Inside the London MBA

I've said my goodbyes..

It felt strange yesterday to empty out my locker and return the keys to the office. Clearly quite contrary to the day I arrived to pick up my locker number and keys. Simple task which mark the beginning and end of our time at school. I also recycled my binders yesterday (yes we love doing that here), and while I cleared out my bookcase I was reminded of how much we have learnt in the last 2 years.

Some of my colleagues have started working already. From the looks of it, the transition back into work life is not an easy one, especially if you have had such a good time for 2 years. I am fortunate to have a few more weeks off for traveling before I set off into the career I have chosen. Thankfully too, I am going to be based in London so I don't feel like I am being separated from this lovely school environment. It will be close at hand if I have the longing to go back and sit in class or hang around the quad. It won't be the same though. We were the fabric of this place for the last 2 years and now we go join the fabric of a community of 28000 alumni.

As a freshly minted MBA, I can only say one thing to readers who are wondering whether or not the 2 year MBA is worth it. I echo the sentiments of all my peers when I say that it as been the best and biggest life altering experience of my life. It takes sacrifices and hardships but it is a supremely NPV positive project.

Capstone begins today

Capstone 1: a Final touch; a crowning achievement;a culmination 2:a stone that forms the top of a wall or building

The capstone class marks the beginning of the end of the MBA at London Business School. It is a 3 day class where you get back with your original stream and "wrap" up your learnings from the MBA. Essentially it is UGM (our very first course of the MBA) revisited after we have gone out and studied everything we wanted to during the two years at school. For me the excitement is about reliving the first few months of the MBA - for me those were extremely formative in terms of friendships and my own development. It will be interesting to see how we have all changed (for the better, I hope) over the 2 years vis-a-vis the personalities we all brought into the classroom when we started.

Victorious again: UCLA case competiton

The case teams from London Business School are on fire this year. Our team had another massive victory at UCLA, Anderson winning top honours over 15 other schools including Chicago GSB, Oxford Said, USC Marshall, NUS, HEC , IESE and many others.

The team (all MBA2009s):

Rodrigo Ormaechea
Abhishek Kapur
Ilias Anagnostopoulos
Arturo Silva-Santiesteban

http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/x19893.xml

This is particularly good news for the consulting club which worked hard to get teams together and increased participation at such competitions as compared to previous years.

BU Tech Strategy Case Competition

I'm proud to announce that the London Business School team (Rene Plug, Sasa Brcerevic, Tobias Schweiger and me) have finished in the 3rd place (out of 16 teams) at the BU Tech Strategy Case competition. We are still in Boston recovering from the celebration last night.

http://www.casecomp.blogspot.com/

The last laps of the MBA

Everytime someone has asked me "how is it going?" in recent weeks, I have had pretty much the same thought. This is a great time in the MBA for most second year students. Things seem a lot more relaxed now and most of us are beggining to plan our breaks and our future months in London or wherever we are going to be working post MBA. The typical subjects are:

-start dates i.e. when we all go back to corporate life

-future housing - for those staying in London this is probably a big one because staying around school, although very attractive has the huge downside of being expensive

-the big break

I have been planning my holiday for the last few weeks and we have shortlisted a few candidates. Luckily staying in London gets you close to so many great destinations that we are spoilt with choice. We pondered over Costa Rica for weeks but then had to drop it for multiple reasons. We have now set sights on Africa.

A few of us decided to scout around some burbs for future accomodation. We ended up picking Hampstead for our first outing. Of course we ended up not seeing any flats because the ladies decided to go shopping on the high street. We were also blessed with the opportnuity to eat the best Crepes ever, See attached pic for proof. This place has been serving crepes in Hampstead for 40 years and the awards they have received are well justified.

One other thing many of us are looking forward to is the upcoming Portugal trip. We will be going there with the Portuguese club in March. It's a shame that I missed most of the cool trips that happened in the first year. But I was determined to go for at least one such trip before graduating.

Anyways, It has already become very evident that this time is going to be severely missed and I want to make the most of it while I can.

The transition is complete: from hi-tech. to consulting

I came to B-school to shed my baggage. My baggage comprised of 2 technology degrees and ~5 years of work in the high tech sector. It was good work and good money but I give you my official story line - "I was rapidly narrowing into a niche which I was not comfortable with" (rights not reserved).

