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Journey to my MBA

Monday, September 13, 2004

World MBA Tour & Happenings

Just to be clear before reading this entry.... I just want to make it perfectly clear that this journal entry is from 2004 and not 2005

I went to the World MBA Tour in Los Angeles Today. I met Dirty_Martini there. We said hi and went our way wandering around the tables. It was a zoo! There were quite a lot of schools. Wharton, Kellogg, Duke, Michigan, Berkeley, UCLA, USC, Darden, McCombs, NYU, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, INSEAD and many others were there. There must have been 40-50 schools represented. The event was NOT what I expected.

Let me describe my experience.

I came thinking I might get to hear some informal presentations from various top schools. I was even more surprised by the $5 admission fee. I was thinking... these schools want to recruit the top students and they want us to pay to hear their sales pitches? Something not right about that. And if you registered at the door, it was $10. It's not a lot of money, but it was the thought of even charging at all that got to me.

I received a big magazine that listed some information about every school represented. It was about a 1/2 in thick and was full of interesting articles that were relevant to the MBA app experience. I picked up a map and an agenda sheet. The agenda sheet listed three events. 1) A Kaplan GMAT seminar at two different times and a 2) panel of UCLA and Colorado MBA alumni or students to ask questions of. I was not interested in any of them. Then I asked myself, where are the real events?

As I walked into the room, a guy holding a handful of white plastic conference bags with the word Kaplan written on it in huge blue letters handed me one bag. I entered the room to see a room full of tables with banners about 9 feet high behind the tables of most of the schools. Moreover, banners of every school fully covered the front of every table. I felt lost because I didn't know what to do because I didn't realize it was going to be like the Comdex computer conferences I had visited so many times in the past. There was nothing different about this setup.

Tables lined all 4 walls with 5 isles stretching from front to back with tables lining each isle. You went to whatever school you wanted to, talked to the person at the table, grabbed some brochures.. pop them into your bag and that was it. I went to every school I plan on applying to and asked them several questions. I asked about IT background and desirability at their school. I asked about my age and I asked about their support for applicants and how they were providing help to get to know more about each school.

You know what's sad.... they all said nearly the same thing. Didn't matter whether I was talking to Wharton folk or Darden. Some were weak in presentation compared to others. For example, when I went to Duke, I looked at the brochure and didn't see a single area that showed MIS or IT job results for the recent graduates. I saw finance and marketing predominantly. The lady told me that it was probably under 'other', but wasn't sure. I was infuriated. I asked her nicely if I could get a feel for what it might look like to go to Duke with an idea on management in technology. She said there were a few classes. Then she grabbed an alum who talked to me for 15 minutes about the school. That helped alot. He happened to come from the IT industry and told me what he experienced. I was still left with a bad taste in my gut about Duke as I walked to the next table though.

Some schools had 1 rep and others had an army of 5-6. Kellog suprised the hell out of me with only 1 person behind the table. The biggest swarms of 10-15 people were around Wharton and Kellogg. It was truly sad to see tier 3 schools with 1 or 2 person manned tables with nobody really walking up to their tables. There were many tables like that. Once, I made the mistake of walking too close to a table as I was walking and the lady behind the table caught me off guard as she leaned way forward and asked me if I had any questions. Out of politeness, I asked her a few questions, grabbed a free pen and walked to the next table. She was so friendly... I sort of felt sorry for the schools with far lower ratings.

I managed to meet many admissions directors and assistant directors. Got their business cards and made note of their names on the cards as nearly every single one gave me a generic business card without their personal contact info. I think UCLA was the only school where the assistant director gave me her personal business card.

I got bored so stinking fast. You would stand at a table waiting for the person in front of you to finish asking their questions and than take your turn. Same old questions over and over. "What is your typical class like, What is your typical student like, What are my chances, How much experience in word do you need before applying..." Yada yada yada.

I got really surprised when I was at the Kellogg table and I heard these two guys mention that they had received an e-mail from the rep at the table about the dinner tommorrow night. Then it hit me. What the..... there are side events aren't there! How can I get invited to one of those? Why wasn't I invited? How did they get invited and not me?

Anyway, I decided to take matters in my own hands. Since this happened very early on, at nearly every school, I would ask, "are there any events going on over the next several days where I could get to know the school or people a bit better in an informal setting?" Not a single solitary bite Dang. The other side events going on were interviews. I had recieved an e-mail before arriving asking me to visit their table to be interviewed. I won't say the school, but let's just say, it was a school I never heard of before in my life. So that made me think... damn there are interviews going on with some schools on the side aren't there!

I was in and out of there in 1 1/2 hrs. Although it was a 4 hour event, I just didn't see the need to stay there that long. The sheer number of people made it very inpersonal and hard to ask questions or talk to the reps without 3 or 4 people around you listening to everything you were talking about. The funniest sight was when I glanced over at the Kellogg table and saw that 1 rep standing in front of the table now with 13 people around her listening intently at everything she was saying to one Asian fellow.

Now for the lame school comments. Throughout the last 2 weeks, I received e-mails nearly every day from various schools letting me know a little about the school while reminding me to visit their table on Sept 12th. This is fine except for the following schools who sent their e-mails this afternoon when I had already left to go to the event. (Some sent the e-mail at 3pm when the event had already started at 2pm) The following schools get my ,"That was funny to send the invite an hour after the event started award", UC Irvine, University of Pacific, Drucker, Santa Clara and UC San Diego. The other award goes to Arizona state for sending out their invitation with all the recipients included in the CC section of the e-mail as opposed to the BCC section allowing me to see all 3 pages of e-mails of all the people who got the same e-mail. Not good.

The funny award. I was walking by the Michigan State University table and I commented how it was interesting how they had changed their B-school name to Ross. Then when I saw her confused look, I realized I was talking to the wrong Michigan school. After an awkward realization that I had got that wrong, we talked some.

I was introduced by Dirty_Martini to a guy named C who told us a bit of his experiences with GMAT tutoring. He was a conference attendee just like us but was just saying Hi to his friends. He said some very encouraging things.
1) He said that R3 last year was great time to apply unlike many years where R3 is a virtual death sentence for applicants. This was caused be the severe lack of applicants over previous years.
2) This year in his strong opinion, applicants were going to be way down again.
3) Some schools buy students into their schools to get better students. I won't mention the school he mentioned that is well known for this right now.
4) He was very unappy about the GMAT because it's been compromised. The Chinese pass around the test answers all over the place now.
5) He really encouraged me after I told him my GMAT score and told me that I was in a very good range to be very capable to do much better on the GMAT and that doing well on the GMAT can be learned as opposed to just being an assessment test.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi, My name is Anna. I've just attanded an MBA event and I still have an MBA tour schedualed in November. Can you please give me your e-mail or any kind of contact, so i can get in touch and actually ask, what I can't publish publicly.
Thank you in advance

1:07 PM  

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