Let the games begin

Received a nice heavy box in the mail courtesy of the Wharton MBA program. I now have reading assignments and cases due prior to the start of classes plus some nice accounting homework.

Bring it on!

Classes start May 28th (memorial day!)

Waiting for Godot, meeting some classmates, and a date in NYC

It took awhile, but things are finally starting to move with Wharton. Lemme explain. I requested early admission and have known for a few months that I was admitted into the program. To secure a spot, I had to submit a not so insignificant (IMO anyway) deposit. So between the time I sent my check and now, not much happened (I called this the waiting for godot period). I sent some emails and made some phone calls to the office to confirm my deposit, and inquired about getting some materials early, and getting financial aid info and perhaps getting the contact info for other admits. Well, I guess they are not in a position to do any of those things before the schedule time frame. So not much happened other than the fact that I was short about 5K.

Well no more. The last week or so, has been a fury of activity. First, normal admission decisions went out towards the end of March. (Kudos to the Wharton Adcom for finishing ahead of schedule and releasing the decisions, and congrats to all the admits!) Then I received an email from Wharton introducing the class manager, and which included a request for additional info to add to my profile and an invite to the three receptions that are being held prior to starting the program. I have RSVP’d for the NYC reception. There was another email with an invite to join the Class 33 east online group. I signed up for that and when I visited the group site, I saw that some of the other classmates had already started to introduce themselves. Not one to be outdone, I quickly fired off my intro. So over the last few days, it has been exciting to read the profiles of my classmates. I am humbled by the diverse and accomplished qualifications of the class (Kudos again to Wharton Adcom on assembling a fine looking class 33!). From the profiles I’ve read so far, I can see there is a plethora of industries and profession represented. In addition to “traditional” MBA candidates such as accountants, financiers, consultants and bankers, I have seen scientist, lawyers, engineers, lobbyists, entrepreneurs, and even a nuclear (or is that nukular?) physicist represented. Such diversity and this is only about half the class so far! I am definitely looking forward to meeting some of them at the NYC reception (which I hope to report on) and the rest of the class when the program begins at the end of May.

I also recently received instructions on setting up my Wharton accounts which I responded to immediately, and went online to set them up. Even though the instructions stated the accounts wouldn’t be ready until a few days later, I did not have problems with the setup. So I now have a cool looking wharton.upenn.edu email address and have access to some of the Wharton sites limited to Wharton students and faculty. I have not had much time to look over the available websites and databases, but will give a synopsis when I’ve had a chance to.

NYC coming up!

Virginia Tech

Wikipedia Article

How does one begin to comprehend such an inconceivable tragedy? My heartfelt condolences to all the families affected by this awful, awful, incident.

Warren Buffet, Wharton, Harvard and Columbia

On my trip to Philly and the visit to the Penn Campus, I had a lot of time to think. One of the things that crept into my mind while walking past Franklin Field on the way to the Penn Museum of Archeology and Anthropology (excellent museum by the way) was that Warren Buffet had attended Wharton as an undergrad. That thought entered my mind because in Roger Lowenstein's book, "Buffet, The Making of an American Capitalist", there is a picture of Buffett at Franklin Field when he was Penn student. So walking past Franklin field, triggered that recollection.

Anyway, when I got home from my trip, I pulled the book out, and reread the excerpts from that part of his life. Warren Buffett did attend Wharton, however, he transferred to and graduated from the University of Nebraska. Although Warren attended Wharton from 1947-1949, he left according to the book because he felt he knew more than the professors. After Nebaska, Buffett applied to and was turned down by the Harvard Business School. He then applied to Columbia Business School where he met Ben Graham of Graham and Dodd fame, and the rest is history.

I wanted to write about this because I feel there are somethings to gleam from this tidbit of Warren's life as it pertains to business schools and the admissions process in general. First of all, I find it amusing that as good as a reputation that Wharton has, Mr. Buffett decided to finish his undergraduate education elsewhere. At first glance, this apparent snub does not reflect too well on Wharton. What did the "the oracle of omaha" not like about Wharton that made him dropout? More to the point, is one foolish to disagree with Warren here and go to Wharton anyway? Oh the horror! Maybe Wharton wasnt right for Warren to begin with. How could the admissions office miss that?

And whats this about Harvard turning Warren down? What was the admission committee thinking? The fact that Warren made it big, even without Harvard, should be inspiration to the thousands that get turned away by the HBS or any business school for that matter.

One more observation that I want to point out is that in the book, Lowenstein alludes to Buffett's dissatisfacotry experience at Penn as forerunner to his generall dissatisfaction with business schools. I have heard of this being true of other business leaders as well, notably Jack Welch. In fact, there are some prominent thought leaders that hold the MBA in disdain. The two that I know of are Pfeffer at Stanford GSB and Mintzberg at McGill. Not surprisingly, many legendary CEOs and other executives do not hold MBA degrees at all but Ph.Ds (Think Grove at Intel, Welch at GE, Schmidt at Google ) . Moreover, many of the richest CEOs are college dropouts. Look who's running Dell, Oracle, Apple, Microsoft (Gates not Baldmer) etc. So should aspiring CEOs head for doctorates or the exits instead of an MBA? Is the MBA an overrated degree?

I pondered many of these questions when I was contemplating the MBA. In my opinion, its a worthwhile thought experiment to go through, but don't fret though. Alls well that ends well. Wharton and Warren's relationship has withstood the early rough going. Harvard's endowment is doing just fine thank you, even without Warren's money. Columbia can lay claim to having one of the world's richest men as a distinguished alum. And last time I checked, companies continue to value and look for the brightest and best MBA students by the bucket load each year.

Road Trip!

I took the family on a road trip to Philly and NYC during spring break, so I have not been able to post. Part of the reason for the road trip was so that my wife and kids could see where I would be going to school. I feel it is important to have your family behind you when you are committing so much of yourself to an endeavor. I wrote about having my family on board in one of my application essays as it was a major concern for me. Anyhow, I wanted them to see the campus so that they would know where their husband/father was when he was away every other weekend. They loved the campus and they loved Philly. Hopefully there will be other opportunitities to visit during the next two years.