The journey through B-school was meant to be my 'wash and iron' which would allow me to develop and market my skills as a non technology business person. And it has turned out to be a premier cleaning service :-). 

Mind you it is a difficult and often depressing process. No matter how convinced you are, companies will always start by looking at your background (education and work experience) and the moment they see 2 high tech companies on your CV, it is thrown into a pile with other geek CVs. It's a fact and I reconciled with this very soon in the recruitment process.

For those of you who find yourselves in a similar situation, here are the things that I think have helped me cross the line:

1) A solid CV with almost no technical buzz words (I would say any thing more technical than hardware, software, database would be red flagged). Your future employers do not care that you used multithreading and ajax for developing something cool. They want to know how much money your company saved/made from your work. They want to know  the business impact, not the technical impact. Secondly you will see all your peers have achievements in each bullet while you as a technologist do certain things everyday because that's what you do at your job. I had this problem but you need to make every bullet in your CV speak of an achievement.

2) A solid internship in your area of interest: This is the bigest hurdle but one you mustn't compromise on. If you do an internship in your area of interest, you can build a convincing story about your aspirations.

3) Serious Involvement in clubs: To show your commitment to the area you are gunning for.

4) Something extra: Language skills, passion for things outside school etc. When 300 of your peers are all overachievers, often recruitment decisions boil down to marginal things and this is where your "other" skills come very handy.

This would not have been possible without the catalyst that  B-school has provided to my case. I at the other end of the transformation process and like many of you reading this, was in quite a dilemma about my life as a technologist when i'm 40. It was scary. Now i moving onto a more universal area of business which will bring its own challenges and keep my occupied for the next several years to come.

This time around..The Milk round saga continues

It has been a while since I posted anything and that has partly to do with the manic summer job that I wrote about a few posts ago.

With October has come back the recruitment season. I was somehow concerned about how quickly this time was going to come ever since the day I got my summer job (about 6 months ago) and here it is to haunt me again. However it feels a lot different this time.

Firstly, working over the summer has given all of us an inside view of the industries and jobs we put on the pedestal 6 months ago. Many of my peers came back with rave reviews. Many others did not find their bliss. Many came back with offers. Many are still looking for jobs. Invariably everyone is a lot more focused this time. What then has summer done to all of us over enthusiastic MBAs? I think it has given us a sneek peak into the real world.

Things seem clearer to me now. I know specifically which jobs i want and am focusing on them only. I went to a couple of banking presentation in January only to realise that those jobs are not for me. I know exactly what to do at milk round receptions this year. I go with specific questions, the answers to which will help me put in a better application.

To a lot of first year students "networking" seems  intimidating. It could be if you make it that way. I found it tedious in the first round but now i see the value in it and make it a point to go speak to people when i get a chance.

In the end, the tension of looking for a job remains. That will not change whether it you are looking for an internship or a permanent job. I just hope to get what im looking for. 

Welcome 09s

It's quite interesting to see the fresh faces around campus. The MBA2009s start their journey today and I heartily welcome them to campus. It is quote unbelievable that I am no longer a first year MBA student.

They will start their orientation tomorrow at Lords. My own orientation seems so far back in the past. Today is when the 09s get allocated their streams and their *ahem* study groups. I remember getting together with my study group for the first time and chatting for a couple of hours with everyone trying to figure out where we were  coming from and where we were headed. After spending so much time with my study group over the last 12 months, that discussion feels alien.

Anyways, I gave this piece of advice to some 09s I met a few days ago and it is the one thing I wish I could change about my first few weeks on campus. Make the most of your time with your peers. Get to know everyone while you all are still new. Once you get into your streams and study groups you won't get the same opportunity as you will over these next few days.

Once again welcome to your home for the next 2 years.

Summer is here .. and so is my internship

Summer break is finally here and with it the end of our first year at Business school. (cliche' alert) It feels like i had only just begun! bwaah!

I am happy to be writing about this for I am one of the 6 summer consultants this year. The summer consulting team is a group of 6 management consultants that run their own firm for the duration of summer. This is as much an entreperneurial internship as it is a consulting one. The business operates within the framework of the school and we even have offices in the school (This building is typically where you will be grilled during your milk round interviews). Whole different feel to this building right now. The 6 of us have camped in nice little offices in here.

