Back from the tour

The groupies and roadies are gone, the tour bus is parked, and I’m back at home. As anticipated, my time in Boston was very busy and gave me much food for thought. I looked at some schools that I had not considered before, and gained additional information on the ones that I already knew about. I also talked to a large number of people, ranging from other candidates to admissions officers, almuni, GMAT prep and even someone from an MBA podcast site. Each had their own perspective and many provided valuable input.

Of course, the flip side is that this massive influx of new information had to be synthesized into my MBA application strategy. In particular this had the (mostly intended) impact on school selection where for a period of time I seemed to be coming up with a completely new list every day. The update on where I am applying is this…

• I am only applying to 4-5 schools now, so as not to burn out my recommenders
• I have removed some criteria such as located in a big city on the east coast because it was eliminating schools that I felt should be in the running
• I have kept my focus on top 10 schools, but I am deliberately omitting the “Big 3″ to keep my chances for scholarship money open
• A good non-profit program has become a required criteria (for a few days I was including schools based on overall strength)
• I will include one school that is ranked lower (approximately 15-30 range) to ensure that I get in somewhere and keep my financial options open

Given this list, I am now planning to apply to three schools in the first round:

1. Columbia (rolling, pre-Jan 9)
2. Michigan/Ross (Nov 1)
3. Berkeley/Haas (Nov 5)

These are the places where I actually want to end up and I would be happy to attend. Their deadlines for Round One are also a little later (I’m not doing Columbia ED) and I think this should be a manageable goal. Basically, I want to get them all in by Oct 31 and go away on vacation.

I promised myself that by the time I came back from Boston I would stop changing my mind about schools. So I am committing to this list for round one. I still need to decide for the one or two schools in round two. Some options are:

• Boston University
• Georgetown
• Maryland/Smith
• somewhere in Canada (Rotman/Schulich/McGill)

Now that I have committed to my round one list it is time to do some serious essay writing. I started looking at the Ross essays today, but I didn’t get as far as I would have liked because I’m sick and functioning very slowly (with lots of naps in between). I will be planning out my essay schedule over the next couple days and I anticipate that I will be pushing to have all the first drafts done in about 2 weeks.

 

Growing and Shrinking

Today was a much better day than yesterday.

My interview with Georgetown was this afternoon and it went very smoothly. There were no tricky questions, I was well-prepared, and she seemed to really like me. In fact, I was doing some research on the net before leaving this morning and I found a mock interview on the business week site that had the exact same interviewer and questions, so I felt very comfortable with the entire interview. I even had some relevant questions ready for her.

In the evening I went to the Forte Foundation event. It was way better than the one on Sunday. There were better schools, a better panel and little extras that made it feel like they wanted us there such as a gift from Fidelity (the hosting location was their offices) and really good food (that I didn’t really touch except for a cookie that I should have left alone since I was already full). There was no food at the event yesterday, and it was a full day event. Not even something cheap like donuts!

I got there quite early since I was on foot and public transit, so I got to start talking to the schools a few minutes early… before the din became unbearable and the aisles too crowded to move. If I had one complaint it would be that the room was too small for the number of schools and people. At the beginning it looked great, but once the people arrived it was crowded and hot!

I had a number of good conversations with admissions officers and students at a few schools that I am interested in. Sadly, they all really want to encourage applications so none of them are willing to come out and suggest that their school may not be a good fit. Of course, they are not willing to indicate any concrete interest in my application either, so I get lots of general encouragement but little specific encouragement. It’s very frustrating.

One surprise this evening was the emergence (briefly) of MIT Sloan as a potential contender. I stopped at a couple of GMAT/Admissions consulting tables and had Sloan suggested both times so I stopped by the table and talked to an admissions officer. She sounded enthusiastic that they could support my non-profit aspirations, but when I examined the website after getting home this evening there is really no evidence of related courses or philosophy. I was planning to stop by the school tomorrow, but now I’m thinking that I won’t bother. My list keeps growing, I need to work on shrinking it, and I think that Sloan isn’t a good enough fit when there are schools out there that do non-profit so much more enthusiastically.

