One of our Peer Adviser’s, Dan from Israel, sent out the following advice to our cluster. At first he sent it only to International students, then realized it applied equally well to the entire group. Taking it one step further, I think his advice is useful for new students at schools across the country. Anyway, Dan has graciously allowed us to reproduce his words here on bschoolers.

1. It is OK if you still haven’t made new friends.

There is a lot of social pressure to meet as many new people as possible, and sometimes this can be emotionally demanding. You may feel that you know lots of people, but none you can consider a friend. You may also feel that unlike you, other students already formed many friendships. This is not true. Most students get to know each other very superficially during orientation, and build friendships only later on. So take your time – eventually you will have many friends here.

2. It is OK not to understand every word in class.

This week you will start your first classes in statistics and accounting. Unlike some countries, in the US it is imperative that you let the professor know if you don’t understand something. If you are not comfortable asking questions in class go to the professor’s office hour, go to a review session or get a tutor. Don’t wait – classes are fast paced and build on previous material. Once again, if English continues to be a problem, go to the office of Student Academic Affairs – they are very supportive and have solutions for you.

3. It is OK to feel uncomfortable participating in class.

But you should challenge yourself to participate anyway. Remember that class participation is important here and is part of your grade. A good way to deal with class discussions is to prepare one question/comment in advance for each class. It gets easier once you know exactly what you want to say.

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Wednesday night, Yale won this quiz show for MBA students. See this recent post for more on this event.

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Now that the business school season is officially in full swing we’d like to enourage students from schools across the globe to share their experiences, musings, intellect and insight with everyone by posting on bschoolers.

This can be a great a resource for us all and we hope you take full advantage by participating in the conversation!

Feel free to email us at info@bschoolers.com with any questions, concerns, comments or suggestions.

Thanks!

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What a CRAZY week! Non-stop, jam-packed days and even crazier nights. The sheer amount of alcohol consumed is mind-boggling. It almost seems as though everyone has been locked up in a cage for years and are just now let out into the wild world of the NY bar scene. Wow. In some ways this week reminds me of my first week in college…with the important exception that bschool orientation includes a tremendous amount of school sponsored alcohol!

Anyway, talking to some CBS students on the subway this evening a few things were clear about orientation week:

1. This has been one of the craziest weeks of all of our lives
2. Everyone has truly enjoyed almost every minute of it

And when you consider these two facts together, it is remarkable that such a busy and tiring week is so well received. I spent a few moments of my precious free time thinking about what has made this week so great. Some reasons are school specific to CBS, but I imagine most of these apply to bschools across the country.

Here are my musings…

• Everyone is ecstatic to be here. Everyone knows what the “real-world” is like and they want to take advantage of every second back in school
• Everyone is eager to learn. I have yet to meet the person truly concerned with grades; yet, everyone is laser-focused on learning as much as possible
• Everyone is leaping at the opportunity to meet new people. If you don’t like people, business school is not the place for you. It is a hyper-social environment and there is a feeling of excitement all around about meeting and befriending an entirely new network of friends
• The diversity is incredible. I have worked in diverse environments and I like to consider myself a very easy-going, open-minded and inclusive person; but I have never been in an environment with this richness of diversity – diversity of race, religion, ethnicity, culture, experience and interests. It is both amazing and humbling

And for a few CBS-specific ones…

• The program has been fantastic. Columbia has really done an excellent job of creating an engaging and interesting orientation program including interactive lectures, group learning programs, social activities and so much more
• The professors and lectures have been fantastic. Even sessions that sound incredibly dull and boring are brought to life by the masterful teaching abilities of the professors and lecturers. Students are engaged in every class, and frankly, the teacher merely serves as the facilitator of us learning from our peers
• The Peer Advising system is awesome. Our peer advisors have done an incredible job of introducing us to the school and community. They are dedicated and fun, and their passion for CBS comes through so clearly in everything they do

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Harvard Bschool doesn’t officially start until September 4^th, but over the past week they have been putting a quarter of the class of 09 through a rigorous pre-MBA program. They call it Analytics, and it is meant to groom those of us without undergraduate business degrees or Finance backgrounds into full fledged spreadsheet crunching master-of-the-universe wannabees.

The way they figure, the case method that HBS employs for 100% of its teaching requires that students be the major contributors to class discussion. In order for the class to keep the conversation at a consistent level even with students from such diverse backgrounds as the Military, Biology, and Fashion, they put us through a grueling two week simulation where they teach us all about Finance, Accounting and Quantitative Analysis.

So what do I think?

Love the case method: It’s absolutely amazing to come together as a class and help each other understand and learn. The professor guides the conversation, but the students lead it. I have learned so much from my classmates. I am so used to having a professor teach through a monologue that within one class I knew the case method was for me.

Hate preparing for cases: It is very frustrating to be given a case for which you do not have all the tools and skills needed to solve it. It’s like banging your head against a wall. Hopefully I’ll get the hang of this and it won’t be so hard in the future.

Miss sleeping: Learning teams go until 11:00pm, so there really is no time for anything other than work.

