Sparta!

This weekend I flew to MI to attend the MBA Exploration weekend at Broad Graduate School of Management. I again took a red eye, landing in Detroit at 4:30am and then drove out to East Lansing. The sun had barely crept over the horizon when I got to the MSU campus so I drove around aimlessly for a while before parking next to a SBUX and knocked out for about an hour. The MSU campus is huge. The buildings are all built out of bricks, something that I’ve come to notice about buildings built in places that freeze up in the winter, and are spread far apart from each other by big lawns. The Eppley Center, the main building for the business school, is very old looking and has an aging interior to match. Being that it was 6:30 in the morning when I got to school, there wasn’t much life on campus.

The Exploration program startred at 9:30 and went till 2:00. Like my post about Smith, I’ll enumerate my thoughts on the event:

• The first thing I noticed was the age of the people at the event. The people I met were fairly young compared to myself. I didn’t ask them how old they were, but their range of work experience was 0-3 years. Even the MBA students that I met had fewer years than the average years of experience that Broad publishes. The point is, I’ve recently realized that I’m going to be on the older side of the student population if/when I back to school. I’ll save this topic for a later post.
• As I mentioned earlier, the facilities at Broad are aging. Compared the Van Munching Hall @ Smith, Eppley is a lot smaller and older. It just isn’t as sexy.
• Broad students are proud to be Broad students. I think this stems from the overall school pride that is inherent to MSU. This pride, according to the current students, is the reason why the Broad network (and brand) is strong. Spartans are fanatical about being Spartans. Although there are only ~200 MBA students, there are over 50k Broad alums (undergrad + grad) worldwide that can be tapped into. Even if the number of alums was a fraction of the actual amount, it is still a great plus, especially given the current economy where who you know will play a big part in finding your next meal ticket. This theme of networking and the accessibility of the Broad network was brought up several times and supported with concrete examples by the students.
• The services offered by the Career Services Center sounded awfully familiar to the OCS @ Smith. From what I’ve read, and from what the staff members have confirmed, is that Broad set the standard for what a successful career services center should do and other schools, such as Smith, have followed. Current students say that the center goes above and beyond to help students find internships and jobs. Students are quick to add though, that the onus for actually landing a job is on us. What did Morpheus say? “I can show you the door, but you must walk through it.” The career center apparently helps in opening several doors.
• Broad’s greatest strength are in Supply Chain Management (ranked #2 by BW) and Human Resources. I have interest in both, but at this point I don’t think I would pursue a concentration in those two areas. According to the current students, Broad’s marketing program, the concentration I would be pursuing, is very good and is sort of overlooked because of how strong the SCM is. I tend to believe what the students said. We got to sit through a mock classroom taught by one of the “rockstar” marketing professors at Broad, Dr. Clay Vanderhoos. If the quality of faculty members is anything close to Dr. Vanderhoos, then I think I’ll be in good hands.
• There wasn’t as much talk about studying abroad. The Assistant Director only mentioned that MSU has the largest number of students that study abroad, but none of the MBA students on the discussion panel had anything to say regarding the topic. I guess I’ll have to dig deeper into this aspect of the program.
• Admission tips: 1) Be honest 2) Use spell check 3) Keep your resume to 1 page and….
• Employability. This deserves its own bullet. The admissions director, Paul North, said that employability is one of the most important aspect of our application that needs to be communicated clearly. Employability means that what we put down as our short/long term goal better be feasible. If you’re a basket weaver and have zero experience in finance and your dream job after you graduate is iBanking, good luck. However, if you’re currently a financial analyst and you want to broaden your marketig skill because you want to get into strategy, then you’ve got a realistic and achievable goal. Bschool is a two way street. You want the prestige of the degree and the brand name of the institution you got it from. The school wants the rockstars that will help promote the school’s brand and elevate the school’s rankings. Mr. North’s ultimate point was that he wanted us to think critically about our goals and make sure that they align with Broad’s strengths and culture. More info about employability can be found here on BW.

All in all, the trip was OK. The event wasn’t as immersive as the Smith event but it’s unfair to judge it by last weekends standards since the two events were different. Coincidentally, Broad was running a Diversity event similar to Smith’s @ the same time as the Exploration event that seemed to be much more in depth. On its own though, I think I learned enough about the Broad culture through the Exploration event that the trip was worth my time.

Here’s some non-school related stuff I noted about my trip:

• No more red eyes. I save some money, but these red eye trips are wreaking havoc on my sleep schedule.
• It was a balmy 56F during the day. This was  considered freakish by the natives, who were out in force in tshirts and shorts, for the month of November.
• I thought people in LA were vain, but the students in East Lansing are just as much so. I say this because every corner of Michigan Ave had at least one tanning salon.
• The geography of MI is something I’ve never really seen before. Most of the land that I saw was flat, woodsy, and pretty desolate. I could imagine that wildlife is quite abundant in that kind of environment, especially given the amount of roadkill that I saw.
• Given the above, it was no surprise to learn that hunting contributes billions of dollars to the state’s economy. When I got off the plane, I passed by a group of hunters loading up their trucks, presumably off to go bag a white tail deer. I should have packed my cross bow and camo suit.
• MI squirrels look like mini wolves.
• I saw only one Japanese car (Honda Accord) and one German car (BMW 3 series) the entire time I was there. How surprising.