Full-Time, Part-Time, Exec - Which Program Is Best?

By Eileen P. Gunn

Patrick Kilborn had wanted an M.B.A. from a top-tier business school for several years, but he didn't think he was likely to pursue one. It was mostly a question of logistics. He liked living in Salt Lake City and had no interest in leaving his job as a litigation consultant and expert trial witness on accounting issues. Moreover, the 34-year-old had a wife and four kids and couldn't imagine scraping by on student loans for two years.

Still, "in my line of work, a degree from a top school provides huge credibility," he says. Then the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania began offering a weekend executive M.B.A. program in San Francisco, and he saw his opportunity. For the past two years, he's spent every other Friday and Saturday at the Philadelphia school's outpost near Market Street, boning up on financial theories, marketing strategies and business-plan writing.

"There's a big difference between doing this when you're younger and doing it at my age now," says Mr. Kilborn. For younger, traditional M.B.A. students, the coursework might still be "mostly theory," but they can completely immerse themselves in it. In Mr. Kilborn's class, "everyone is doing it as they're learning it, and there's tremendous value in hearing how Cisco does something one way and eBay does it another." But group projects are squeezed in between afternoon meetings and family dinner, and he sometimes has a kid in tow when he heads off to school on Friday morning.

If you're thinking about getting an M.B.A., your options for how to do it are myriad. In addition to the traditional full-time regime, there are night, weekend and executive programs. You can accelerate your degree or stretch out a program five or six years. And you can attend class just down the road or fly across two states. "Just like there are AmEx cards for all different market segments, there are M.B.A.s for different markets, too," says Russell Winer, deputy dean of New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business.

Even most A-list schools offer more than one program, and they're quick to emphasize that regardless of which program you choose, you're handed "the exact same degree." So it really is a matter of finding the right fit for your career track, personal life and pocketbook. Some factors to help you decide:

Career Strategy

One of first things to ask yourself when looking at different types of programs: Are you a "career changer" or a "career enhancer"? Career changers are generally better off in a full-time program, while career enhancers -- who want to stay in their current tracks -- should consider part-time or executive programs that can be integrated with their jobs, say faculty from several schools.

"The full-time programs are meant to transform your professional and personal life," says Nedda Gilbert, who wrote "The Complete Book of Business Schools" (Princeton Review, 2002). "Think of them as a laboratory where you can indulge in learning and exploring without immediately worrying about the gain."

Full-timers can use internships to segue into new careers, and they often can take more varied elective classes, which helps them cultivate new areas of expertise. "Our full-timers have a choice of five real-estate electives, our part-timers have one and our executive M.B.A.s have zero," notes Andrew Shogan, associate dean for instruction at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

Harder to quantify, but equally valuable, is the opportunity that full-timers get to knock around campus all day, joining student clubs and going to guest lectures and other activities that help them to explore their options.

James Oliver thought he wanted to be a consultant when he headed off to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School. Then, while prepping for job interviews, he tried out the type of problem solving that consultants do. "After one or two, I realized I had no interest in the issues they deal with; I was bored. I figured I probably didn't want to be a consultant after all," he says.

At the other end of the spectrum, executive M.B.A.s are often entrepreneurs or senior managers. They're trying to transition from their chosen niches into more diverse roles, but after years in finance or product development they need help looking at business more broadly. Employers often subsidize the cost of their employees' tuitions or at minimum, let the school know they support the employee's interest in the program and will give them the time off needed for classes and travel.

"I have one EM.B.A. student who's 27 and owns 10 retail stores in Russia," says Daniel Nagy, associate dean for recruitment and admissions at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. "He thinks he can have 100 stores in the next 10 years, but the company is outgrowing his capacity to run it. He's taking our program to catch up with his business."

And part timers? They're somewhere in the middle. Generally, they're closer in age and experience to full-timers, but they often have an enthusiasm for their careers that matches executive students'. At best, the classes are full of young, high-potential workers who don't want to step off the fast track to gain the M.B.A. credential.

