An MBA is one of the most respected degrees you can add to your resume—but it’s not a golden ticket. To reach your goals, it’s important to choose an MBA that reflects your aspirations and equips you with the knowledge and skills to pursue them with confidence. 

Customizing your MBA to fit your ambition is key. Thanks to the growth of online learning, this is more accessible than ever. Online MBA students can tailor their studies around work commitments, gain a diverse skill set, and even use their degrees to pivot into new career paths. 

We spoke with two students from the Online MBA program at Concordia University Wisconsin, Batterman School of Business, to understand how customizing your MBA can help you reach your goals.

Choosing the right electives for your career path

Most MBA programs include core courses in management, accounting, marketing, and finance. But the specializations you choose often determine how well your degree aligns with your long-term plans. 

At Concordia, Online MBA students can choose from 12 different concentrations, allowing them to acquire the skills they need to pursue their chosen career path.

“What I think really sets Concordia apart is the flexibility and the ability to customize the program to your interests and your career goals. You can customize your path according to your specializations,” says Dalton Hribar (pictured right), who feels his MBA in Management gave him the toolkit needed to step confidently into the world of business. 

“If you want to specialize in something like accounting or marketing, they have so many different concentrations that you can really go all in on and become an expert. You can set yourself apart and have the full skill set in that area.” Concordia's concentrations go beyond typical options and give students the opportunity to develop targeted skills that support their career goals. 

For Grant Karsten, a 2023 graduate, choosing the Nonprofit Management and Public Relations course allowed him to explore new areas and diversify his skillset. 

“Since I didn't know exactly what I wanted to do, it made the most sense to diversify a little bit and be more well-rounded,” he explains. “Further down the road, I think those could be interesting career paths as well.”

Working an Online MBA around your commitments

Tailoring an MBA to your goals is one thing. Making time for it is another—especially for working professionals. That’s where online programs bring tremendous value. 

For students like Dalton, the flexibility of Concordia’s online format made it possible to study while working almost full-time. 

“The flexibility of it was really important to me,” he says. 

The program blends in-person courses with synchronous and asynchronous online learning. According to Dalton, it allowed him to “pick and choose” when to study. 

“It was great in the sense of being able to fit it around my lifestyle and still be able to work,” he adds.

This ability to learn and work simultaneously not only makes the program more manageable but also strengthens students’ resumes by pairing real-world experience with graduate-level learning. 

“Our MBA program is designed to meet the needs of a diverse student body. Courses can be taken at a pace that allows students to balance the pursuit of an MBA with real life,” says Dr. Kim Schave, the MBA Program Director at Batterman School of Business. “Busy professionals can advance their education without putting their lives on pause.”  

The lesser-known benefits of an Online MBA

While many people pursue an MBA to access new career paths or leadership opportunities, the degree also provides benefits that can’t always be measured right away.  Dalton believes an MBA is not just a short-term tool–it provides real-world skills that remain highly useful throughout your career.

“It goes to show that an MBA can be for anybody, and even in your late 40s [for example] you can still take those skills from the curriculum and apply them to where you are now,” he says.

For Grant (pictured right), Concordia’s online program helped “broaden his horizons” and reveal new career possibilities. Balancing the MBA with work also gave him something especially meaningful: confidence. 

“Whatever I put my mind to, I now feel like I can learn it, and that's because of the well-roundedness of an MBA program and doing that amount of work over a few years.”

It is not only the academic content that has prepared these students for their future careers. Concordia provides a Lutheran education, incorporating Christian ethics and morals throughout its curriculum.

“They really focus on ethics and having Christianity involved, which is important to me,” says Dalton, adding that the school’s Lutheran approach has helped him tailor himself into a responsible, human-centered leader—something that's just as important to him as preparing for a specific industry. 

Dalton, who had previously worked in accounting, is now serving as an insurance agent and hopes to manage his own agency one day. Grant, who completed a bachelor’s degree in finance while working on his MBA, is now a senior associate in wealth strategies at Northern Trust. Both say the MBA played a meaningful role in their professional growth. 

“The degree is a great benefit,” says Grant, “but also just knowing that you did it–that's a really big boost going into your career.”

As for Dalton, he says he couldn’t have asked for any more: “It was just a fantastic experience overall.”