Tomorrow I have Columbia in the evening and then Wednesday I am visiting Yale. Since I’m skipping MIT, I will have a free day and perhaps even pop into the Museum of Fine Art for some touristing!

 

Musings on Merit Money

I’ve been giving it a great deal of thought this weekend, and I’m starting to lean toward skipping the schools that don’t give out merit based financial aid. In other words, Harvard and Stanford. My reasoning goes as follows:

• If I am qualified for Harvard and Stanford, I should also be qualified for Kellogg, Yale and Columbia, which are all good names and I would never have to apologize or explain the decision to go to any of them.
• I want to work in the non-profit sector after graduation, so I will not see the large salaries that my peers will.
• This is a $150,000 venture. If I qualify for a scholarship or fellowship and can graduate with less debt then I seriously need to consider it.

I have been starting to have doubts about whether I actually want to go to H & S (for various reasons) and I’m aware that I need to keep my applications targeted and keep the number down to a reasonable minimum so that this process does not burn out me or my recommenders, and really so that none of us are wasting our time. So this may not be final, but for now my revised list of target schools is:

• Columbia
• Yale SOM
• Kellogg
• Georgetown
• Haas

This is in order of preference, although I don’t want to apply for Columbia’s early decision because of the crazy “I’m not interested in any school but you” oath that you have to take – and financial aid offerings could have an impact on my order of preference.

Sigh… Sometimes this seems far too complicated. I’m hoping that my trip to Boston brings some answers. Just three more days till I leave!

 

March of the Recruiters

Up until now, things were quiet on the recruiting front. Based on my attendance at the Boston events, I was contacted by exactly three schools up until yesterday. But today, that changed dramatically. I had emails inviting me to interview or check them out at the MBA fairs from SEVEN schools today! Their email programs must have hit some key date or something. Sadly, I am not getting agressively recruited by any of the schools that I plan to apply to, so I can’t get too excited about this, but it’s still kind of neat to see that this sort of activity really does occur.

I’m leaving for Boston in exactly one week, so suddenly the time is starting to feel really short. After my great weekend, I have had a run of family emergencies that have swallowed this week up completely and I no longer feel ahead of the game. I’m even considering putting all my applications off until Round 2, just to be sure that I get good applications in. In other words, I’m definitely feeling the pressure.

But hopefully things are going to ease off for the next week so that I can do some good preparation. I want to build my case so that I’m ready to present it at the fairs with conviction. I think that I need to rehearse an “elevator speech” since there are bound to be dozens of other hopefuls in attendance. Come to think of it, can anyone tell me how large these events typically are??

 

Right up my alley…

This post on Clear Admit’s blog this morning highlights Yale SOM’s non-profit focus. As I mentioned before, this is the area that I want to focus on so I read this article with great interest. Yale SOM is one of my first round applications and it looks like a school that would be a great fit!

I was hoping to visit New Haven while I’m in Boston, but now I’m not sure that I will have time. Class visits start Sept 17, but I am going to interview with Georgetown that day so my only choices are the 18th, 19th or 20th since I fly out on the 21st. According to the website, the visit would take from 9:30 am to approximately 4pm. I could take a train there and back but it will be very rushed since I have evening events on every night. So far I have not booked myself an appointment.

In the meantime, no progress to report today. I was busy with work and family and just too tired to write this evening. Perhaps tomorrow I will return to this task…

 *yawn*

Good night all

 

What’s in a Name?

As I mentioned before, I am planning to go to Boston in September for a week to attend The MBA Tour on Sept 16th and the World MBA Tour on Sept 20th. I have also signed up for the Forte Foundation event on Sept 17th and I have discovered that there are single school recruiting events on the 18th and 19th if I choose as well.

Since putting my details in for the fairs, I have started to receive a few emails from schools. I have now received three emails – from Georgetown, Clarkson and Maryland. I have found that I am at a significant disadvantage coming from Canada in that I’ve never really heard of any of these except Georgetown, and that one only from college sports. So today I went online to visit the rankings and see how these schools measure up.

Georgetown and Maryland seem to come close to each other on the ranking lists that I found. They are typically around 25-30th on a US list, and of course lower on an international/complete list.

Which brings me to another criteria for choosing a school: Is it a good “name”?

