­vided it as a major, he wouldn’t have taken it. Thank­fully Media Man­age­ment has out­grown that size and is more of a main­stream option now. It is my intended field of spe­cial­iza­tion as of now. But for oth­ers, I am not so sure. Is it bet­ter to com­bine it with mar­ket­ing or con­sult­ing etc etc.

Any­ways, here are some ques­tions that fel­low MBA appli­cants or stu­dents may be able to answer  more intelligently–

1. How do employ­ers view your elec­tives? What is the cri­te­ria for ini­tial inter­view selection?
2. How does it impact over­all job hunt?
3. Will a mar­ket­ing com­pany be reluc­tant to hire you if you didn’t spe­cial­ize in Mar­ket­ing but only took few electives?
4. For eg. there is a course called Cor­po­rate Finance in Media and a generic Cor­po­rate Finance course. By tak­ing the for­mer, I might be more lucra­tive to a Media employer (will I be?) but I might miss out on other firms?

I am just won­der­ing whats the best approach and I under­stand it will be sub­jec­tive. So, any ‘lessons learned’ or com­ments from exist­ing stu­dents would be awe­some. Also, whats the take of other appli­cants. Some­times, the jack can out­weigh the master.

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