Traditional schools vs. online schools

Round One

I started my MBA at the same school where I received my undergrad, against my better judgement. Truth is, I valued life experiences more than classwork and ended up with an embarrassing undergrad GPA as a result, despite my intelligence, and did not have many options for places to get my MBA.

When I started the MBA program, I fully expected the work to be challenging and possibly even difficult...I was wrong. One of my first MBA classes was an finance class, which was supposedly taught by the best professor in the MBA program. I purposely waited a couple of semesters so I could, indeed, have the best professor. The third class meeting he played us a movie....a MOVIE! I had paid almost $800 for the class, to be taught finance, and was instead shown a movie that I could have rented at Blockbuster for $5 or so. That was when I decided to investigate other programs.

My pathetic undergrad GPA was still a handicap in my quest for a new school, so I did the unthinkable....I looked up online programs. I know, I know, there is such a stigma attached to getting a degree online...much like the stigma attached to getting your GED instead of a "real" high school diploma.

"Sticker price shock" was waiting for me when I began looking at the individual schools. I was paying around $800 per class at my state university and the online programs were asking for around $1800 per class. Outrageous! Then I found an online program affiliated with several Georgia state schools called the Web MBA. It was cheaper than the other online programs and would have the name of a "real" school on it...and best of all, their admissions standards were low enough for my undergrad GPA. Yet, I was worried that a school in Georgia would be no more challenging than a school in Tennessee. So, I decided to keep researching the online options and signed up for another semester at Middle Tennessee State University.

file under: online MBA programs