What is the criteria for mba marketing?

Is masters in marketing analytics a valuable degree or should i go the traditional MBA route?

• I'm looking to go into marketing but i heard marketing by itself (ex: brand management, which is where i would like to end up) is a very soft degree due to it's limited quantitative focus. I was thinking about doing marketing analytics instead, which has a lot of focus on statistics, excel, sas, multivariate testing, etc. I'm also considering an MBA but that would again just be regular marketing but an MBA is a better known degree. The school I would do marketing analytics at is NYU, the MBA would be from a slightly lower level school like Rutgers. Which is better?

• Answer:

  The marketing MS would make you an expert in the field and should eventually lead to a high level staff position. The MBA is a general degree preparing students for management in any area of business, up to CEO. If you are not interested in management, then the MS from NYU is probably better than the MBA from Rutgers. But you should decide only after you investigate both options thoroughly. A good source of information about MBA programs is the Official MBA Guide. It's a free public service with loads of information about the MBA and it has a good search engine for finding the program that fits you best. It contains all the best schools but almost none of the low-quality for--profit MBA programs. It is the most respected MBA Guide, created by Dr. Martin Schatz while he was the dean of Florida's #1 MBA school, and provided free since 1997. It lists more than 1,000 universities worldwide, and has more than 10,000 members seeking MBA programs.