“We had all our best business schools in the United States pouring out financial engineers, every smart young mathematician and physicist said ‘I don’t want to be a civil engineer, a mechanical engineer. I’m a smart guy, I want to go to Wall Street.’ And then you know all the risks were going to be sliced and diced and [people thought] the market would be resilient and not face any crises. We took care of all that stuff, and I think that was the general philosophy that markets are efficient and self correcting and we don’t have to worry about them too much.”

I’m still trying to digest some of the efficient market stuff we learned last week but I take it Volcker isn’t a big fan of the efficient market hypothesis. Or maybe he is implying that there needs to be more regulation because the markets didn’t auto correct. At least he spared software engineers in his rant, ha ha. WSJ for more.

Volcker made an appearance at Owen last year to discuss the economic crisis. We found out from Christie that one of our professors is buddy-buddy with Volcker. I guess that’s how we got such a heavy hitter to come to Owen.

In case you’re interested, my two minute research of Kaplan University, which is part of the same group that brings you Kaplan Test Prep, reveals that KU is a higher education institution similar to the University of Phoenix.

MBA Poker – Play hold ‘em and network at the same time. Who was last year’s winner? Some kid from Broad
LXD – Another dance movie, although this one has some promise.
Zappos Retails Its Culture – More than just an online shoe store, Zappos will now teach you how to emulate the Zappos culture.
Ford and Social Media – A chat with Ford’s VP of marketing about how Ford is trying to be hip like Apple and Facebook. iMustang?
Bezo’s on Amazon – Amazon CEO talking about the next thing I’m thinking about emptying my pockets on :/

In Your Face – This article talks about something I’ve been noticing a lot lately which is the inordinate amount of people that I see in SM wearing North Face fleece jackets. Specifically, the article explains how the NF’s logo is so noticeable and recognizable, yet I’ve never seen a NF ad on TV or radio but I know exactly what the NF logo is communicating about NF’s brand.

The article also goes on to talk about how a brand’s image can also easily turn someone off. From my own experience, I will never buy a mattress from Larry from Sit n’Sleep or Niel from Leed’s because I can’t stand their commercials. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, think “You’re killing me Larry!!!!” and “I’m Neil with the deal, I won’t be beat!”.

Back to NF. I don’t own any NF gear and I don’t have anything against NF in general. If I had a nit about NF, it wouldn’t be with NF, it would be with  NF haters who dislike NF because NF is 1) too popular and 2) too “technical” (meaning too many buttons, compartments, and straps). I was in Patagonia the other day and there was this one douche-bag who was loudly bagging on how only douche-bags wear NF and how NF crap has too many useless douchey hoops, loops, and pockets in their jackets. First of all, STFU to the snob. Second, it goes to show how popular NF is. When you have major haters and they’re not hating on the quality of your product, you know you’ve got a popular brand. I mean, when was the last time you heard someone hating on Kia or Champion sports wear?

Surviving the Start of Bschool
Another Wireless Charger – The difference between this charger and the wireless powermat is that this charger harvests energy out of thin air. Pretty cool.

For 2010, it all depends on what happens in the next three months. My admission decisions to Smith, Owen, and Broad will basically determine which fork in the road I take, business school or what-next. I know which path I want to take, but it’s not up to me once my apps are submitted.

The common thread between both path is that they’re both uncertain, even the business school path. Although I know in general what to expect, there’s still a lot of unknowns. What is of greater concern is what happens if I don’t get into bschool this year. I still haven’t figured out a solid plan B yet. I tell myself, “One thing at a time. Get through your essays and interviews first, then wait for your decisions, then figure out what to do next”. Sound self-advice, but I want to be ahead of the game here because I dislike sitting idle when it comes to my career.

All I can say for certain is that the next two to three months will be very antsy times. I’m going to try and take my mind off of what might happen by throwing myself at mt biking, reading, traveling and maybe rock climbing/mountaineering.

So I’ve spent the last week rewriting and rewriting my essays some more. A friend of mine gave me lots of good pointers on how to improve my essays. A lot of my flaws centered around not being succinct and concrete in my words. I attempted to cover way too much ground using vague language which really didn’t say much. For example, I want to take part in a study abroad trip so to express that interest, I threw in a sentence in an essay stating that. The problem is I didn’t tie in that interest into a reason as to why I want to go on a study abroad trip.

