Adnan Sarwar, a former MBA student and current Economist intern, gives prospective MBAs five things to consider

Don’t fund yourself

In my case it was £24,000 ($33,800), distance learning, over three years. You get books and some tuition, but mostly you are on your own. Students get together to form study groups; some work hard while others are busy with their jobs and families. Everyone passes.

I managed to find £8,000 for the first year. Then the second year came around and I struggled. I spoke to my student support officer who offered little support. I should have had all the money sorted, he said. Welcome to the real world.

I was working in a bar at the time to pay for the course. Most of my cohort were funded by their companies and then locked into contracts for a few years. That is the way to do an MBA: your firm pays and then guarantees you a job.

Do not believe it is for the elite

The interview to get admitted to business school wasn’t robust. Conversation quickly moved to making sure I’d paid my deposit. If you can pay, you can play. Once on the programme, I had assumed I would be in a room with just the business elite. Not so: some students were excellent, some good, some terrible.

There were foreign students on my course who could not speak English well. You will be up until 4am trying to explain to people in your study group why they can't write the presentation slides because their language skills aren’t up to it. And they will simply change your PowerPoint before you present it.

Some teams tried the inclusive approach and were marked down. The smart approach was not to let these students near the laptops. But they had funding and, with help, they got through. They are currently sat at some management consultancy in London forecasting your company into the ground while you pay thousands of pounds a day for it. An MBA does not imply quality.

It will not make you a genius

Businesses have been run well without MBAs for millennia. The merchants of Carthage did not need them. Kanye West does not have one. That said, an MBA will get you up to speed on business in a general sense. But so will a good book, for far less money and time.

The MBA is a club like any other: you are either in or out, that is its main selling point. Incompetent people will get in, and they’ll leave incompetent. But they will beat non-MBAs at job interviews because they had the money to attend a prestigious school and scraped through on Cs. You will not leave business school with the next Google, YouTube or Twitter in your head; if it is to happen, it will happen anyway. Reading case studies about Steve Jobs is not enough for you to become like him. To start something takes imagination and courage.

Do you really want to meet these people?

Business schools constantly boast about the network students can tap into. Don’t be fooled. Do you need to pay thousands to meet middle managers from industries that you have no interest in? I keep in touch with exactly one person from my year at business school, but if I'd met him in any other situation, we'd have become friends. I see a couple of others on occasion. But that's it, one person. If you gave me £24,000 now and asked me to go and network, I’d join a club like Soho House or fly to Gstaad and spend a season working in a ski-rental shop. I’d meet everybody I needed to, or at least someone who knows someone.

Do it because you want to

I was trying to please Asian parents. I had failed them in my teens by not getting into medical school, and instead joining the army. You cannot impress Asian parents. Unhappiness is their default. And honestly, I believe they enjoy it. My mother has berated me for over twenty years for not getting an arranged marriage. She never tires of it. I call home to tell her how my job at The Economist is going and there it is—that painful pause, hear it?—and then “When are you going to get married?” If I did get married, my mother would be unimpressed by my choice. If she chose my wife, she would be unimpressed that I was not yet Lakshmi Mittal. My mother is unrelenting.

Which is to say: remember, you do not need an MBA. Only do it if you want to. Food and water are needs; an MBA is an expensive want. Like a Rolex. And that didn't impress my mother either.