College isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be nowadays. After 4-6 years of studying, students are asking themselves: Where do I go from here? And with times changing rapidly, degrees don’t necessarily guarantee a job nor do they promise great money and stability. Therefore, pushing on with an education is becoming more and more popular. Law enthusiasts who majored in business often wonder which choice is better for their career: a JD or an MBA.

Well, here are a few opinions that were found on various blogs. Take it with a grain assault…or not. But, whichever choice you make, the bottom line really comes down to where the passion lies. If you love to do something, pursue it! You will succeed…sooner or later.

“Don’t go to law school. I wish I had entered an MBA program instead. MBA will earn you as much as if not more money than being a lawyer, you finish school in half the time and you don’t have to worry about passing some stupid bar exam at the end of it. I’m in my 3rd year of law and I am still wondering if I want to be a lawyer.” anonymous - mbwana.blogspot.com

“I went to law school for 1 year, did relatively well (3.2 GPA) and didn’t return. Now I’m doing my MBA instead. I liked the intellectual aspect of Law, but the practice is MUCH different. After working for a firm over the summer and seeing what was in store, I cut and run pretty quickly. Plus, I never really “wanted” to be a lawyer, I just thought law school would be a logical place to go after getting a BA in philosophy, plus I had no job prospects at the time. 2 very bad reasons to spend $16,000 to not get a degree.

So, I’m doing an MBA instead. While Law school was more intellectually challenging, the MBA offers SO many choices of fields to go into. It has been pretty eye opening for me. True, getting a law degree isn’t a bad thing for your job prospects. But, if you’re like me who didn’t even want to be a lawyer, much less know how I would apply a law degree outside the field of law, then maybe the MBA is best.

Sometimes I regret quitting law school but then I think back at how lost I felt there and how I dreaded graduating and trying to get a job at a firm or market myself as a non-lawyer with a law degree.” anonymous - mbwana.blogspot.com

“These days, when people consider doing an advanced degree, their thoughts often turn towards an MBA. Why an MBA over another degree? It’s a general degree that opens many doors (e.g., finance, HR, consulting, management) in many industries (e.g., healthcare, finance, manufacturing). With healthcare professionals, an MBA is often the degree of choice when looking to leave clinical work behind or enter administration,” Cynthia Piccolo - medhunters.com.

“You might want to do a combination program like law/MBA. If so, you’ll have to do well enough on the LSAT (the standardized test administered by the Law School Admission Council and used as an admissions tool at more than 200 law schools throughout North America) to be admitted into the law program. And remember that it will take longer to complete a dual program.” Cynthia Piccolo - medhunters.com

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If you are like thousands of other students out there, you are considering getting your MBA or Masters in Business Administration. While we all have our own unique motivations for getting the degree of our choice, the amount of money we’ll be making with our degrees is usually of paramount importance. However, not everyone who earns an MBA can be expected to earn the maximum amount of money available for a number of reasons, such as the amount of prestige attached to a particular school’s MBA program, the type of connections you have once you graduate and the type of business you pursue once you have your degree. Let’s take a look at how all three of these variables influence what you can make with your MBA degree.

According to recent statistics, it really is worth staying in school to get your MBA. Starting salary numbers jump significantly when you have your MBA from approximately $56,000 a year to $76,000 a year. When you extrapolate that five years into the future, the earning gap is even larger, with most MBA students earning well over $100,000. There are a number of things that can influence that earning potential, however.

Almost every major university in North America has an MBA program, but not all MBAs are created equally. Just as there are some schools that specialize in microbiology and others that churn out exceptional surgeons, some schools are better known for having solid MBA programs. You can significantly increase your earning potential by graduating from a school like Harvard that has an established MBA program that is highly respected as opposed to graduating from a school that has just started an MBA program.

As many of you know, the real world is less about what you know and more about who you know. Our professors try to hammer into our heads how important it is to network while we’re in school and when you look at the influence networking has on MBA earning potential, you’ll see why. Many times, things like our resumes, where we graduated in our class and the grades we received on our final exams mean very little if you know someone who can start your career off on the right foot. Perhaps more than any other single factor, who you know can determine how much you will make right out of school with your MBA.

Finally, not all types of companies give the same kind of rewards. Just like social work tends to be the lowest earning degree one can get, if you affiliate yourself with a law firm or another business that rakes in the cash, you will likely find significantly higher earning numbers over the life of your degree. The question that many of us have to ask at one time or another is how happy you’ll be working at the job your MBA earns you. Will the extra cash bring you genuine happiness or will working at a job that helps to make the world a better place be a more significant reward?

Earning potential with your MBA is a major concern that almost every student has, however, putting a price on happiness is something that no one can do.

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