I know that the rankings vary considerably, and that they don’t tell the whole story, but I kind of have my heart set on a top 25 school. Or better yet, a top 10 school. In fact, my biggest fear is that in a few months I am choosing between a free ride at a decent school that won’t make anyone say “wow!” or full price at Harvard. What kind of decision is that to put upon someone? I would dearly love to attend a prestige school, but I’m about to get an MBA so I can do the math on the difference between school costs. It could end up being a $100,000 decision – literally!

Anyway, Georgetown has invited me for an interview that will take place prior to filling out a full application so I think I will take them up on it. Certainly the experience will be valuable, but I am also open to hearing what they have to offer. Washington could be a great place to go to school! But the first thing I need to be convinced of is that when I go out into the world after my degree, others will have heard of them and care that I went there for my MBA.

To help avoid too many painful decisions, I purposely grouped my application schedule so that similar institutions should deliver their decisions at the same time. And one of my goals in attending these fairs is to get the real scoop on financial aid. Hopefully I can get a good name without having to pay sticker price!

 

Location, location, location

It’s everything in real estate and it’s highly important to me when thinking about selecting an MBA school…. Yes, today I’m talking about location.

I’m currently living in Calgary, Canada, and while I like it here I am also aware that I have not lived anywhere else as an adult. So when I do my MBA, I am looking forward to moving somewhere different and experiencing what another city has to offer. There are a few things that would make a school location appealing to me:

• good public transportation so that I can get around without a car
• nice walking neighbourhoods with shops and services located close together
• arts and cultural venues and activities
• clean and safe
• proximity to other interesting places

My first preference is to live in a large urban center. San Francisco, Boston, New York, Chicago, Toronto, Philadelphia or somewhere in that league. Second preference would be a really great university town that is near a major city. For example, I haven’t visited New Haven, but that is what I am imagining I would find.

If I stay in Canada, I would only be considering Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. When I first started planning to go for an MBA, I was all set on Toronto, and I still like that idea quite a lot.

Then there is the issue of where the school is located within the city. Using Toronto as an example (because I know it better than most American cities), York is located way up north, while U of T is right downtown. It would be great to live near U of T but purgatory to live near York, even though they are in the same city. Unfortunately, you kind of need to know the city to evaluate this, because downtown isn’t necessarily better in all cases.

So far, I have one trip planned that may help. I will be going to Boston for a week in September to attend some fairs and recruitment events. I plan to look around HBS and MIT while I’m there, and perhaps even do a day trip to Yale SOM if I can fit it in. But this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The challenge with evaluating school locations is that it is very expensive and time consuming to travel from Calgary to visit all of the places that I might consider, and time is short. I have been to a few of them but there are many more locations that I have not ever seen. So I may end up evaluating this criteria after the fact in some cases, by putting in the application and then visiting if I am considering an offer from the school.

 

Finding a Non-Profit Management Program

Choosing which schools to apply to is hard. But MBA applications are a lot of work, so the list has to be narrowed down. In the end, I don’t want to be doing more than 5-7 applications, and even that is going to keep me very busy for the next few months! So I am building a list of criteria that I am looking for in a school.

The first criteria that I am applying to choosing a school is that it must allow me to develop knowledge and skills in non-profit management. My eventual career goal is to provide senior level non-profit management consulting, with an intended focus area in strategic planning and governance.

Today I have been going through a site that was referred to me by Dr. Brenda Gainer of York University, that of the Nonprofit Academic Centres Council (NACC). There are over 40 member institutions according to the site, and based on the list there are a few that I may be interested in attending (not in any particular order):

• Harvard
• Berkeley - Haas
• York
• Duke
• Georgetown
• George Mason
• Northwestern – Kellogg
• Arizona State University
• Indiana University

Not all of the centres that are listed on this site are business schools. Some are Public Policy or other programs, or even non-degree granting centres within a university. So Haas, Kellogg and York get an extra “point” for the non-profit program being part of the MBA. If I went to one of the schools where the program was better in Public Policy, I would probably do a joint degree because I still want to have an MBA. But then it would be 3 years instead of 2, and therefore I would have to consider greater costs and lost time from working.