Having someone else look over your essays is absolutely critical. I wish I had done it earlier, but I wanted to get my essays right before sending them off. Turns out, if I had someone else look at it sooner, I would have probably spent Thanksgiving enjoying my turkey a little bit more.

Right now I’m sitting in my hotel room in Nashville 10-I-C (har har!). I took the red eye out of ONT Monday night, which proved to be quite a painful experience eye yet again. Maybe my ass is too scrawny or the seats on Continental are cut from grass, but the flight was very uncomfortable. I managed to catch some Z’s, but woke up frequently to adjust my sitting position so my ass didn’t go numb. There were also one too many babies on board. They cry every time we land, probably due to the changing air pressure causing pain in their ears. Solution: benadryl or overhead compartment.

Tomorrow is the campus visit to Owen. I took a brief walk-through campus. It’s very small, probably about the size of USC. It’s a very old campus, although the Owen building looks to be very modern. I walked through the building and found a lot of students standing around, studying, talking, doing group work, and mingling. I probably looked a bit suspicious and out of place in my jeans and beanie, walking around trying to random doors and reading stuff on the wall.

I mentioned before that there’s an interview as part of the visit. To prepare, I’ve looked for stuff online and found a bunch of reviews on www.accepted.com regarding other people’s interview experience with Owen. I’ve also been reading through a lot of the school’s online material and view book. There were a couple of brochures that I found while walking through Owen so I’m going to be looking through that material once I’m done here. On a scale of 1-10 for being prepared, I’d say I’m @ a 4.5. Supposedly the interview is very relaxed and straight forward so I’m not too worried, I just need to be better prepared so I don’t sound a stumbling fool.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I went to a USC MBA.PM session down in OC. The presentation was exactly the same as the one I went to in LA in 07. USC has a very strong network, access to a lot of C-level execs, faculty that brings cutting edge research to the classroom, student body is very tight, GLOBE experience is great, etc. I think the presentation was enough to convince me that I should apply, JIC. I’d rather have more options than be limited.

My recommenders are also (slowly) finishing up their letters. The score right now is 3-8 (complete-incomplete). I’m hoping that they’ll all be done by the end of the Thanksgiving break, as one of my managers indicated that that is what she would be working during the break. Bless them, though I don’t think it will happen, but cross my fingers, hope to die, eat a big turkey drumstick thigh.

I scheduled a school visit for Owen and Marshall. Owen sent me a personalized itinerary which included an “evaluative interview” that caught me off guard. As if this coming weekend won’t be hectic enough with finishing the essays and other parts of the app, and gorging myself with food, I now have to prep for an interview. The visit is slated for next Wednesday and I haven’t booked my travel arrangements yet. The Marshall visit is scheduled for next Monday down at their OC campus. It’s a two hour info sesion that includes a brief on the program and a Q&A session with current students. At least that was the format of the last one I went to about two years ago.

The goal is to be done with everything by Xmas at the latest. I took the last two weeks of the year off and I want to be able to enjoy it. The end of the app process is coming close to an end and I can’t wait. Time to buckle down and power through.

For the rest of the month, I’m going to be out in beautfiul Yuma Arizona where the sun always shines and the desert sand is smoking hot. I’m not sure what I’m doing out here other than if I didn’t come out here, I might not have a job for the rest of the year. That doesn’t sound good but it’s the reality of an economy that has supposedly hit rock bottom. The days are going to be long but at least the work seems easy from what I’ve gathered. Crossing my fingers that things stay this way, especially the weather which has been surprisingly cool.

School

I finished the first and third essays for Smith over the weekend and sent it off to Tiff for review. The first essay is the goals essay and is applicable to all the schools. The third essay is the optional essay and again, it is applicable to all the schools. Thumbs up to me for getting that first draft done. Hopefully Tiff doesn’t rip the essays to shreds. I’m also having my resume reviewed by TL who has already redlined the hell out of it.

Some of the better guides that I have used to help me with my essays include: Montauk’s Big Book, Mba Game Plan, and The Techie’s MBA Guide. If you only want to buy one book, get the big book. It is the encyclopedia britanica of the mba guides.  MBA Gameplan is good too. It’s got a really good guide for the Top 30 schools that’s worth a look if you need todo a prelim run down on schools. The techie’s guide for mba is written by the people from www.accepted.com. It’s OK. It walks through a fictional engagement between an Indian technologist who is working with an accepted.com admission consutant. I found most of the material applicable to my case, but since I can’t relate to the fictional character, some of the value is not lost.

