Getting in: Resarching Schools and free beer

I recently received an email from one of the admission directors at Wharton inviting me to attend the Wharton recruiting reception that will be held in Atlanta this year. Which reminded me that recruitment season must be starting soon. So in keeping with an earlier promise, I will write about my experience in applying to business schools. All the usual disclaimers apply, this is my experience only, your situation may be different, mileage may vary...blah, blah, blah.

Ok now that we have all the niceties out of the way lets get down to the nitty gritty. Since I probably have more to say on the topic of getting in to an MBA exec program than most of you would care to know, I will break it up in to different subtopics. The first one will be researching schools because I think it the first step in the process. Some of you may already have your heart set on a particular school and know you will get in, so I salute you and advise that the rest of this post may be useless to you unless you want to score some free drinks and fancy shmancy Hors d’œuvres. For the rest of you who are undecided on a school, not sure yet if you want to commit, or just plain confused about the plethora of programs out there, you might find this post helpful.

First and foremost, it helps if you've already gotten the GMAT out of the way. While not all schools require it, some do (Wharton does, but not Chicago, or Kellog for instance, while other schools may allow you to waive it). If you have the GMAT out of the way (remember scores count for up to 5 years, check with schools if you are on the fifth year), the score will help narrow down the choice of schools that you should set your sights on. Plus if you do decide on a school that requires the GMAT, that's one less thing to worry about.

Next step is to send away for brochures/information. Since this is free information and most schools have online request forms, this is a no brainer. You may also be able to get the same information from the school website. When you start to receive them, keep in mind the brochures are slick marketing material intended to present the school in the best light. so don't believe all the fluff that has been written or fall in love with all the pretty pictures. What the brochure is really good for is collecting facts. The important facts in my opinion are the following: Program formats offered (evening, weekend, p/t, modular etc), program length, program start dates, application deadlines, applicant profiles, application requirements (gmat, transcripts, letter of recommendations etc), program location, class size, tuition. There are other good nuggets of secondary information you get when you ask for brochures as well. How responsive is the school, do they share resources with the ft program (ie is the exec mba program an afterthought), is there contact information listed. It might be a good idea once you have a list of schools to start a spreadsheet to collect all the information in one place. You could list the schools in the first column and then all the relevant information that is important to you in the remaining columns. Also note that in the exec mba program format, the admission criteria and process varies from school to school more so than the FT program. While FT programs have a relatively well defined process among schools, there is more flexibility and leeway in exec programs. Keep that in mind when you do your application planning.

The next step is to attend as many receptions as you care to go to. There are two ways to approach this. If you are planning on applying this year...stick to the schools that you will realistically think about applying to. Otherwise, if you attend too many of these, you may just suffer from information overload. On the other hand, if you are still a year or two away from applying (like me a few years back), Sign up for as many of these as you can. Some schools do these at the school itself, while others use hotel reception rooms. The nice part of these receptions is the free beer / wine and the Hors d’œuvres. It will also be good networking practice for all you shy types that don't get out to many cocktail parties. After a few of these, you will attain some skill in the art of the talking to people you don't know and getting information from them. But lets be real, you are not really there for the food and the wine, you are there to figure out if you want to attend. In addition to paying attention to the slide presentation and its content. Pay attention to who attends from the school other than the admission director(s)? Alumni? Professors? Deans or Program Director? What kind of candidates attend? Is the presentation well organized? It may also help to attend more than one reception for the same school if you still have some time before applying. I heard one story about a guy that has gone to a recruitment reception for five years running without yet applying. I guess he likes the food! Perhaps the most useful part of the evening (or morning) will the be opportunity to talk to somebody from the school administration, alumni, current students, or other prospective applicants. My advice is to network like crazy. Get good at your 10 second intro, the handshake and collecting business cards. This network will come in handy down the road as you start to have specific questions. If you meet somebody from the administration, it might be helpful to follow up with an email the next business day so they remember you. Keep in touch frequently by making inquiries (when are applications due, when can I do an interview, can you review my profile, what are my chances etc.). Alumni and current students will be a great resource starting from the application period all the way through the end of the program. Again, get business cards, follow up in the next day or two with an email or phone call so they remember you. Try to get a dialog going with these people so you can gauge yourself for fit at the school. Fellow applicants will be useful to network with during the application process. It also helps to gauge yourself against their profile and get a rough estimate of "fit". Could you see these people as your future classmates? Funny story about my Wharton reception is that I arrived a little early, there was a couple of groups of people already chatting when I arrived. I approached one group of two guys chatting. Lo and behold, when I started the program, these same two guys happened to be not only in my class, but incredibly enough also in my study group. True story that. If you are curious, I ended up attending about 7 different receptions (some of them twice, but in different years).