The SCT needs to find its own business though. Right now we are busy marketing and selling our services to potential clients. As the summer progresses we will do a variety of projects for these clients who will then pay us for our work (yaaaay!). We currently have some exciting proposals out on clients' tables and hope to bag those deals.

What I'm loving about this job is that i have to do so much more than a typical internship in consulting. We had to get our offices setup (tables, file cabinets, phones et al), develop our own brochures and get them printed, take over accounts and finances. you get the point. It is like running your own business which is a great opportunity to do something entrpreneurial over and above the actual consulting work. Of course the end goal is to get a proper consulting job in a top firm but you never know where this will lead!

"Doth the moon shine the night we play our play"

The 3rd annual London Business School summer play was held last week on 2 nights. Roughly 3 weeks of preparations culminated in a night of 3 performances which included scenes from Denise Deagan's "Daisy pulls it off", Charles Webb's "The Graduate" and William Shakespeare's "A mid summer night's dream". The summer play was organized by the acting and creative communications club and was attended by over 200 members of the school community including students, alumni, faculty, staff and partners.

The plays were directed by David Lightbody (MBA2003) and John Lightbody, who have been involved with the club since its inception. The best part about this experience was that while the summer term of our MBA has been grueling and there was really no time for anything but projects and homework, every minute spent on rehearsals was unbelievably relaxing. Most of the participants had taken acting I classes offered by the club. I was an exception though and it was a pleasure learning from John and David (thanks for shepherding us!). One of our actors had painstakingly put together wonderful costumes for our play (case in point ‘the magical Puck’). I played the part of Snug the joiner in "A midsummer night's dream". Kudos to the school facilities staff that helped us put together a great night with food, drinks and performances.

It was great to participate in this fabulous event because it was an opportunity to exercise our creative sides (and as they say, use the left side of our brains).

Help with Accomodation

Ever since I settled into my wee little flat on Abbey Road last year (after a tough long distance search for a flat and a week long search after arriving), I have been hoping to help out the incoming class with searching for their own flat. You will soon hear about a flatcrawl where people get together to find roommates and see tons of posts from fellow admits looking for flats/flatmates. However, it is still pretty depressing sitting in another country trying to find a flat in London before you arrive.

Bias Alert: I only have information about some areas around the school. Many students live away from school and commute on the tube.

Tip: Don't break your head over it until you arrive. You will find a flat after you arrive. Calling agents and clicking through websites (listed below anyways) are futile because agents need to show you flats. "Viewing" as it is called here is important. It really is. You must see a flat before you sign up for it because it is really hard to tell how a flat is from a few pictures.

The picture is an attempt to mark out walking distances and a few popular building/blocks where students currently live.

St Johns wood is a popular post code. It is an expensive area but it is really pretty and safe. You will mostly be within a 20 minute walk to the school from here. Rents in the area are typically upwards of 200 for a studio and around 275-300 for a one bed. They can be much higher for better blocks.

Many students prefer living right across from the school in Ivor court, Rossmore court. These buildings are so close to school you can even catch the wireless network signal from school. Hanover gate masions is another popular block and is a 1 minute walk from school. There is a large number of students that choose to live towards Baker street station/Marylebone street which are both 5-10 minutes away from school.

The following is a list of agents that are located around school. Some of these agents waive the agent fees for students (you need a school letter for this). Rents can be negotiated upto 10% downwards. However your bargaining power diminishes as you get closer to the start of the term and flats are almost all gone.

JAC strattons - www.jacstrattons.com

Oakleys - www.oakleys.co.uk

Sandfords - www.sandfords.co.uk

KnightFrank - www.knightfrank.co.uk

Foxtons - www.foxtons.co.uk

BrianLack&Co - www.brianlack.co.uk

Benham Reeves - www.brlets.co.uk

General property search websites: www.findaproperty.co.uk, www.gumtree.com, www.loot.co.uk

Hope this helps cool your anxiety a bit.

Student initiative - Yeah we got that!

Last saturday the Student Association hosted our annual Winterball which turned out to be an extra special event for me.

