Q&A with a Member of the Stanford GSB MBA Class of 2013

In this post, my former client, a member of Stanford GSB’s Class of 2013,  provides great answers to my questions about his first year in the MBA program. GSBEngineer worked as an engineer in a technology company prior to business school for a few years. He has an advanced degree in computer engineering. He is interested in the technology sector investment and also looking into start-up ideas. 

Adam: To what extent do you think Stanford’s mission statement has impacted what you learned at the school so far?


GSBEngineer: The school emphasizes leadership and I greatly enjoyed honing my soft skills during the first quarter. To be honest, most students can learn basic finance/accounting/etc. on their own but the opportunity to listen to my peers' feedback is priceless, from how to structure an argument to how to build a productive team to how fast should I speak in front of a crowd. 

Adam: What parts of the program have you liked the most? The least?

GSBEngineer: I really loved the rich resources that are available to us thanks to a small and close-knit class. On a per student basis, faculty and staff are really easy to get access to. More importantly, students can always talk to all the company reps easily during on campus recruiting, without getting stressed out at all because people's interests are so diversified. For those who are interested in the traditional banking/consulting jobs, there are plenty of opportunities to have one-one info interviews. With the Exclusive Academic Period (EAP) in place (See here http://www.stanford.edu/group/mba/blog/2011/11/the_end_of_eap_the_beginning_o.html for an extended discussion), we were isolated from the recruiting noises for the first six weeks of the program so that we could focus on bonding with classmates and getting used to be back at school. I did feel a bit overwhelmed when EAP ended. Among classes, extracurricular and recruiting events, it wasn't easy to balance everything. I'd suggest thinking about what you want to do early and focus on those things most relevant to you. 

Adam: What has most surprised you about your first year?


GSBEngineer:
1) How accomplished and special everyone is. I shared a room with a professional poker player during our pre-MBA trip to South America. As young as he is, I didn't know he just won over 2 million dollars earlier that year. 
2) The schedule can be fairly intense, especially the first quarter. Be ready to give up some sleep and to study. 

Adam: Do you actually have any time for clubs?  If so, which ones are you active in?


GSBEngineer: Yup. I am part of one career oriented club and one diversity club. It really depends on how one chooses to spend his/her time. Some classmates are very actively pursuing their startup ideas so they choose classes on certain days of the week and will spend most free time working with their start-up co-founders. Some choose to be engaged in clubs and the student association.I am helping a local nonprofit as a board fellow. It is a great experience to sit in the board meeting and help them solve issues.

Adam: Are there any common characteristics you find amongst your classmates?

GSBEngineer: I think a key ingredient that makes an MBA program unique is the diverse student body. It probably shows more at Stanford. We do have finance and consulting types but percentage wise, many are also from non-profit, tech, pharmaceutical, etc. It makes classroom discussion very interesting.Also a large percentage of my classmates are self-sourcing their internships (VC/PE firms and hedge funds, start-ups, etc.). I want to point it out because if you want to be in finance, Stanford has a very strong network of alumni in this area. And they answer our phone calls.

Adam: What are hot topics, activities, classes, etc. at Stanford GSB?


GSBEngineer: Tons of opportunities to attend start-up/VC events. Getting to know the founders or speak w/ the VCs. Cross pollination is happening across departments everyday. Sand Hill Road. is right here. It doesn't get any better. We don't have GSB classes on Wednesday. One highlight of the first year is probably the Vegas FOAM (Friends of Arjay Miller). Two classes fly over on a Tuesday evening after winter quarter midterm) to Vegas in 70s costumes, hang out at one of the clubs (@Pure this year) all night long and then fly back the second day. It sounds and is crazy but is awesome. 
C4C, a charity event with many other MBA programs, just finished. GSB show, an event where students will reveal their great performing talents on stage, is coming! Being close to Tahoe is a great advantage to skiers. Many classmates had weekend trips during the winter.
BTW,  $25 for playing on Stanford’s golf course is a steal!

Adam: What advice do you have for those considering application to Stanford?

GSBEngineer: Be truthful to yourself. Really sit back and reflect on how and why you made the choices you made along your career/school/etc. I believe that is what makes you stand out. Then write your essay.
Definitely visit us, sit in a class and have lunch with current students. You will know how each school is different. 

Adam: Anything else you would like to tell us?

GSBEngineer: if you get in, try to join the unofficial pre-MBA trip to Colombia. This is purely personal choice. Some people prefer other smaller pre-MBA trips. And because it is unofficial, there is not pressure to go if you cannot make it.
I like it because it is not easy to get 120 people, who have never met each other before, to show up in Cartagena on the same day. There is no agenda to visit businesses, no classes, no recruiting, just relax and having fun. I met my schwab roommate on the trip. Personally it also made remembering names a lot easier once school starts (I am not good at names).  

