MBA student reflection – June 27, 2025

I am about half way through my last class at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The class is called Operations Management. It has been a pretty exciting 3 years in this online MBA program.

As I start applying to jobs that require skills of my education background, I am also exploring further education and training.

Three further education opportunities that I have always thought about for the future are: med school, law school, and a PhD program in computer science.

Law School

Law school has a lot of overlap with the curriculum that is taught in business schools. I have enjoyed learning about some of the topics taught in law school on my own throughout business school. I am curious about the new JD-next program that can be used to substitute for the LSAT.

https://jdnext.org

It seems like this exam and curriculum is a course on contracts. It is currently not accepted at all law schools. However, it seems like a great opportunity. I might take this class for fun.

The typical exam to take for law school would be the LSAT of course. I might take this exam if I still need a LSAT test score after the JD-next program.

Med School

I used to be on the pre-med track back when I was in my undergrad chemical engineering curriculum. I still have all of those pre-med courses completed. I previously scored a 36 on the MCAT when it was scored out of 45. That test score has now expired. I guess I could always retake the MCAT for entering med school in the future if I feel that it is necessary.

PhD program

Another thing that I might consider, if I don’t find a good job, is continuing in a PhD program. It might be fun to study in a computer science PhD program. I have previously earned a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania called the MCIT degree. A PhD in computer science would just be a continuation of this training.

The computer science department seems to be getting more interesting every year. Top departments in the country are starting to look like 8 to 10 departments inside of the school of computer science. Machine learning and software engineering are starting to become different departments with different faculties. Algorithms is also becoming a separate department. Bioinformatics and computational biology seems to be another interesting department inside of the school of computer science.

Robotics seems to be becoming its own department as well. There is a lot of overlap between robotics and mechanical engineering.

Computer science is becoming so broad and so deep at the tip of computer science research.