Hello All:
I’m a full time minister in the Methodist church with 18 years of experience of leading churches (from 80 to 2300 in membership) including budgeting and outreach, marketing, Human Resources management, visioning, and the expected weekly work of planning worship, preaching, teaching, and pastoral care. I am also a Veteran having served as a Commissioned Officer and Chaplain in the USAF then Navy (Marines) Reserves for nine years.
In the last several years, I’ve become more involved with other non-profits such as The Boys & Girls Club and have found great joy in helping to both raise monetary funds for them while increasing hands-on volunteer hours. Collaboration with for profits to show them how investments in these non-profits and the lives they reach helps not only the community, but businesses b/c the child with dreams and tools to achieve them becomes the healthy, skilled, dedicated employee and fellow business owner is a passion of mine. In order to realize better results and sharpen / acquire skills not learned (or not learned with great depth) in undergrad (BA-English, 3.33 GPA; I did take Statistics, Algebra, and Calculus with a B+ average) or Grad School for Theology / Church Leadership (MDIV-Vanderbilt University, Full Scholarship, 3.5 GPA), I’ve applied to MBA programs.
I will continue to work as a pastor full-time, but the church is in full support of me pursuing an MBA per the gift of time (no monetary help). I’m in KY with a young son near St Louis, so I applied to and was accepted into WashU-Olin’s EMBA. They offered a $20,000 scholarship which leaves $110,000 to finance. UF-Warrington also accepted me into their online program ($58,000). Both of those programs and Illinois’ iMBA Program (I’ve not completed that application yet) waived the GMAT requirement based on my other degrees, leadership / military experience.
My question: Do any of those three programs stand out as “best” per what you know about them and my background? I do plan on staying with nonprofits for the most part, yet I do want the MBA over an MPA curriculum for the flexibility and overall acceptance as a better degree per applications in many industries. I’d focus on management / Human Resources and / or entrepreneurial education. I’ve also considered Vanderbilt’s EMBA, Auburn-Harbert online, and Notre Dame’s EMBA. One of my recommenders graduated from Kellogg’s (NW) on-campus MBA Program and encouraged me to apply to their EMBA. Yet it too is expensive if I didn’t get a scholarship with Evanston a plane ticket expense per getting there to add to the cost (StL; WashU is only 3 hrs away and my son is nearby; Vandy is an hour away; Florida seems like a great online option at a good value; iMBA is even cheaper of course).
I very much appreciate any input including other school’s MBA’s rec’s and thoughts re the ones I’ve listed. And thanks for reading my lengthy post.
[Edited by RisingSons on Apr 17, 2019]