The event was managed by a student from my stream and everything from the marketing and sales to catering was organized completely by students. The event was a huge success with tickets selling out a few days before the event.

We ran into problems with entertainment (cancellations etc) which put the onus of managing the music for the event back on the student body. That is what made this evening special for me. I had always wanted to try being behind the decks of a DJ and that is exactly what I got to do at the winterball. We had a pro among the 4 of us (yes he's an MBA student!) to shoulder the major responsibility with the equipment but all of us got a chance to have some fun with DJing. For me especially, it was a great learning experience. I had never tinkered with the DJ mixers that i usually fixate on when im in a club. We worked hard to put together the playlist for 2 separate room (a dance room and a lounge room).

At the end we had been playing for 2 hours and had been through some massive club anthems that people loved. I also think the student led DJing added an underground feel to the event.

So they were correct when they said that Business School gives you opportunities to try new things. I never expected it to be DJing but I'm glad it was!

The clash of the spring term and recruitment season

I had been warned about this by MBA07s. But now that milk round and the spring term are both underway I am beginning to understand the gravity of the combination. It pulls you down!

19 companies strutted their stuff last week and from now until the end of february we will see rougly 3-4 companies per week doing their presentations at lunch hour. Everyone is struggling with the fact that classes will be their demanding self like nothing else is happening. Of course we all want good summer jobs, so our focus is on companies and CVs and cover letters and the like. The problem is that the job search is fairly stressful and i have heard it only gets worse as the term progresses (unless you are among the early birds of course).

I hope to stay on top of both these issues and get out of this semester alive and with a good summer job. It's hard enough getting into business school. Now you are competing with the best and the brightest for the next slice of the pie.

It's over...for now

310 first year MBAs are now past the most dreaded day of the first semester - the finance-1 exam. For a lot of people, including me, this was the first sit own 3 hour exam in many years. Our finance professor had been kind to us and spent 4 hours over 2 weekends going over some of the basics we had covered over the semester. That helped a lot in gearing me for the big day.

Anyways, a big percentage of us were out partying since the sound of the bell. There was even an unofficial competition to find out who gets to the windsor castle pub right after handing in the exam. I believe the winner got there in about 1hour and 30 minutes. I took my full 3 hours like a lot of others. The folks at the Windsor castle were probably aware of the exam and the potential rush through the doors at 1pm. A ton of us ended up there eventually. There were several parties on including a big party at On-Anon in Picadilly circus to celebrate a handful of birthdays.

I know a lot of folks are going to take the weekend off and do nothing to make up for the overload of finance we had this week. Thankfully some of our projects that were due on monday have been pushed out by a week to give us this much needed breather.

Feedback anyone?

How many times has your feedback gone into a blackhole ? I've felt that feedback is no more than a formality on many occasions.

London Business School has been asking us for feedback regularly. The programme office, the professors, professional and social clubs have all asked for feedback. We have been encouraged to be vocal about our thoughts on everything.

What stood out for me was how quickly our feedback was acted upon. Professors have now started asking for feedback every 2 weeks. One of them even asks for feedback at the end of every class. So the changes are taking place in real time. We get a summary of feedback at the beginning of the next class so we generally know where the class barometer is. Of course they can't act on everything right away and our expectations have been managed rather well.

Most often future classes will benefit from the bigger changes that aren't easy to make. That been said, our class is benefiting from the changes made per the previous class' recommendations (thanks 07s). One of them, I believe, is that out streams will not be shuffled around at the end of term 1. They had a hard time adjusting to the new dynamics at one of the worst times of the year( summer recruitment season). Lets see how that plays out for us.

The 'Real' Windsor Castle

What comes to your mind when you hear someone say Windsor Castle ? The British Monarchy? The Queen ?

Try this on anyone in London Business School and there is only one thing that comes to their mind. The Real Windsor Castle.

This institution is second home to most students at London Business School. It is a pub but, to most, calling it a pub is disrespectful. Now London has a massive pub culture. That can be a huge topic of discussion by itself but we'll stick to Windsor castle for now. Windsor castle shares a wall with the school building. There is a back alley from within school that has a 'private' school entrance to the pub. Now that's what I call customer service. (I'll try o get a picture of this special entrance soon)

After 6pm on most days people head straight to Windsor to chat with other students (you'll even find professors here). The ambience at Windsor is very welcoming. It's a small place but it has plenty of room for students. On any day you can find groups of people tucked away around small tables with tall glasses of golden lager or dark ale and the odds are high that the discussion centers around finance or accounting or some big investment bank or consulting firm (don't quote me on that though). People come to Windsor to eat, to drink and to have a good time. But a lot of people also come here to network. I won't be surprised if the best ideas for projects have been developed at Windsor. 