On the GMAT side of things, I spent an hour with a MGmat tutor on Saturday going over strategies, assessing my practice test results, and doing some problems to illustrate some review concepts. One thing that I thought was interesting was what the tutor said after he asked me why I was taking the test again. I gave him my reasons and he said “fair enough, but realize that the GMAT is just one data point. if you can, focus on essays because those are just as important if not more so”. he talked to me about his experience and how even though he got a 770, he got rejected by the schools that he applied to last year. Food for thought. I’m certainly regurgitating and chewing it again.

On a work related note… minus McCombs, I got all my recommendation provider forms sent out. I’ll be putting together a briefing that I’ve put off for a while for my recommenders to help them out with the forms. My manager also told us that he highly recommends taking vacation before the year ends because of the reason I sort of alluded to above, but also because we’re supposed to be crazy busy starting next year. I’m going to take his recommendation and plan some school visits as well as taking the last couple of weeks of the year off. Owen and Broad have “preview weekends” in November that I’m planning on going to. Similarly, Smith has a couple of class visits/info sessions that I’m thinking about as well, though they’re in the middle of the week so TBD. I looked over the itinerary for the preview weekends @ Owen and Broad and it looks packed, especially Owen’s plan. For Owen, we can also schedule an evaluative interview, though I’m not sure I’m ready for one yet. It seems like there’s a lot of value that can be extracted from these school visits and @ the very least, I’ll be able to notch East Lansing, Nashville, and College Park/DC on my travel belt.

OK time for bed. Even though it’s PST here, we’re working EST hours so i’m way past my bedtime. Booo. At least we get two free beers from the hotel everyday to comfort us after a long day in the sandbox.

Without further ado, drumroll please…. the list (in no particular order): Vanderbilt (Owen), Michigan State (Broad), Maryland (Smith), USC (Marshall), Texas (McCombs). Ta Dah!!!

I talked about “fit” in the last blog and I feel like these five schools are the best fit me. What fit meant for me came down to a several things that all five schools possess: small classes, collegial/collaborative environment, general management program, flexibility in course selection, companies that I would work for that hire there, location (most), international/study abroad programs, alumni network, brand, and lastly and possibly the most important, a football team . Some schools are better regarded in certain areas than others, and each school has unique aspects that add to their appeal. Below is brief bio of each school.

Owen

Vanderbilt is located in Nashville Tennessee. If you’re from LA, I’m sure you’re thinking, “Tennessee?!?!”. I don’t blame you because I did that myself. But after looking into the mecca of country music, Nashville would be a great place to go to school because it is not LA. I’ll get into what that means in another post. Owen has a well defined plan for people that are looking to go down the brand/product management career path. The Nashville area is also an “incubator” for entrepreneurs, especially those looking to get into the healthcare industry, something I’d be interested in doing. Overall, the Owen program seems pretty strong in all departments. There are a lot of choices for extra-curricular activities in terms of academic, non-academic, and career-oriented clubs. Plus, it’s a “Southern Ivy”, which just means it’s a good school.

Broad

I chose Broad because I like the color green (school color), its Magic’s alma mater, and the movie 300 is about a bunch of Spartans (school mascot is the Spartan). <roll eyes> For a smaller school, Broad does a really good job of placing their students in jobs after graduation. They’re not as well known in entrepreneurship or technology, though they do have specialized classes in those areas. They are however highly rated for their supply chain management specialization. One thing that I learned at the MBA fair was a learning opportunity called “BrandNew” that teams MBA students with engineering students to research, develop, and market a new product. Sold! I’ve talked to a couple of MSU alums and they have nothing but good things to say about the business school. A friend who went there told me rent is around $300 if you share a room. Thumbs up to East Lansing.

Smith

Smith has a penchant for the use of acronyms in its marketnig material. Coming from the defense industry, I can appreciate that. One of Smith’s acronyms is GET, or “Globalization, Entreprenuership, and Technology”. GET is what Smith believes are the three drivers for transforming business. Coincidentally, those are the three business areas that I want to study. Smith is also home to the Dingman Center which by all accounts, has a really good reputation within the region of being a entrepreneurial incubator. They also have a this place called the Netcentricity Laboratory where students get to do simulations and modeling of things ranging from the stock market to supply chain management. It looks to be awfully similar to some of the demo labs we have at work.

