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!
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it's particularly terrible that significant others are given spots in favor of tuition-paying MBAs. this makes no sense to me. do the significant others pay a non-subsidized price?
in any event, i'm glad to hear that you were placed on a trip.
Green with jealousy...so green
re: green....about the Condi class... not the lack of trips..that's a shame
Can you clarify which trips? The Global Study Trips or others?
Pretty cool in my book as well that Condi is teaching one of your classes. Good luck!
having significant others and 2nd years on the trips makes no sense when first years who need the trips arent allowed on them. That is complety lunacy
SOs are allowed on the Argentina/Chile Global Study, the Cali/Nevada Service Learning, the Ghana/Senegal Global Study, the Mexico Global Study, the Paris/Beirut Global Study, the Peru Global Study, the Scandinavia Global Study, and the Turkey Global Study Trips. If you're a Stanford student, see https://mygsb.stanford.edu/mba/academics/programs/gmp/tripmatrix.cfm.
Hey.. Completely agree that they should have had space for everyone, at least one more trip. But I think having SOs on or off the trips doesn't really help with capacity for the other MBA1s, since in most of the cases SOs have different itineraries and don't really do the main activities (meeting political leaders, business leaders etc). I think the capacity constraints are from these meetings and controling size for them.
PaloAltoForAWhile - your posts are the most interesting and insightful that I have read. Thanks for sharing your experiences!
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