"I like the idea of coming together from all over for the weekend for class and then going back to our lives and jobs," says Kathleen McDonald, a vice president of corporate development who commutes from Indianapolis to the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business's Weekend M.B.A. program. "Full-timers count on being important contacts for each other down the road, but I have a great network of people now."

At worst, however, part-time programs are the less-attractive stepsisters to traditional programs, full of students who want to change careers and would benefit more from a full-time experience if money and circumstances allowed. A survey by the Graduate Management Admission Council in McLean, Va., found that part-time M.B.A. grads are the least satisfied with their M.B.A. experience, with 59% rating their program outstanding or excellent, versus 68% of full-timers and 72% of executives.

"Expectation plays a huge role," says Daphne Atkinson, vice president of industry relations at GMAC. "A lot of people think they can live with the trade-offs of a part-time program and then don't like them in the end." For example, 80% of part-timers in the survey say career services mattered to them, but as one dean points out, "when they're on campus at night or on the weekend, that office is closed."

In and Out of the Classroom

One frustration part-timers and executives share is "wanting more time to focus on just learning," as Ms. McDonald puts it. But they make up for that lack of study time by letting work and school feed off of each other.

Michael Scherer, who graduated from Chicago's part-time program in 2001, says the company he worked for at the time "was one big case study for me." In one class on strategy, he learned why a business plan is important even in an established company, then noted there wasn't one in the business unit he was running. "I didn't know if we could reach our goals without a plan that everyone could follow." So he wrote one, "and it became the model for the company's other units."

Executive M.B.A.s, in particular, count on learning from each other as much as from the instructor and expect a sophisticated classroom experience. Patrick Janin, now based in Nice, France, was running the U.S. operations of Future Medical Systems in Glen Burnie, Md., when he enrolled in Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business's International Executive M.B.A. program at age 33. "After visiting a few schools, I didn't think the classmates in a full-time program would have enough experience to challenge me," says Mr. Janin, who's now president of FMS France. "But when I visited Georgetown, not a class went by without a teacher being challenged by a student."

Ms. McDonald believes that while her part-time classmates don't socialize nearly as much as full-timers do -- there are no football games on the quad when people have to catch afternoon flights back to Seattle and Houston -- they're better able and more willing to support one another. For example, with an undergrad degree in public policy, Ms. McDonald says her quantitative skills were lacking, but "I had several people say, 'Call me, I'll help you,' and who spent an hour working on problems with me."

Executive M.B.A. students aren't as competitive as full-timers. "We're not all going to be out looking for jobs and talking to campus recruiters at the same time," she says. "We can afford to be supportive."

Moreover, Mr. Nagy believes the demands of cramming a full M.B.A. course load into already crowded lives bond students together. "They know that if they pick up the slack in a team project for someone getting slammed at work this week, someone will do the same when they're dealing with some issue next week," he says.

The Nuts and Bolts

Just as the faculty, core curriculum and degree are the same for all programs within a given school, be prepared for the same application process, too, including interviews, essays and recommendations. One major difference: Some schools wave the Graduate Management Admissions Test or give it less weight for executive-M.B.A. applicants and look for a longer career history instead. Duke's Global Executive program asks for at least 10 years of experience, for example, and the average for its students is 14.

And then there's the price tag. The executive programs have by far the highest. NYU's, for example, is $100,000 versus $65,000 for the full-time degree. But they're the most inclusive, covering classes, books, class-day meals and some housing, as well as residencies (weeklong stints, often overseas, that supplement the classroom time).

Part-time and full-time programs are more comparable, though part-timers can sometimes take fewer classes and spread the cost over five or six years. Full-timers, for their part, often have to move and pay for student housing. And, NYU's Mr. Winer points out, "there's the opportunity cost of not working during those two years."

If you choose a program that really fits your stage of career and life, however, the cost, no matter how you slice it, is more likely to pay off in the long run.

-- Ms. Gunn is a free-lance writer in Brooklyn, N.Y.