Marshall

After going back and forth this decision for several months, I finally realized that it would be foolish of me not to apply to the part time program at USC. Marshall’s dedication to entrepreneurship, the Trojan network, and the ability to work and go to school at the same time are the main reasons I’m applying to Marshall. Going to Marshall would obviously mean I’d be staying in LA, which also means I can finally start laying some more permanent roots down.

McCombs

I listed the above schools arbitrarily, but I intentionally saved McCombs for last. After the QS MBA Tour, I came home with a tough decision to make. McCombs was one of the first schools I looked into when I first started considering going to bschool. It fell off the radar sometime during the summer when I started looking into Foster. After talking to the admissions folks from both schools at the fair, I realized that I was a long shot at both schools, especially with how my GMAT turned out. I talked to Tiff about what I should do, and she more or less said, “Man up, take it again and try!”  She made a good point and talked to me about her experience of applying to grad school. I realized that I would regret not taking a shot at applying to a reach school so it came down to choosing between Foster and McCombs. I weighed the pros and cons of each school. It was a very tough and even fight, but in the end McCombs came out ahead in terms of brand; I felt like McCombs has a better national brand than Foster. McCombs has everything all the schools above have but stronger (Moot Corp [Entrepreneurial challenge], great city [Austin literally rocks], Colt McCoy[future Heisman]) . As it is with the other schools, getting in will be tough, but @ McCombs, it’s going to be an uphill battle with trolls at the top of the hill tossing rocks down.

I’m glad I finally have this list put together. Now I can really focus on putting together a package for my recommenders and start cranking on those essays. This week is going to be fun!

There were about 60 schools in attendance, split up into two ballrooms. Fortunately for me, all the schools that are/were on my hit list were there, minus Kelley. I don’t recall seeing any of the top 7 schools (HBS, Stanford, MIT, Chicago, Penn, Kellogg, Columbia), not that I wanted to talk to them (ha). Anderson and Marshall had the biggest group of adcom and alumni present to handle the massive throngs of people who wanted to talk to them. NYU had a pretty solid number of candidates turnout as well. I was a little surprised that Haas didn’t receive the same type of attention that Anderson or Marshall received though.

The only negative aspect of the event was how short it was; it started @ 1pm and ended at 5pm. The first hour of the event was a panel discussion with representatives from the admissions office of USC, UCI, Baruch, and ESADE (me thinks). There was a lot of good information presented, some that I already knew, some that I didn’t. Some of the notes I scribbled down include:

• Figure out if the school you’re applying to “fits” you and vice versa. Fit is a bit esoteric in meaning, but it boils down to things like how a school’s brand, ranking, location, teaching style, specialty, student body, class size, ROI, etc reflects what you want out of a business school education. It’s one of the most important things the adcoms want to see in your essays and interview.
• Know the school you will be interviewing with. Speak with specificity.
• Every MBA related interaction you have pre, during, and post-MBA will be an interview; you never know who is around to judge you. The USC admission’s officer told us a story of how an interviewee brought his gf to an open house event and made out with her during a break. That’s a no no
• Engage with the schools that you are interested through MBA fairs, school visitations, email, etc because it will go to show that you are genuinely interested in going to that school.
• Provide evidence of how you came about your career goals and how the school’s program will help you achieve them.

In hour two of the event, the fair really began when the doors to where the adcoms were stationed were opened. I ended up attending the “Do’s and Don’ts of B-School Admissions” hosted by Ben Baron, former Assistant Dean of Admissions @ Harrrrrrrvard. I’m not sure I got a whole lot out of his presentation as much of what he said is in the MBA books that I have. What his talk did do I guess is pound home the points of developing a personal brand and making sure it comes out in our essays, and managing our recommenders, making sure that we guide them in what to write.

After the talk, I took a minute to gather my notes on questions I wanted to ask the programs I was interested in. My basic questions were 1) Tell me about your product management @ your school, more specifically, technology product management. 2) Entreprenuership @ your school? 3) R1 VS R2 VS R3? 4) How to handle weak undergrad GPA, strong postgrad GPA, average GMAT

I talked to McCombs, Foster, Owen, Smith, and Broad and my three biggest takeaways include:

• There isn’t a whole lot of difference between R1 and R2, even R3 , when it comes down to being admitted. Only Foster said that because of the increased number of applicants in R3, if you’re not as competitive, you probably won’t get an invitation to interview, implying that you won’t be admitted. The only difference between the rounds, and this applied to all four schools that I talked to, was that there would be less money, if not no money, for scholarships after R2.
• At Foster and McCombs, they want to be reassured that you can handle the rigors of the quant coursework. You can reassure them through your GMAT, undergrad quant work, or quant work in your current job.
• Present your “best-self” in your apps, so if you have to wait a round to boost a GMAT score or have a friend polish an essay, then wait a round.