Perhaps the most important part of the school research is attending the school itself. My experience has been that when you schedule your interview, the school allows you to also attend a class, and probably eat lunch with current students. By attending the school, you get a feel for all the little details like where do you need to park, whats the best way to get to the school etc, and the important ones, like, what is the class schedule, what is the teaching environment like, how do students interact during class, do students look bored, what is the energy/excitement level in the class. One of the things I kept track of was how comfortable I felt in the classroom environment. In one class I attended, the professor happened to be discussing something about my industry and despite my inhibitions, I got myself involved in the discussion. I couldn't help myself, the energy in the classroom was exhilarating and I felt the need to chime in. One other note. If you are married like me and need to get the spousal buy-in to attend the program, the information receptions and classes are the perfect vehicle. Since I was shelling out the tuition from my own pocket and had to explain to my wife and kids why I would not see them every other weekend for the next two years, I took my family to Philadelphia during spring break to visit the school so they could see with their own eyes where I would be attending classes. This went a very long way to easing some of their concerns.

So there you have it. If you are planning to attend for entry next year, now is a good time to start your research and attend some cocktail receptions while you are at it. You may want to start your research with school websites. Wharton has some good websites with some good information on the MBA exec program. Check
them out below.


Wharton MBA exec home

Wharton EMBA blog

Wharton Student 2 student message board(mostly ft applicants, but you will find good nuggets on the WEMBA program if you search right)

2007-2008 admission eventss (receptions)

Howard Kaufold's Wharton presentation
for prospective EMBA applicants ( I highly recommend this one)

Degrees aren't worth anything_

While I'm stuyding for MGEC, I thought I would break away from the regularly scheduled programming (procrastination?) to talk about the general state of education in the world.

Every now and again, I come across something very powerful. Something that moves you. Some people feel this with music, a work of art, a theory. I recently came across this something in the form of a video from a TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference. You may have heard of TED before if you are a Bono (U2's lead singer, duh) fan. Bono won a TED award a few years ago.

Anyhoo, I came across this video by a fellow named Ken Robinson who discusses how the current education system is having a negative impact on children's creativity. I had never heard of Ken Robinson until I saw this video. Apart from the fact that he is very funny and entertaining, he has some very powerful things to say about the education system. I was moved by the arguments he makes because I have similar thoughts about the education system, thoughts I have nurtured ever since my daughter started her own educational journey in pre-school. Looking back at my own education and reflecting on my daughter's, its clear that schools do not necessarily serve the interest of the individual, but instead serve the interest of an industrial society. In school, the student is constantly evaluated and graded -- mistakes are penalized. Doing things by the book is rewarded. By the time we are done with school, this behavior has been internalized, and most of us go on to become worker bees in the labor pool. However, where I think the education system gets the answer wrong (pun clearly intended), is that in the process of stigmatizing mistakes, it teaches students not to make any. To paraphrase Sir Ken Robinson, if we are not prepared to make mistakes, we will never come up with anything original. To me this is a profound conclusion, proven over and over again throughout history. The education system needs to figure this out. The problems we will face in the coming years (overpopulation, extinction, poverty, global warming, war and conflict) will require imagination and creativity more than knowledge. Consider that some of these problems will exceed the scope of our knowledge. Our hope rests on creativity. Yet are we killing that with our education system? The most vivid contemporary example of the lack of creativity in addressing societal issues is the infamous "failure of imagination" conclusion used to describe the intelligence community's failure to prevent the 911 attack. I had previously heard the "failure of imagination" phrase to describe the Apollo 1 fire in the HBO special "From the Earth to the Moon".

So what does this have to do with the Wharton MBA program? Well for one thing, it supports the notion that an MBA degree does not necessarily equal success in business. Perhaps creativity is more important. Gates, Dell, Ellison, Jobs and the likes would probably vouch for that. But the other point I wanted to illustrate is "academic inflation" that Sir Robinson alludes to in his discourse. Eventually, Maybe there will be a time and place where degrees aren't worth anything.

What a paradox when you consider how much this MBA is costing me!

So to part, I will write down these quotes that came to me while I wrote this entry.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”. Albert Einstein

"We don't need no education". Pink Floyd

Imagine all the people... living for today John Lennon

What I'm I watching:Ken Robinson: Do Schools Kill Creativity