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Maturity comes with age, and sure enough, most educational consultants will tell you the same thing.

The admission procedure to any foreign university stipulates prior work experience in its prospectus.
With approximately 3-4 years of work experience, you will be pushing 26 or 27 years of age. This, most colleges feel, gives you the idea of where you want your career to head.

The essays you write for self-assessment will have more weightage if you add to it the experiences you have had as a working person already, rather than what you hope to be. And most important of all, most foreign universities assure you placement. Your prior experience is an advantage to them as they can offer you better prospects while maintaining their placement figures.

According to Arvind Chopra of CRV Edu consultants, "Most B-schools abroad take MBA aspirants with work experience, this is because a large number of them apply to these B-schools! There is no defined 'quota' for experienced personnel, nor are they given any 'preference' at any stage of the process. Students with work experience do have a psychological edge in the interview as their interviews tend to focus predominantly on their work (which they should know) whereas fresher interview focus more on academics (not everyone's strength!)."

Further, you don't need research to tell you that one learns more when he interacts with people from varied backgrounds. Having a diverse MBA classroom environment can be a great learning experience. Recognising this very factor, several business schools prefer students with different cultural, personal, and professional backgrounds.

Needless to say that team work is crucial to management degrees. Most curricula for MBA programmes involve team work and there is hardly any scope for a person to work on shining individually. Your strengths lie in the way your group is motivated to work. Having such varied experience gives you an edge over the competition.

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* Contributed by -
Oumkar Umesh,
Senior Correspondent - The Observer of Management,
Vol. 1 Issue 4 April 2006,
(With inputs from Prithvi Singh).