Choosing a business school
Another week is gone. We finished our economics final exam last week. So, that is one course less. I am overloading 1 course. As a result, I will have 4 final exams by March 11th. Given that I have been slacking off in a big way this term, I need to work hard now.
This is also the time of the year when applicants are deciding on their business schools. I have spoken to a few people who are in the process of making their choices and thought it prudent to share some of my thoughts on the blog.
The objective of business school is three fold - to get a job you want, build a good network and learn some stuff (in that order).
A lot of recruiting is very region specific. If you are looking for a high tech VC job in San Francisco, or a media & entertainment job in Southern California, your needs may be best served by attending a school in California. On the contrary, it would be stupid to attend California schools when you know you want to work for an NYC hedge fund. I am not saying it is impossible to land these jobs, but it requires substantial effort. On the contrary, for firms with structured recruiting process (read I banks, consulting firms), it is not hard to study in one part of the US and choose to work in the opposite corner).
Fellow classmates make a huge difference to the recruiting experience. I have helped my friends in other schools through my contacts and realize different schools are home to people with vastly different personalities. Just the other day I was speaking to a friend about his recruiting progress. While he has awesome job offers, he mentioned that the competition was bordering on cutthroat and thus made recruiting hard for people.
Internship recruiting stories also tell you a lot about the cultures at different schools. A friend of mine was among a dozen other applicants in a final round interview at a company's headquarters. As is customary, people went around the circle introducing themselves. Suddenly, two people discovered that they were from the same school!! They had seen each other, but hadn't even recognized each other. In contrast, when my classmates go to a second round interview, they typically travel together, help each other prepare and the teamwork spirit seems to be present even in an individual exercise such as recruiting.
Many applicants use placement statistics bandied by schools to decide where they want to go. Caveat emptor. It is important to read the fine print. 30 people getting jobs in lobster fishing is very different from 30 lobster fishing offers! The latter might mean there are actually just 15 people with lobster fishing offers but 3 lobster companies have made the offers to 10 students each. Applicants also need to look at the placement statistics in light of the demand for the job. Were there 45 people who wanted to do lobster fishing and 30 got jobs? Or was it that everybody who wanted to be a lobster fisherman got a job?
Finally, as far as the learning experience goes, learning takes place both within and outside the classroom. You learn not only from professors but also from classmates and visiting executives/speakers. All schools talk about their star faculty members. It is necessary to do the homework and find out how many of them actually teach MBA students, and how many of their classes you can take! Having a star faculty member on board makes a difference to the B school experience if you are either able to take a class taught by him/her or do a guided study/project with him/her.
There are numerous other criteria that applicants use to choose business schools. And rightly so. One cannot have a formulaic answer and everybody needs to recognize that. Good luck!
Mindblowing applications...
Every few years, there are consumer software applications that just amaze you by their capabilities. Skype and BitTorrent are two such applications. I have been using both for a while and am amazed by their potential to change complete industries.
Just when people thought VoIP phones couldn't be improved much, Skype has telecom players in cold sweat. I use Skype to speak to my family in India almost every day for almost half an hour. And so do many of my friends. When I add up the numbers, I realize it has a significant impact on my pocketbook. (Especially when the cheapest long distance provider costs 13 cents a minute). In fact, when I want to speak to people within school, I prefer using Skype than using the phone (though the phone is also free). Skype is so much more convenient. Now, if Skype starts charging a small monthly tariff for the software, I am sure there are millions like me who will be happy to pay for it. The software is so well built, I can transfer a Gig of data through the send file feature. On Yahoo messenger, I think twice before sending a 1 Mb file!
BitTorrent is another application I expect to shake up industries. If Kazaa made the MPAA and RIAA cringe, BitTorrent is worse. While I do not advocate downloading pirated files, I cannot help but admire the elegance of the software. It took a really long time to go from ripped MP3's to legal music downloads. I hope the movie industry doesn't take as long to harness the potential of the internet to make watching movies easier for everybody. A few weeks ago, Wired had a nice article on how music download has changed the choice available to consumers. We don't need to be forced into the Top 40 world and can access whatever music we like. Now, if the same phenomenon repeats in movies, life would be so much better.
I will be happy to hear any comments about your experiences with Skype/BitTorrent. I have removed the comments feature from the blog since it was on its way to becoming a nuisance.
So, the best way to let me know your thoughts is to mail me at tagad dot tale at gmail dot com. Like they say in marketing - nothing like connecting directly to your consumers :)
Valentine Day!
Yesterday was Valentine's Day.
While I didn't have a date for the evening, I had a really wonderful evening :). I had dinner with a Visiting Executive from a large commodity company. Over the last few months I have had tons of visiting executive lunches/dinners - with people ranging from hedge fund managers and telecom executives to thought leaders in consulting and high tech pioneers. But, yesterday's dinner was among the most interesting of all these.
The discussion was free ranging and covered a range of subjects. Some of them were the concept of a premium conglomerate/discount conglomerate, genetically modified foods, orange juice industry in Brazil, need for traceability in the food chain, why India is a wonderful investment destination. We also spoke about specific pathogen free livestock, why wild salmon is better than farmed salmon and debated whether palm oil would replace soybean oil as the oil of the future.
Some of the people at the table were second years I hadn't interacted with. One complaint I have about the last few months is that I have not been able to know a large part of the second year class. I probably have interacted with 30-40% of them. But there are so many fascinating people I don't know. May be it is because I am not into drinking so much. Among business schools, Tuck probably ranks on the absolute top if per capita alcohol consumption is the metric. Like a friend was commenting the other day, the student population is a bunch of 30 year olds behaving like 18 year olds without any thought about the consequences. I am not complaining about this and am guilty of being part of the revelry that is Tuck! There is a whole lifetime ahead of us where we need to behave our age.
Super bowl, Lunar New year....
There hasn't been much happening over the last couple of weeks. It has been the routine of classes, study group, going out to local hang-outs on weekdays and party on weekends.
The super bowl last weekend was the first super bowl I ever watched. I enjoyed the game and the commercials. Since it was the first time I actually sat down to watch a football game, a friend had to explain to me the rules of the game. Now I know what a blitz is!! The commercials were lacklustre compared to last year (I saw last year's commercials online). Fortunately, the marketing professor did not cold call us and ask us about the commercials!!
Last night we had the Lunar New Year party. Good Chinese food, a lion dance, some fortune telling and 'games'. I even got my name written in Chinese and Japanese. If I decide to go to Japan on an exchange program, I now know how my name is written :)
The fortune telling session was hilarious. The fortune teller (a classmate who lives on the same floor as me) stared intensely at people's palms and said profound stuff. She told one guy 'You are a player!'. She told me that I would get married in my mid 30's and will go through a string of heartbreaking relationships before I finally get married! Another guy was told that he will have lots of money and won't need to work hard for it :)
Today in study group, we had some left over fortune cookies from last night's party. We were wondering whether we will get more credit for our case analysis if we incorporate the lucky numbers on the fortune cookie paper slip. Any thoughts ?
The more I read about behavioral finance, the more fascinated I am by the subject. Next year, I will probably do some faculty directed study in the area.
In just over a month's time, I will be done with the term and will be off to India!! I am eagerly looking forward to the trip. I just realized it has been the longest time I have been away from home :). The sights, the smells, the food, the people. I miss everything so much!!