Where are the socials? At least for this week, the social aspect of the MBA has been a letdown. I was expecting constant socials and unending opportunities to meet interesting people from around the world. So far it’s been all academics and nothing else.

I have to get back work, we have a presentation tomorrow and I need to be ready for it. One last thing, if you are reading this and are part of HBS class of 09 post a comment or send me an email.

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Whew! Three days into orientation and I have barely had time to catch my breath. Things are moving at a feverish pace – sessions, social events, group projects, and more take up our entire day. After a packed day of non-stop activity, our nights are purely dedicated to socializing (and school sponsored drinking!). Orientation is definitely not for the weak of heart!

A few initial observations:

• The enthusiasm is tangible; you can really sense how happy and excited everyone is to be back in school. And it’s not only because they are thrilled for a two year break from the work-force. People are genuinely enthusiastic about learning!
• The class diversity is astonishing. There are people from all walks of life, representing 50+ countries from an incredibly broad range of cultural, ethnic, religious, interest, and experience backgrounds
• Career switching seems to be a very popular reason to attend school. Most of the people I have met are looking to switch and are using school to make it happen
• Socializing on steroids – this seems to be one of the most critical elements of orientation (and the business school experience in general). Everything is geared towards meeting and interacting with your peers. On some level the insane amount of socializing feels somewhat forced and artificial, but at the same time there is a real sense of genuine interest as people meet and explore an entirely new network of peers
• Business school learning will be very experiential. Already every session, project and activity has been extremely participatory and interactive. It is very clear that the next two years will not be about learning from a dry book or boring professor

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[Note: this is an article I wrote that, while not about b-school, should be of interest to many MBA students as it discusses the future of an emerging industry.]

The Simplest Form
Friendster, of course, was the first social network as the form exists today. Consisting mostly of user profiles and friends, Friendster is largely a way to keep track of real world connections. Then came MySpace, which provides two big differentiators: 1) more freedom with the profile page (it is intended to be . . . your space) and 2) you are encouraged to connect to people regardless of any real world connection. I might be friends with Barak Obama, whether I actually know him or not.

Facebook evolves: the news feed
At first glance and at first launch Facebook seemed to be far closer to the Friendster model - you have user profiles and you can link your profiles to those of your friends. But then they added one ostensibly simple feature that changed everything: the news feed. When you log into Facebook, the first thing you see is the aggregate news feed (sort of like an RSS feed) from all the recent Facebook activity of your friends (depending on the privacy settings they have in place). It’s this feature that makes Facebook applications so incredibly powerful in their viral potential on Facebook (of course, the fact that there even ARE Facebook applications is also key. For more on that, please read this very insightful Marc Andreessen article: http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06/analyzing_the_f.html).

There are two types of viral advantages created by the news feed:

1) The growth/spread of applications themselves. As an example, if I add the “places I’ve been” maps application, all my friends see that on their news feeds and then know that that application exists and may be worth adding.

2) The viral growth of the specific tasks preformed by the application. The best example here is the “del.icio.us” application. Much like its at-large net application, del.icio.us is a way for you to share web pages. So if you have the del.icio.us application on Facebook and links set up in your browser, as you’re reading a cool article on nytimes.com, just link the article to del.icio.us and your friends’ news feeds will read “Mark added ‘Dewey Beats Truman’ to del.icio.us.” and my friends all know that the news article “Dewey Beats Truman” exists and the article, as well as nytimes.com itself, will spread through Facebook users.

And there are two incredibly powerful things worth noting about the news feed/friend relationship:

1) Because most relationships in Facebook (for the time being) tend to be based on real world friendships and not some dude you met on MySpace because he likes the same band, actions taken that are represented in the news feed come from a trusted source. I’m as likely to add that application I read about in a news feed as I am if a friend had told me in conversation “hey, you should check this out.” That’s some powerful marketing ability – you’re not leveraging connections, you’re leveraging friendships. When in the history of marketing has anyone ever been able to tap into that en masse?

2) The news feed is a light push. I’m a big sharer. I love telling all my friends about this cool link I just found, this crazy story I just heard, a good deal, or some new music. But I’m well aware that my friends don’t want e-mails from me about this every two seconds. The news feed is a way for my friends to see what I’m suggesting and sharing (perhaps via posting a link on del.icio.us or broadcasting a song on iLike). But it doesn’t clog inboxes with each instance of a posting, or even alert me each time something new happens. I just get one simple login page with all the activities of all my friends (which, by the way, is customizable). Knowing this, I can be less shy about broadcasting my news, which in turn encourages people to post more. That’s great news for people that have content they want moving through Facebook. The more content moving around, the better for all content providers.

Clearly the news feed is important. In fact, it’s the core of what Facebook really is. After all, if it’s the home page, they’re saying that’s the key—the starting point—right? So whereas Friendster was in the end a way to connect with friends, for Facebook, the connections are just a means to an end. All those connections you have are the bedrock of your Facebook activities. It decides whom you broadcast to and where your broadcasts come from. The truth is, as cute as it is, Facebook’s name is a horrible mistake. In fact, to accomplish its goals, I don’t think Facebook even cares if you have a picture of your face on your profile, or really if you have a profile altogether. Your “Facebook page” is really just a home page, a sort of place holder, to represent yourself as a node in the connections of your network so that you can appropriately receive and send broadcasts.

