Hello MBA applicants!

Just want to introduce myself. I’m Janet, one of the hosts of MBA Podcaster. We produce audio podcasts on everything MBA - how to get in, what to do once you’re there, and where you can go afterwards.

Since our launch in early 2006, we’ve grown to include a variety of shows covering topics such as the importance of the GMAT, how to write great essays, and how to choose a MBA program, just to name a few.

On MBA Podcaster, you hear advice directly from admissions directors at top programs like Wharton, Kellogg, Chicago GSB, Columbia, MIT Sloan and Harvard. We also regularly hear from career management directors, MBA recruiters, and alumni to bring you post-MBA career advice.

You can browse through our archives and download the shows that apply to you!

Here are some of our most popular shows:

- The 360 Degree Guide to Applying For & Getting Your MBA

- Getting an MBA vs. Masters in Finance or Economics: Which Option is Right for You?

- MBA Admission Strategic Plan: What You Can Do Now to Help Get Accepted Next Year

- Part-time versus Full-time MBA: Which One is Right for You?

- Acing the MBA Interview: How to Prepare Yourself for Your In-Person Inerview

- MBA Quantitative Skills: Sharpening You Skills Before You Begin Your MBA

Our newest series is called a “Day in the Life“. We’re visiting business schools around the world to bring you an in-depth perspective of campus life. We follow a current student for a day, speak to deans, admissions committee members, career management directors, alumni, and others. It’s a great way for you to get to know the different programs out there!

- UCLA Anderson School of Management

- UNC Kenan-Flagler Weekend Executive MBA Program

- RSM Erasmus University

- INSEAD 

- Ross School of Business

- Hawaii Pacific University

- Chicago GSB

- And many more coming soon including Wharton and OneMBA!

Visit us at www.MBAPodcaster.com

Good luck on applying to Bschool and we hope to help you in the process!

Best wishes,
Janet Nakano
Host/Producer

Popularity: 24% [?]

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The Forté Foundation is an organization dedicated to encouraging women to pursue careers in business leadership by providing access to information, scholarships and
networking opportunities. Obviously this is an important topic for everyone in business to be aware of. The vast majority of b-schoolers are still men, and that quite simply means that the business school experience is not as well rounded as it should be.

This fall, Forté is coming to cities across the country with its Forum
series, featuring top women business leaders sharing candid advice drawn
from their own career experiences.

They’ll be joined by admissions officers from the top MBA schools, who will
answer questions and give advice about the admissions process.

The event includes plenty of time to mingle with corporate and school
representatives for one-on-one networking opportunities.

The schedule of events is as follows:
Boston, September 17th (register by September 13th)
Washington DC, September 18th (register by September 13th)
Chicago, September 19th (register by September 13th)
New York, September 20th (registration is closed)
Atlanta, September 24th (register by September 20th)
Houston, September 25th (register by September 20th)
San Francisco, September 26th (register by September 20th)
Los Angeles, September 27th (register by September 20th)
New York, October 1st (register by September 24th)
London, October 9th (register by October 1)

To register for any of these events, visit
http://www.fortefoundation.org/forum

Popularity: 7% [?]

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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

Popularity: 21% [?]

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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

Popularity: 10% [?]

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Here’s a video that someone just sent me – a parody on the movie Wedding Crashers, titled Admit Weekend Crashers. I’m fairly certain it’s by some Stanford students.  Anyone have any more info on this?  It’s not rolling in the aisles funny, but it’s a nice effort and a fun 5 minute watch for any b-schooler. Parodies on Kellogg, Wharton, and Harvard.

Popularity: 19% [?]

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For some MBA students school starts in . . . a few days! For example, NYU-Stern has a “Summer Start Program.”  This is a program that you are selected for and cannot apply to.  I actually was selected to interview for this program a few months back and they outlined the benefits, of which there are many.  The short of it is that they select students who display strong leadership and/or communication skills (which they seem to think is the raw material of leadership) but who may otherwise need to a little more time to let those talents blossom — hopefully in the form of starting or taking leadership roles in student clubs. One current student at a Summer Start Program information session asserted that while only about 15% of the class does Summer Start, it seems that 80% of the leadership positions in clubs come from those students. 

