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Double or Nothing? The Pros and Cons of a Joint Degree

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Joint degrees are a hot trend among B-school students. It's twice the work, but the payoffs can be huge. How can you tell if a joint degree is right for you? Jungle talks to MBAs who completed one and lived to tell about it.

Call her crazy, but Terri McBride gets her kicks examining currency exchange rates, foreign debt transactions, and International Monetary Fund policies. With this passion for global economics, it made sense for McBride to take advantage of one of the nation's most prestigious joint-degree graduate programs, which allows her to simultaneously get an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Graduate School of Business and a master's degree from Johns Hopkins's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).




McBride is a firm believer that two is better than one when it comes to higher education. While the MBA program fine-tunes her understanding of the international business world, the Johns Hopkins course work broadens her understanding of the histories and economic systems of foreign countries. McBride is still one semester away from finishing school, and her skills have already won her job offers from the State Department, the Treasury Department, and a top-notch New York management consulting firm. "It's easy to understand the benefits of going to the number one business school," she says, "but I think the SAIS degree pays off in the long term."

Although only a small portion of the B-school population (most estimates hover around 5 percent) enrolls in dual-degree programs, there are those, like McBride, who have chosen to dance the graduate-degree two-step. And the numbers are climbing. Schools across the country are making the joint degree easier than ever by combining programs that attract students with all types of interests. Those pursuing MBAs, for example, can get additional degrees in law, medicine, dentistry, public health, public policy, social work, computer science, even animal husbandry.

What can a joint degree offer you? Depending on your career goals, there are many potential pluses to pursuing a two-in-one deal:

Specialization

Terri McBride wants to concentrate on a specific area of knowledge-global economics-in her work, a common goal for MBA candidates seeking joint degrees. If you know exactly what you want to do, earning a complementary degree can help focus your studies and later your job search. "An MBA is just not enough for those who want to pursue something off the beaten path," claims Rose Martinelli, Wharton's director of MBA admissions and financial aid. "[An MBA] gives a lot of foundation, but it doesn't give you the specialization that you might want to have."

Flexibility

For people like Scott Sherman, a dual degree provides an alternate set of skills. For almost as long as he can remember, Sherman wanted to be a lawyer. Yet, after two years of at Columbia Law School and two summers interning as an associate at a couple of New York law firms, he was having doubts about his calling. So he decided to take advantage of Columbia's JD-MBA program to obtain the business skills that he missed as a pre-law undergrad at Duke University.

Most joint programs require that you apply for each degree individually-and be accepted to both independently. Students commonly do what Scott Sherman did and apply to a second program once they've already completed much of the first. In fact, McBride completed a year at SAIS before she applied for the dual degree at Wharton.

Sherman is in the final semester of his joint program, and has already accepted a job with the New York City law firm Willkie, Farr & Gallagher. But he says that his joint JD-MBA gives him flexibility if he ever decides to explore his entrepreneurial ambitions. "If I do eventually decide to open my own business, I want to have those skills," Sherman says. "I don't want to rely on somebody else for all the financials. I don't want to get taken for a ride no matter what I do."

More Bang for Your Buck

Most important, obtaining a dual degree is cheaper than pursuing two degrees separately. A Wharton MBA costs about $90,000, and a SAIS degree is about $70,000. You can combine them, however, for the low, low price of $120,000. Of course, this sum is nothing to sneeze at, but neither is saving $40,000 by pursuing both degrees simultaneously. And sometimes, employers make the additional cost of a second degree worthwhile. "When I finish school and start work, I immediately get a $20,000 bonus for having gotten my MBA," says Columbia's Sherman.

A joint program also shaves months, or even up to a year, off the time it would take to earn the degrees separately. Getting a JD-MBA, for instance, takes only four years (five semesters of law school and three of business school)-one fewer semester for each discipline.

Opening New Doors

For Alyse Forcellina, a dual degree opened the door to a brand-new career. After working as a Capitol Hill aide focusing on health-care policy, Forcellina decided to deepen her understanding of the subject by heading south to get a master's at the University of Texas's Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. To gain a better understanding of the financial side of the health-care industry, she also decided to get an MBA from UT's McCombs School of Business.

As it turned out, Forcellina fell in love with business. With her dual pursuits, she became attractive to firms that emphasize health care, and consequently landed a summer internship with J.P. Morgan's health-care group. "I certainly did not have the business background in investment banking," Forcellina says. "I really attribute the fact that I got that job-which is one of the best summer internships to get-to my public-policy background and understanding of how hospitals work."

After graduation, Forcellina accepted a position with Deloitte & Touche in Chicago; she now works on Wall Street as a senior associate at True North Partners, a hybrid hedge fund and consulting firm that focuses exclusively on the health-care industry. "In my business-in health care-we look at people with joint degrees very favorably," she says.

Sounds great, doesn't it? But resumé padders beware: Getting a joint degree has its drawbacks. Before you start filling out your application for an MBA/fill-in-graduate-degree-of-your-choice, you should consider a couple of the negatives that a joint degree can entail.

Expense

A dual degree may be less expensive than pursuing two degrees separately, but it's still a huge investment. The cost of a three-year Wharton-SAIS degree is still $30,000 more than just an MBA from Wharton. Unless you're confident that your value as a job candidate will increase, pursuing a joint degree may prove to be a bad investment. "You're amassing an amazing amount of debt," warns Wharton's Martinelli. "You have to be silly to get a degree that you're not going to use."

Lack of Focus

In addition, for some postgraduate jobs, employers are skeptical of students from joint programs, because two degrees could sometimes signal a lack of focus. "I tell everyone to be cautious," says Peter Veruki, the executive director of admissions and career planning at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Business. "I've seen cases where it closes more doors than it opens." Veruki recounts one story of a student whose JD-MBA was perceived as a hindrance by a brand-management company during the interviewing process: "All that they wanted was an MBA who was hungry to do brand management."

Paul McLoughlin, a principal at Nordeman Grimm, a senior-executive search firm based in New York City, agrees that obtaining two degrees sometimes doesn't help. "I don't think it makes you more attractive as a potential employee." McLoughlin, however, has this advice for students thinking of participating in a joint program: Have a good story to explain to interviewers why you've pursued two degrees. "I think the joint-degree program works when individuals… know what they are going to use them for."

Philip Bellaria has taken this advice to heart. Like McBride, he's currently participating in the Wharton-SAIS program and wants to eventually work in global finance. Bellaria tells prospective employers about living in Thailand (as an Air Force intelligence officer) right before the 1997 Asian financial meltdown and explains that a dual MBA-public-policy degree has given him the necessary tools to understand how flaws in a country's economic and political systems can impact foreign investment. "You really need to come up with a good, clear story about why you have done both," he says.

Once you've weighed these pros and cons, if you do decide to take the dual-degree plunge, consider this advice from seasoned veterans:

When you combine an MBA with another master's program such as public policy or public health, be smart about dividing the curriculum, particularly if you want to take advantage of classmate networking. Most three-year joint programs require you to take one discipline in the first year, the other in the second, and both in the third year. Forcellina says that taking the MBA component the first year is a mistake, because by the time you return to the business school for your third year, your original business classmates will have already graduated. "All of your friends and all the contacts you're making are going to be gone your third year when you go back to the business school," she says. "One of the most important things that I got out of business school was the networking."

Last, once you've committed yourself to investing the additional time and money in a dual degree: Enjoy it! As Sherman says, "Extending school for a year is never a bad thing."
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