5 Reasons to Attend Graduate School – See If It's Right For You

Boys 4-7 Under Armour Hoodie with Built-In Face Mask
Featuring an attached face covering, he'll be able to easily mask-up whenever he's out and about with this boys' Under Armour hoodie with built-in face mask.

Graduate school is not right for everyone, but it does have its benefits. Take a look at 5 good reasons to go to graduate school and earn an MBA. See if any of them are right for your own personal, educational, and professional set of goals.

1. Show me the money: Like Cuba Gooding, Jr. said in Jerry McGuire, "Show me the money!" Typically, MBA graduates are more marketable to companies for management positions. Management positions typically pay more in salary than staff positions. And since a lot more companies today are making an MBA a condition for employment, by learning your MBA may actually mean that you will be "seeing more money!"

2. Professional growth & development: Many students enter an MBA program after they have been in the work for some time. This means that they have earned real-world experience after receiving their bachelor degree. Going back to grad school may simply be a personal or professional goal that you have set for yourself. By combining your real-world work experience with the advanced skills and training that graduate school can offer you, it can help you grow both personally and professionally.

3. Become a specialist: Many graduate schools allow you to choose a specialty when you are attending your MBA. This allows you to further advance your general business skills while becoming an expert in a particular field. For example, you may currently work in the marketing department of your company as a marketing assistant. You ambition, however, to become a marketing manager for one of the divisions of your company and one of the requirements for marketing managers at this particular firm is that they have to have their MBA. You can return to graduate school and earn your MBA with a special concentration in marketing. Even if it does not land you a marketing management position in your current firm, it may very well land you one in another firm.

4. Opens doors of opportunity: Earning an MBA degree can open up doors of opportunity that may not have been opened without having one. Numbers do not lie and the numbers show that MBA graduates have an increased chance of gaining access to the position that was beyond their reach before they earned their degree. You too may be able to land your dream job by going to graduate school and learning your MBA.

5. Build a network: Sometimes being successful in business and just in life in general is about who you know versus what you know. In grad school you are introduced to all different kinds of people from all different walks of life. Your peers and your professors are great resources for you in the business world. Graduate school allows you to build your own framework of a support and contact system to build strong business relationships.

While these are 5 great reasons to attend graduate school, you may have reasons of your own that are not listed here. Take out a piece of paper and make yourself a list of the reasons why you think you want to go to graduate school, and how to get your MBA may benefit you. Make an old fashioned pros and cons list and see which side has more reasons, pros or cons. The odds are that you will probably find more positive reasons to earn your MBA degree than you will find reasons not to attend grad school.