I want to thank GSBEngineer for taking the time to answer my questions.

-Adam Markus

I am a graduate admissions consultant who works with clients worldwide. If you would like to arrange an initial consultation, please complete my intake form. Please don't email me any essays, other admissions consultant's intake forms, your life story, or any long email asking for a written profile assessment. The only profiles I assess are those with people who I offer initial consultations to. Please note that initial consultations are not offered when I have reached full capacity or when I determine that I am not a good fit with an applicant.

My visit to IESE in Barcelona

I had the pleasure of visiting IESE Business School in Barcelona on April 16^th.   I have been traveling in Europe since early April and will be doing so until returning to Tokyo on June 16^th, so my visit to IESE was my only “work” this month.  That said, visiting IESE was a real pleasure.  The campus is located in one of the many very lovely parts of Barcelona.

My visit was arranged by a former client.  I really appreciate his willingness to take time to make arrangements for me to visit one of his classes, to meet with Ms. Itziar de Ros Raventós, the Admissions Director, and to give me a tour of the campus.

Like other top international MBA programs, the thing that struck me about being in a class at IESE was how diverse the class was.  The class I attended, Operation Strategy, taught by Professor Alejandro Lago, was very dynamic.  I was very impressed by the class and the level of student engagement.  As a case method focused program, the class environment was quite similar to HBS except the students at IESE are much more diverse. I was particularly glad to see the highly active participation of so many Japanese students in the class I attended.  Japanese students in MBA programs worldwide often have a reputation for not being active in class, but at least in the first-year class I attended, this was not the case. IESE's Japanese student page is here. Based on what I observed, IESE surely provides the kind of internationalizing and personally transformative education that only the best MBA programs provide.

Ms. de Ros Raventós was kind enough to take some time to talk with me. I want to thank her for giving me a better understanding of IESE and answering some of my overall questions.    

This is my first blog post on IESE, but I doubt it will be my last.

Now back to my vacation.

-Adam Markus
アダム マーカス
I am a graduate admissions consultant who works with clients worldwide.  If you would like to arrange an initial consultation, please complete my intake form, which is publicly available on Google Docs here, and then send your completed form to adammarkus@gmail.com.  You can also send me your resume if it is convenient for you.  Please don't email me any essays, other admissions consultant's intake forms, your life story, or any long email asking for a written profile assessment. The only profiles I assess are those with people who I offer initial consultations to. See here for why. Please note that initial consultations are not offered when I have reached full capacity or when I determine that I am not a good fit with an applicant.

ビジネススクール カウンセリング コンサルティング MBA留学

Q&A with a Member of the Chicago Booth MBA Class of 2012

In this post, the first where I have done a Q&A with a former client in both the first and second year of his or her program, is with “Booth1Y” who is now “Booth2Y”. Booth2Y is a member of the Class of 2012. You can find his earlier Q&A here. Booth2Y wanted me to share his background with you: “After the four year experience as an equity analyst and the three year experience in the corporate in one of the major investment banks, I got an MBA sponsorship from my company and chose Booth due to its amazing finance program (however, again Booth is not just finance school).”


Adam: Looking back on your Booth MBA experience, what do you think you have gained?


Booth2Y: I have gained the following.

• Advanced knowledge of finance: I worked as an equity analyst before coming to Booth. In order to continue a career in an investment management company, I wanted to learn advanced level of finance. At Booth, we can take PhD level courses of finance. Through such courses, I definitely think I could get a deeper understanding of finance and broaden my knowledge (i.e. from equity to fixed income and derivatives)
• Soft skills in several areas (please read the following questions)
• Global network with talented students: Through tons of student activities and study groups, I can get a lot of friends from all over the world. If I just had continued working in Japan, I would not have been able to get these precious friends.
• Deeper understanding of myself and Japan: This MBA experience is my first time to live and study abroad. Through studying and being involved in student activities with talented students from all over the world, I could understand my weaknesses and strengths deeply. In addition, by looking at Japan from U.S., I feel I could rediscover problems and attractiveness of Japan.

Adam: Beyond Booth’s flexibility, which you mentioned last time, what parts of the program have you liked the most?


Booth2Y: I like that Booth offers us tons of resources to learn and to create network. For example, other than courses, Booth offers us lots of seminars about leadership and practical financial skills. Through these seminars, we can have more opportunities to learn and grow as business people. In addition, various student clubs organize conferences, which enable us to expand our network.


Adam:  Booth has a strong reputation for teaching the hard skills, but have your soft skills improved?


