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JD/MBAs: Who s Crazy Enough To Get Both Degrees?

Tim Hsia, a former military officer, will graduate from Stanford with a JD/MBA in 2014.

This spring Tim Hsia, a former military officer, will accomplish something that precious few can ever brag about: The former military officer will graduate from one of the world’s top law and business schools simultaneously.

The JD/MBA candidate at Stanford University will complete a four-year intellectual boot camp that is among the toughest educational journeys a student can undertake. It s also among the most expensive: JD/MBAs pay one year of law school tuition ($50,580), one year of first year MBA tuition ($59,550), and the remaining quarters at the combined JD/MBA tuition rate which roughly translates into paying whichever tuition is higher that year.

Throw in living expenses, and the yearly cost for single students living on campus winds up being somewhere between $80,340 (the law school estimate) and $93,866 (the business school estimate). For the record, Hsia is married and has two kids.

The West Point grad signed up for the experience after confronting a less than welcoming job market when he left the military during the Great Recession. “I actually didn’t want to go back to school,” Hsia admits. “My thoughts were like, ‘Oh, you know, I don’t need an extra degree.’ But the more I went out and tried to find some jobs coming straight from the military, people were not interested in potentially hiring me.”

You wouldn’t expect someone who couldn’t find a fulfilling job to get into two of the most competitive professional schools in the world. But even for those who know law schools and business schools fairly well, JD/MBA programs can be full of surprises.

Derrick Bolton, assistant dean and director of MBA admissions at Stanford s Graduate School of Business, notes that great JD/MBA applicants don’t always come from places like McKinsey and Goldman Sachs. While companies like that might pass on applicants like Hsia, universities are in a better position to recognize their potential. “Schools have the luxury of being able to look more deeply at each applicant,” he says.

Bolton believes that whether applicants have excelled in the military, in an internship, or in a club—every year, there’s at least one JD/MBA who comes right from college—that excellence is transferable. “[Business and law schools] are professional schools, but they’re still schools,” Bolton explains plainly. “They’re still part of universities, so I think what enables you to succeed is that notion of intellectual curiosity.”

So far, that philosophy has worked. Bolton says that JD/MBAs are almost always at the top of their classes, and faculty members love them. It shows when he talks about Hsia. “In 20 or 30 years, he’s going to be running for President,” Bolton raves. “He’s going to be running for Senate or something.”

A program off the beaten path

GMAT Exams Taken by Potential JD/MBA Applicants