7. An MBA can give you an opportunity to deepen your technical expertise.
While working on my MBA, I had to write numerous papers, so I took each opportunity to explore the application of different technologies in business. One time, I wrote a paper on ERP that distilled best practices for implementing the system successfully. This paper helped me get my current job because Christopher Newport University was in the process of implementing an ERP system and needed someone with deep ERP expertise. Both Christopher Newport University and the College of William and Mary have used my paper as an introduction to ERP implementations for staff working on the project.

I wrote other papers on enterprise reporting architectures, on Java's position in the software development space and on the development of activity drivers in IT for activity-based costing. The process of writing each paper gave me greater insight into each topic.

8. You can apply business school classwork to your day job.
In one class I wrote a paper that investigated the value of training for the IT staff, and I used the research and arguments I developed in that assignment to convince management to approve a substantial training budget for my staff at William and Mary.

On another occasion, I developed a statistical analysis that identified giving patterns across different segments of William and Mary's alumni. In this analysis, I compared different categories of graduates and the frequency and amount they donated to the college. My analysis revealed that alumni who received their undergraduate degrees in business gave with the greatest frequency and donated nearly twice the average amount of other segments of the giving population. This particular group of alums had been managed by a centralized annual fund group for many years, but after I presented my findings, the business school lobbied for and received approval to appeal to those generous donors directly. The result was more fund-raising dollars for the business school and for the college overall. I would not have thought to explore this business issue of fund-raising had I not gone through the MBA process, and William and Mary might not have brought in more donations had I not uncovered these funding patterns.

9. You'll polish your written communication skills.
Because the MBA is a master's-level academic program, you generally have to produce a 20- to 30-page report for each class subject. In my program, the classes were only six weeks long, so every six weeks I had to demonstrate academic mastery of a given topic with each paper I wrote. The ability to research business topics and develop written comprehensive analyses quickly has been enormously helpful to me in my role.