Booth2Y: Definitely. Although Booth is famous for its hard skill courses in finance and entrepreneurship, Booth has also various kinds of soft skill courses such as negotiation, organizational management, and leadership. Although I was skeptical about learning soft skill in classes before coming to Booth, I have learned a lot from soft skill courses and am feeling that my soft skills have improved. For example, this quarter, I am taking one negotiation class called “Strategies and Processes of Negotiation”. In this class, we learn various techniques of negotiation thorough a lot of exercises with our classmates. This is my first time to learn negotiation systematically. And, I feel my negotiation skills are definitely improving through the lectures and the exercises.


Adam: How would you describe Booth’s culture?


Booth2Y: I often feel professionalism from our friends. For example, in study group meetings, we don’t depend on each other too much. Each of us makes most effort to solve homework before the meetings. And, we try to finish the meetings within predetermined time because we have a tight schedule and because we respect time of our friends and us. Of course, if our friends cannot solve the homework, we help our friends learning.  And, of course, like other business schools, all of us are very friendly. However, we are not just “friendly” and don’t respect superficial “teamwork”.


Adam: I know you are active in a number in a number of clubs, which ones did you end up being really involved in?


Booth2Y: I am really involved in the activities of Japan Club. This March, as an active member of Japan Club I led the Booth Japan Trip 2012 which 39 Booth students and partners joined. It took 4 months from November in 2011 to this March to prepare for this trip and we were busy with the preparation during the winter quarter. We considered itinerary, collected the applications and money, and organized the information sessions, etc in the preparation. Through the preparation and the trip, I could improve my leadership skill and extend my network. And of course, although I was hectic during the trip, the trip was very enjoyable.


Adam: Do you think Booth is successfully expanding its scope beyond being a “finance school”?


Booth2Y: I think, only in Japan, applicants tend to consider Booth just a “finance school”. However, in U.S. Booth is considered a school which has strengths in not only finance but also entrepreneurship and marketing. Thus, the backgrounds of students are well balanced from engineers to consultants. In terms of qualities and quantities, Booth offer great courses in entrepreneurship, marketing, and other areas. Thus, Japanese applicants should discard the wrong image of Booth = a “finance school”.


Adam: Do you have any specific advice for those considering application to your school?


Booth2Y: My advice may be commonplace and basically the same as last year but I think applicants need to write very, very, very specifically what they want to learn and do by taking advantage of Booth’s flexible curriculum and rich resources. Applicants should plan precisely how they will spend two years at Booth, i.e. which courses they will take, when they will take the courses, which activities they will be involved in (student clubs?, new venture challenge, parties?). In order to make their essays more feasible, applicants should talk with the Booth students or alumni who have the similar backgrounds and career interests.


I want to thank Booth2Y for his willingness to answer my questions two years in a row.



-Adam Markus

I am a graduate admissions consultant who works with clients worldwide. If you would like to arrange an initial consultation, please complete my intake form. Please don't email me any essays, other admissions consultant's intake forms, your life story, or any long email asking for a written profile assessment. The only profiles I assess are those with people who I offer initial consultations to. Please note that initial consultations are not offered when I have reached full capacity or when I determine that I am not a good fit with an applicant.

Q&A with a Member of the Ross MBA Class of 2013

My former client, Ross2013, is a Japanese American. After working in Tokyo for a global software company in the video game industry for 6 years as an engineer, he joined the MBA program at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business in August 2011.

Adam: To what extent do you think the school’s mission statement has impacted what you learned at the school so far?

Ross2013: I think that the mantra of leading in thought in action is prevalent everywhere at Ross. The obvious place to highlight how this has impacted my learning experience is MAP. As you already know, MAP is the flagship program at Ross where first year MBA’s venture out all over the world to engage with real clients to solve real business problems. I am currently at the midpoint of my MAP, and the experiences where I am able to apply knowledge acquired from my core classes to an actual problem have been truly invaluable. I also believe that MAP reinforces the value our school places on strong teamwork. The adrenaline rushes you get from real projects are much greater than those you get from group work in classes. Sharing such an intense experience with my MAP team has helped foster life-long relationships.

Aside from the cliché answer about MAP, I also think that the professors do a good job of enforcing both thought and action in a classroom setting. For example, I was initially expecting my core statistics class (OMS 502) to be a traditional lecture style course where you simply solved assigned math problems. However, the professor did an excellent job of keeping the students engaged by encouraging us to lead in thought in action. For example, the professor would request different student volunteers to walk through a problem on the whiteboard and explain how they solved that problem on front of the class. By reinforcing the mantra of leading in thought and action in such situations, our student community is groomed to embrace the said mantra as a part of our culture both inside and outside of the classroom. An example of this is how thought leaders in my section took the initiative to organize pre-exam study sessions and did an excellent job of helping every member in the section understand key concepts to do well on the final exams.

Adam: You really do speak highly of MAP. Can you talk a little bit more about your project?


