EE to MBA: How Will a D in Economics Affect My MBA Chances?

[DefaultName]

Hi, I'm currently an EE. I'm between my sophomore and junior year. I will have one internship with an aerospace company. I also think I'll be able to land another internship next summer, between my junior and senior year since I will have had prior internship experience (and I hope to keep my GPA up and strong). Also, I do want to work in industry for 4-5 years, then try for a top-notch MBA school.

I have one problem, my freshman year wasn't so hot, like many people. My first semester, I got a 2.0 (two Cs, 1 D, and 1B I think). My second semester I got a 3.3, which is a little bit better. I've been going up ever since. Right now, my overall is ~3.2 (before it was a 2.7), and my EE gpa is 3.7 (only 4 courses so far).

I know math is heavy in MBA, so my Calc I: C, Calc II: A, Calc III: A-/B+ (still waiting for the grades), Ordinary Diff Eq: A.

Obviously, I have changed my attitude from the fall, and my GPA has been increasing a lot since then. And I know this will continue until I graduate and eventually until I get a job.

My question is: I took an economics course, specifically intro to microeconomics. I got a D in it. Yes, a D. I didn't study, read the books, or attend class. It was completely my fault only, no one elses. I thought I could wing it, turns out I was utterly wrong. This will look very bad on my UG transcript. Will this hurt my chances of getting into the MBA program, even if I had two internships + teaching assistant experience for a CS class, and hey even more classes later down, who knows? + a fulltime (successful) job experience after I graduate? For sure, the D won't help me out, but I was curious as to how bad it will hurt me?

 

[chroot]

Repeat the class. Also, look in your school's literature to see if they have a "freshman rule" or other policy that allows your new grade to replace your old grade without any notation on your transcript. It'll be like it never happened.

- Warren

 

[kdinser]

Math is heavy in an MBA?? I know people with MBA's who can't even give a coherent definition of an integral, even in layman’s terms. If you make it through an EE, I doubt you will find anything scary during an MBA other then how little people have to study to obtain one.

This may sound harsh, but I know many people who had to drop out of engineering programs because they didn’t want to put in the effort required, i.e. this class is BS, how do they expect us to know this, blah, blah, blah. So they dropped out of engineering and went into business and then obtained MBA’s.

I think you have a good plan, but I wouldn’t wait that many years to start working on the MBA, start as soon as you can and get it over with. Retake the econ course, encon is more about vocabulary then math, the problems are only hard if, as you said, you don’t study enough (2 to 3 hours a week should be more then enough for intro econ classes).

This only goes for into classes, I’d assume that higher level econ classes require more study, but it’s more likely to be because of the vocabulary then the math.

 

[Locrian]

I second Kdinser's surprise at learning MBA is math intensive. I've looked at the curriculum, and it certainly didn't seem that way to me.

Also, you mention getting into a top notch MBA program. . . certainly you want to be in a good one, but I question how important it is to be in a "top notch" one. Studies among the top 100 or so schools show that even Ivy League MBA's rarely perform all that much better than the others, and their pay reflects this. The #1 predictor of an MBA's starting pay is not their school, but what their job pay was pre-MBA.

MBA's aren't like law degrees. I really believe that a good program at a state school is worth every bit as much to employers as from one of the top five schools.