Implications of broadcasting and sharing through social networks
Of course, then the question is, why is broadcasting important at all? Truth is, right now, it’s really not all that important. But in a few years it may very well change the way you find things on the web. The news feed on Facebook is a great form of social web discovery. It brings you programs web sites, people and more, both within Facebook and without, based on what your friends are doing. That’s great for the “light push” we’ve talked about. But what about when you’re more actively looking for something? It’s great to suddenly discover a group devoted to fans of the movie Office Space because your friend Brett joined it. But what if you’re looking to buy a digital camera and no one on your news feed has done anything related to that recently? One of the incredible things about applications on Facebook, thanks to the very well crafted API, is that they have access to your friend’s activities and information (in an anonymous and safe way). Imagine a Facebook based social search, where you could type in “digital camera” and search results might be prioritized based on what your friends already found to be relevant if they’ve done this search before. That would probably be based on an algorithm combining factors such as what they’ve clicked on before, what sites they bounced (i.e. left quickly because they didn’t find what they were looking for) and what they’ve actually purchased. It’s the web equivalent of asking your friends for advice on your search for a good camera.

You’re already familiar with that type of information gathering. You’re at dinner with some friends and you say “oh, guys, I’m looking to get a new camera, any new ideas?” And two people recommend the same Cannon Elph and you trust their opinion – they’re your friends, after all. You hang out because you share common opinions and you share common life experiences, so you trust what they have to say more than anyone else. A search engine based on Facebook would have the same effect. You’ve built your little network of friends. And now, let them advise you en masse based on their past history of related activity.

 Where’s Google?
Of course, that’s Facebook style social networking. Once we start talking about social search, you of course have to look to search giant Google. I think Google sees social networking as a far more dynamic concept than Facebook does. Think about the way they populate your Gmail Chat contacts. It dynamically updates based on people you’ve been in e-mail touch with. Pretty smart. They don’t stop and ask “who do you want as your contacts” the way Facebook asks who your friends are, or make you build your “buddy list” from the ground up. And Google already applies this sort of dynamic historical intelligence in search. If you have a Gmail account, you’re by default logged in to Google even for search and Google delivers what they call “personalized search results.” They explain that “Web History helps deliver more personalized search results based on what you’ve searched for on Google and which sites you’ve visited.” Again, that’s a pretty smart idea because it’s dynamic. They don’t stop to ask you as an interstitial step “please select what factors are most important to you while searching.” They decide that for you based on what you’ve told them is important in the past based on prior usage. So what’s Google’s social networking plan? Of course I don’t know exactly. But I don’t think it has much to do with the Friendster-like Orkut program that they own and is so popular in . . . Brazil.

But think about little things like this: Gmail is one of the fastest growing e-mail programs and the inbox is the starting point for many people on the web. Gmail also has a “web clips” application which dynamically (starting to sense a theme?) populates RSS feeds based on your web history. What if web clips started feeding you information of your friends’ web activity, much like the Facebook news feeds, based on your frequently e-mailed contacts? And how would Google know what your friends are up to? For one, your search history and related exit links. But beyond that Google Analytics is one of the fastest growing web analytics tool in the world. With the simple javascript they’ve already got on millions of web pages, you theoretically could OPT-IN to be tracked by them for broadcasting certain information to your friends (and for further customization on the sites you visit, but that’s a whole other story). There are a lot of possibilities. The bottom line is this: In the future, you won’t have to actively join a social network. The web will BE a social network. And you’ll reap the benefits, finding new information in ways none of us could ever imagine.

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It’s incredible, school hasn’t even started but we are already laser focused on finding our next job. Last week, Columbia hosted a five hours session called “career day” preparing incoming students for the mad rush that is about to consume the lives of first year bschoolers.

The sessions were interesting: a general overview of the recruiting process, a resume workshop, a career assessment seminar, and a Q&A with second year students. I definitely walked away with some interesting perspective.

First and foremost, a thought on the process – it is going to be crazy! Immediately upon getting to school, students are encouraged to meet with career service advisors to discuss everything and anything career-related: resumes, interests, plans of action, scheduling, networking, etc. Already in September, the presentations begin. We have been warned that we will need to make choices on which presentations to attend since there will simply be too many (as well overlapping scheduling) to attend them all. By October/November we will need to perfect our resume and cover letters to apply for all of our target positions. By December we learn where we have been invited to interview. Our winter break will be spent preparing for interviews. Interviews actually begin in early January (even before break ends!) and can continue throughout the month. Finally, by the end of January or early February most will have secured their coveted summer position.

Clearly, these next few months will be a sprint of meeting people, learning about companies, networking and developing relationships all with the singular goal of landing that dream summer job. Amazingly enough, somehow through it all we are supposed to excel at our coursework, socialize with our peers, and take full advantage of all the ancillary school offerings (clubs, events, speakers, etc.). I don’t know about everyone else, but I anticipate becoming one heck of a Google/Outlook Calender user!

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