Ross 2013: Our team is working for a global player in the pet food industry, and we are tasked to help the client increase their speed to market for new products launches. At first I didn’t have much of an interest in Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), but I’ve been pleasantly surprised that the pet food industry differs from traditional CPG, mostly because of the consumers’ strong emotional attachment to their pets. In other words, a typical consumer might not care much about what kind of toothpaste to use but would tend to be very passionate about the food his or her pet eats. I’ve found it to be intriguing to work on this project of this passionate consumer base.

Aside from the industry, the project itself has also been a lot of fun. We visited the client’s corporate headquarters for the first week of the project, and this was also followed by visits to regional offices in Canada and the Czech Republic. We are currently in our third week of the project and are scheduled to deliver our midpoint presentation in a few days to share our learnings to date as well as to provide initial recommendations. The final presentation will be delivered on-site at the client’s corporate headquarters on the last week of the project. I wish I could go into more details, but unfortunately I’m bound by a Non-Disclosure Agreement. Nevertheless, the experience so far has exceeded expectations on all fronts.

Adam: What parts of the program have you liked the most? The least?

Ross2013: If I were to highlight my favorite aspect of the program, it would definitely have to be MAP. This obviously is a huge selling point for Ross, and we have a solid program in place built on decades of success. From the students’ perspectives, this leads to a plethora of interesting projects to work on for many interesting organizations. I would expect that such an organized program would be extremely difficult for other schools to replicate at scale. Seriously, MAP is really that awesome!!
You might find this hard to believe but I’ve genuinely been satisfied by all parts of the program. It really is difficult for me to call out an aspect of the program that I did not like. A common theme I hear from some of my classmates is that some core classes are not interesting. I suspect this may be the case for students who already have applicable work experience or previous exposure to the subject as a BBA or Economics Major. Since I had a relatively limited business background prior to Ross, I personally was able to learn something new from all of my core classes and found every single one of them to be interesting in their own way.

Adam: What has most surprised you about your first year?

Ross2013: I would say that the intensity of the recruiting process has been the most surprising part of my experience here. The recruiting process literally starts within a month of the first day of school, and the process continues to accelerate very quickly through the academic year. I think an overwhelming majority of my classmates would agree that recruiting is the most nerve-racking aspect of business school. Having said this, career services at Ross is superb and the on-campus recruiting process is extremely well organized.

Going back to your previous question about my least favorite part of our program, I am inclined to call out a very specific part of the recruiting process. At times I was somewhat frustrated with how career services managed the mismatch between supply and demand for private recruiting events. For example, when a popular employer offered slots for office hours to privately meet with students, the process was set up in a first come first serve basis where the registration window was open for less than a minute before all slots were filled up.

Adam: How would you describe the culture of the business school?

Ross2013: Collaborative! I am well aware that almost all business schools emphasize this because business really is about bringing great minds together to generate new innovative ideas. I urge your readers (and particularly the Japanese applicants) to take the time to visit not only Ross but other schools to get a better feel for the cultural differences of each school. My perception of Ross greatly changed in a positive way after I visited a year ago as an applicant, and that visit is what drove my choose Ross over my other options. At the end of the day, your satisfaction level in business school is going to be highly dependent on whether you like your classmates which is nothing but subjective.

Also, I truly think that the Ann Arbor locale contributes the interpersonal dynamics of our student body. Ann Arbor offers a nice college town atmosphere where students come from all over the world eager to network with their new classmates. There really isn’t an existing network where local Arborites mingle - this allows everyone to start off on a level playing field and foster new friendships outside of the classroom.

Adam: Do you actually have any time for clubs? If so, which ones are you active in?

Ross2013: I participate in professional clubs including the Consulting Club and the Technology Club. I am also involved in the Japan Business Association and Soccer Club. I would like to highlight that the Ross Soccer Club participates in the MBA tournaments hosted at UCLA and UT Austin, both of which I had the privilege to play in. Our team brought the championship trophy home from the UCLA tournament, so hopefully this indicates that we have a pretty darn good team despite the cold and snowy winters that may not be suited for soccer.

I want to thank Ross2013 for taking the time to answer my questions.

-Adam Markus

アダム　マーカス
I am a graduate admissions consultant who works with clients worldwide. If you would like to arrange an initial consultation, please complete my intake form, which is publicly available on Google Docs here, and then send your completed form to adammarkus@gmail.com.  You can also send me your resume if it is convenient for you.  Please don't email me any essays, other admissions consultant's intake forms, your life story, or any long email asking for a written profile assessment. The only profiles I assess are those with people who I offer initial consultations to. See here for why. Please note that initial consultations are not offered when I have reached full capacity or when I determine that I am not a good fit with an applicant.

ビジネススクール カウンセリング コンサルティング MBA留学