In order to accomplish this, these students start in the first full week after July 4th (this year July 9th) taking six credits over the summer.  These aren’t classes specifically designed for these students, but rather just a way to get a head start on the rough first year course-load.  Students are then free to take one fewer course in each of the first two semesters, or two fewer courses in the first semester. 

This sort of begs the question – who couldn’t use this?  Perhaps in the future business school will be a little longer, or maybe just a class or two fewer to help students focus their time on the variety of activities and tracks open to them. 

Other schools offer math boot camps and other skill brush-ups in the summer.  Anyone know of some other schools that offer similar head-starts? 

Popularity: 7% [?]

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I recently purchased a new computer to use for (at least) the next two years as a business school student. After much consideration I settled on the ultra-portable Lenovo x60. While thinking about which machine to purchase, I dealt with two major issues: size vs. power, and Mac vs. Windows.

Size vs. Power
When I posed the question of size vs. power on the Columbia bulletin board, the consistent response basically said “you will carry your computer with you all the time everyday, everywhere.” Right then and there I had my answer - go small and light. Re-enforcing this decision were posts from people who chose “power” and a larger screen wishing they had gone with the most portable option available.

Frankly, today’s technology allows even the ultra-portable machines to pack more than enough punch to suffice for just about any task you can think of as a business school student (of course, excluding heavy gaming and graphic design/editing work). Furthermore, my experience with a “smaller” screen has been totally fine. Of course, I prefer two or three large 21’’ monitors on which I can see all 15 windows I have open at any given time; but truth be told, the 12.1’’ monitor is very good and perfectly usable for just about any task.

The one thing that does take getting used to is the smaller keyboard. On the Lenovo x60, the main section of the keyboard (all the letters) are the same size as on a regular laptop; however, the side keys (backspace, tab, enter, etc.) are a bit smaller. By no means a deal-breaker, but nevertheless, something to adjust to.

Mac vs. Windows
Now I must admit the only Apple product I have ever owned is my IPod. Nevertheless, I cannot express how much I’d like a Mac for personal use. For pictures, videos, music, or just about any media related item I think Macs run circles around Windows-based machines. For my personal use, these are the items of importance to me.

However, there was really one factor that kept me from making the jump for my business school machine – Microsoft Excel. Though I have heard conflicting reports on how well Microsoft Office products run on Apple machines (even through Bootcamp or running parallels), that was not the deciding factor. The kicker was simple – keyboard shortcuts! After two years in Investment Banking analyst bootcamp, I have become somewhat of a master of Excel shortcuts. There is no question these shortcuts have saved me countless hours in Excel and made me much more productive. Understanding that business school will require lots of Excel use, I decided not to go through the process of relearning the shortcuts on a Mac and went with what very well may be my last (personal use) Windows machine.

So far, so good; I am very happy with my purchase. What factors did you consider when making your computer purchase?

Popularity: 6% [?]

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There were a lot of reasons why I decided to go to Harvard, but I never really thought about the classroom dynamic as a pro or con. Over the past couple of weeks though it’s become real evident that the case study method is a very important differentiator, and my classroom experience will be quiet unique.

When I thought about going to business school my perception was that I would cement my finance, accounting, quantitative, and other hard skills in pretty much the same fashion as an undergraduate course. I am not sure about the other schools, but it definitely does not work that way at HBS.

Because of my total lack of foresight during my undergraduate days I did not take a single accounting, finance, or otherwise business related course. I figured that could wait until business school. I was somewhat surprised that in my admission letter was a blurb about finance and accounting requirements (I was asked to complete entry level finance and accounting courses before August 1st and to attend an Analytics program in August).

Wasn’t that the point of business school?

It seems that the case study method requires a base knowledge so that everyone can participate in analyzing and assessing the cases for each class. I am not sure how well this translates for some of the hard-skill classes like Finance, but I think it will be an exciting and dynamic opportunity. I’ll keep you posted.

Popularity: 5% [?]

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