Workload

Stanford MBA1s have three 1,000-word papers plus comprehensive feedback on 7 classmates due in the next 8 days.

And then we have mid-terms the following week.

Applicants: please do not believe that business school is not a ton of hard work. Even if you're just aiming to graduate, the workload is overwhelming.

Fellow MBA students and business school graduates: please stop perpetuating the silly idea that business school is a joke.

Condoleeza Rice & Trips

1. Condi Rice is teaching two of my classes this week. I think she just published a bunch of new business school cases and is coming to the GSB to teach them to us in our "Global Context of Management" class. That is pretty cool in my book. I definitely read those cases a bit more closely than I usually do. Don't want to be cold-called out by Condi!

2. Trips were assigned. We had to fill out a ranking and then some algorithm sorted through them to place people. I got a trip in my first choice bucket and am really excited. But troublingly, about 10% of my class was not placed on any trip. There just aren't enough spots and so some people got left out of the mix.

This is unacceptable for several reasons:

a) The GSB promotes these trips aggressively during admit weekend without mentioning that 10% of the class doesn't get one.

b) A "global experience" is required to graduate and while there are other ways to fulfill that requirement, the trips are by far the least time-consuming and the most popular.

c) There is no good reason for there to not be enough trips. Stanford claims that these trips are subsidized and that budget cuts have forced them to reduce the number of trips, but most trips cost $3-6K. How subsidized can they be?!

d) A small number of both second-years and significant others are allowed on the trip. It is non-sensical for tuition-paying MBA1s to be excluded in favor of MBA2s who have already fulfilled their global requirement and significant others of MBA1s.

As one of my classmates said, no algorithm, no matter how "fair", can fix the lack of trip spots!

I miss blogging

I have many posts clogged in my brain, but little time to coax them out of there. Strapped for time, and yearning for more sleep, I must neglect my blog for another few days in favor of homework.

However, given that the round 1 deadline for the GSB is rapidly approaching--this Thursday I think--I want to wish all applicants the very best of luck. Take a deep breath in through your nose, click submit, and exhale a long "ahhhhhhhh" out of your mouth. You've done what you can do. Let it go for a while. Resist the urge to reread your essays and instead, rekindle your neglected relationships and rejoin your forgotten hobbies. Read a book. (I wish I could read something other than cases.)

Also, here is a preview of topics I'd like to touch on in the coming months:

1. Stanford GSB classroom norms

2. The social life

3. Trips and other cool opportunities

4. Leadership Labs & CAT (the two most interesting classes of the quarter in my opinion)

Crazy little thing called FOAM

F.O.A.M. = Friends of Arjay Miller.

F.O.A.M. = Stanford GSB Tuesday night drinking club (with occasional dance-off).

F.O.A.M. = annual 12-hour trip to Vegas in 1970's garb.

F.O.A.M. = one of the quickest ways I know to spend $190 (cost of annual membership).

F.O.A.M. = the reason I am exhausted and hungover in my Wednesday morning Leadership Lab session (to be discussed in a later post).

...and on that note, to bed I go.

Campus is Crowded: "Week 1"

Today was the official first day of classes for the entire MBA program, so our once cozy community of first-year MBAs has now been invaded by our second-year counterparts. All of a sudden, it's not quite as easy to wander up to a group of students and start chatting with them because they might be--gasp--second years.

As I previously mention, last week ("Week 0") was entirely filled with an organization behavior module and an accounting module, plus a half a dozen info sessions/meetings. Now, we are getting down to business with the classes of the quarter:

Managerial Finance

Strategic Leadership and Leadership Labs

Organizational Behavior

Global Context of Management

Critical Analytical Thinking ("CAT")

All of our classes, except finance, are taken with the same section or sub-group from the section. Stanford divides finance into three levels--base, accelerated, and advanced--based on some kind of algorithm.

I don't know much about any of the classes, except CAT. CAT is a written and oral communication class that spans seven weeks of the quarter. Each week, we have to write a paper (different topics, different structures, different modes of argument) and then defend it in class. Paper is due Wednesday; discussion is Friday. That is what I will be working on for the next two days. See you on the flip side.

The Sting

During week 0 (last week), we had an organizational behavior module on working in groups and teams. The syllabus clearly indicated that 90% of our grade would be based on class participation (about half of which would be determined by our peers), so naturally, many hands were raised during the duration of the class discussions. My hand was often one of those.

However, after a couple classes and a discussion of what constitutes a valuable comment/question, I began to curtail my participation. I tried to "move the conversation forward" with any comments I did offer. I offered no more than 1-2 comments/questions per class from Wednesday onward. However, in the back of my mind, I worried that my first two days of eager hand-raising had already been indelibly marked on my classmates' brains.

Now, we are being asked to rate each of 10 randomly-assigned classmates from 1 to 10 and if we desire, to provide a comment. I was clicking around in the website and discovered that you can view any feedback about you that has been submitted already; so far, I have received a 5 and a 2 and one of the raters offered his/her opinion that I was participating only because of the required participation component. Ouch.

I cannot tell you how deflated I feel right now. I know that need to develop a thicker skin if I'm going to get through this program (let alone progress in my career), but I am a person who cares deeply about what other people think of me and just those two numbers and that brief comment jotted down have been enough to pull me down today. I am enervated. How is it possible that I have been in classes for only one week?

GSB Class of 2011 Facts & FIgures

Straight from the mouth of Derrick Bolton during today's MBA program welcome session:

Class of 2011 class profile/admissions information--

Admit rate = 6.7% (lowest ever if memory serves)

Class size = 384 (biggest ever I think)

Average GPA = 3.68

Average GMAT = 727

That's all I could store in my capacity-constrained memory.

Otherwise, first day went smoothly--met some people in my section, took an interesting organizational behavior class and a boring accounting class. Now I've got to sign off to do some reading.