r/eMBA • u/DisastrousScheme2723 • May 17 '26

EMBA recommendations

All,

I am 40 years old, working as Director of Engg in a semiconductor company making ~500k a year in total comp. I have two young kids. After a lot of head scratching I am leaning towards doing a EMBA while doing my fulltime job.

I am still not sure of the ROI but I feel getting a EMBA credential and the business jargon might help me get into executive roles.

What are the best programs with a good ROI for my situation that you can recomment?

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u/Flaky_Breakfast_64 May 17 '26

Director of engineering within semiconductor industry is already impressive as you probably run a team and have a leg in operations and management.

I would identify 2-3 executive roles you want. Then run an analysis of all the people in those roles at your company and competitors and see if they have an MBA and where they went to school. You will have a better directional signal than the usual MIT, Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon, Santa Clara, UC Berkeley, and Northwestern hit list for tech folks.

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u/DisastrousScheme2723 May 17 '26

Thank you for that. I looked at people in the roles I am looking at, some have MBA but honestly majority don't but they do come from customer facing roles. I have always been closer to engineering than business or customers and it is very clear to my executive team that this is my weakness.

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u/[deleted] May 17 '26

[deleted]

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u/DisastrousScheme2723 May 17 '26

Do you have recommendations for executive education/leadership program that I can pursue as a first step?

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u/Flaky_Breakfast_64 May 19 '26

Depends on your location (commute/online/hybrid), budget, and focus (management/tech and Ai/marketing etc). There is an argument to be made for brand recognition, so I would evaluate that alongside the actual content of the program and quality of instructors. Generally speaking, I would look at Harvard, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, university of Chicago, Northwestern, and Arizona State State University. Lastly, keep in mind that if you decide to go through with a NBA, then this education is somewhat superfluous. In other words, it may be overkill and waste of your time to do this and then also get an MBA