At the end of the day, I left feeling pretty good and confident in the choices that I’m making. I also ran into Guzzles at the event and we talked about school and the GMAT. I’m 80% sure now that the GMAT and I will be squaring off one more time. I swear, the GMAT is going to be a recurring theme for the rest of my life >:X

The rest of today will be spent gathering the rest of my thought on the schools that I will be applying to. I’m quite certain about three of my choices, but I need to do some more thinking about my last two choices. Hopefully by the end of the day, I’ll have it all figured out.

Appendage: Who is the handsome man in the cornflower blue dress shirt seen here: Smith Admissions Blog?

I arrived at Pearsons around 2:45 and went over some quant stuff in the parking lot. Strike two. Going over the review somehow made me even more uneasy. Instead of stopping, I continued through to the end, closed the book, and called TL to take my mind off of the test. We ended up talking about mochi and her behavior problems and how we need to hire Cesar Milan to heal us. Strike three. I’m not as caught up over mochi’s problem as TL is, but as Cesar would say, there’s a lot of negative energy in the situation and it’s very distracting.

I went up to the test center @ 3:30 to get processed. After taking care of the administrative stuff, I took a quick pit stop, ate a nutri grain bar, and headed into the testing area. Since I’m out of strikes, I’ll just list out the highlights of the actual test.

• Perhaps this was a sign of things to come, but I ran out of time while selecting which schools to send my test score to. I somehow lost track of time and didn’t even notice! At least I got the five schools in (Foster, McCombs, Kelley, Merage, Marshall) before time ran out.
• I did much better on the essays this time. The extra practice  that I put in paid off, although I did run short on time. For both essays, I spent the last two minutes shoring up some of my weaker paragraphs and arguments so I didn’t get time to fully proof read the essays in their entirety.
• Quant. Talk about laying an egg. It felt like someone took an ice cream scoop and scooped out my frontal lobe. I drew a blank on the very first question and that pretty much put me into a talespin till the very end. I must have guessed on at least ten problems, mostly because I was running out of time. With about ten minutes to go, I still had ten problems left. Right there, I knew that it was over. Hell, I should have known that it was over when I forgot what an isosceles triangle is.

  Much like the first test, there were a lot of problems dealing with number properties, percentages and averages. There was one section of the test where I got what felt like 5-6 DS problems in a row. One of the DS problems was so horribly worded that I couldn’t believe that it was even a test question!

• After the disaster that was quant, I felt like I could redeem myself in verbal. The only problem was that the thoughts of quant kept popping back into my mind every couple of problems and I didn’t get into a groove until halfway through the verbal section. In the end, I didn’t think verbal was that bad. I finished with more than two minutes remaining on the clock.

I was expecting something in the low 600′s. Boy was I suprised. Shock and awe. Anger and confusion. Deflation and defeat.

So what went wrong?  I can’t point to a lack of effort being the cause because I felt like I was putting in a lot of work already. Perhaps it was the quality of the studying, and not the quantity of the studying that got me into trouble. I could have focused more energy on the weaknesses in my quant, or I could have done more timed drills. But the most probable cause of my pwnage was probably my negative state of mind. I hate to use that as an excuse, but at the very least it was a contributor to this fail. The more I think about it, the more coulda-woulda-shouldas keep popping into my head, none of which helps me in moving forward right now.

So what now? Sigh. Well, first I need to figure out what this bomb means. Will this raise a red flag? My first test score is technically within the range of my target schools but its not on the right side of the average. I’ll probably call up the admissions office and see what they say. I hate to have to retake this damn test again, but if I have to I will. I’m almost tempted to retake it just to prove to myself that Tuesday was just one of those days…. Most importantly, I need to refocus. Depending on what happens with this first step, I might have to reevaluate my application strategy. More on this later.

It’s been a long day and I need to get some sleep but before I sign off, thanks to those that gave me words of encouragement before the test and those that asked me how it went afterwards.