I was at Windsor with my study group the other day. We decided to head there to cool our brains off after a harrowing session of business statistics. See how an place like The Windsor Castle can offer so much more than beer. This is the de facto hang out for most study groups. People do venture elsewhere too (like 'The Volunteer' - a short 5 minute walk) but I personally like the cozier and cheaper Windsor.

Windsor is part of our world class institution. I think we should get a credit for spending a certain number of hours at the Windsor because you tend to learn so much over there anyways. I doubt if the programme office will buy that though.

Shrikant Shenoy, MBA2008, says

The Windsor Castle, with its combination of friendly staff, cosy atmosphere, and good food is a good place to hang out. But the fact that it is actually physically attached to the school, and usually full of school people means that it has an appeal and a pull akin to the gravitational pull of a black hole!

Why are good B schools expensive ?

So we are at the end of (real) week 2 of school. And now it is becoming evident that London Business School charges me a large sum of money for a (good) reason.

Our most recent super experience was a simulation. The school (as part of one course) arranged for a professional executive development team from the United States (i think!) to spend an entire day with us running a simulated industry where 6 student teams represented one company each. We had to come up with a business strategy (under defined constraints) and run our companies. Each person in my group assumed a certain responsibility (like marketing or sales or finance) and took decisions on a quarterly basis to move the company in the desired direction. At the end of each quarter our decisions were submitted and results were computed by the simulation to determine where our company stood.

I was the finance guy in my group (because i knew least about it and wanted to learn). Let me give an example of how real this simulation was. We received letters from our financers that we were in deep s*** because we went over a certain debt-to-equity ratio. They refused to lend us more money and we needed more money to fund out marketing, operations, and R&D plans. This was really real. It was our company and it was failing. That is exactly how it made me, the finance guy, feel.

We got our act together and cut costs, reduced budgets, put some bets on our decisions and got out of it alive.

All in all, it was one of the best learning experiences I have had. Replace this with 1 lecture each on the things we did and we wouldnt be able to come even close.

Now my point is that all this costs a lot of money. So you are really paying for these experiences. So when you pick your school, please dont pitch one school against the other based on how much it charges in tuition. Find out what your tuition is going to pay for and make an informed "investment".

(edited to fix typo) 

B-school and MBA: why is it different from other programmes

We have been through a week of classes and workshops (including a CV workshop in the 1st week - can you believe that!) and now some of the simple differences between an MBA programme and a traditional degree are becoming clear.

I'm probably going to restate the obvious, but for someone looking for a "What happens in b-school" primer, this could be a start. Heres 2 things that have stood out clearly.

We had 5 sessions of our General Management class this week. A comparable course in undergrad would have involved a Professor giving lectures week after week coupled with chapters and chapters of reading. I've had several of these in the past. The theme is "here is the concept, now ask me questions and go figure the rest out". In the MBA this pattern/theme does not apply. Our classes have been mostly discussions on some or the other case that highlights a business/management concept. We read the case before the class, prepare some notes on what we read, and show up to class. The professor then starts of by asking questions and highlighting some important points from the case. What ensues is a myriad of thoughts and arguments reflecitng the immensely diverse backgrounds that people come from. We were discussing a case on American Express yesterday (it was about their turnaround in the mid 90s) and lo-and-behold we had someone from AmEx in our class giving us first hand detailed "insider" views on things. That can't be beat by any amount of professorial lecturing. Note that the professor here is merely provoking our thought processes by asking the right questions. The mass of the lecture is left to us to take in any direction we want (albeit with supervision).

Now to my next point - Career development and Jobs. I have never been in a school or programme where this much emphasis was placed on the career development process. B-schools take this bit seriously. Very seriously. Of course they have worked hard and chosen a great bunch of talented and motivated people to become a part of their organization. But a lot of their success depends on our success. We are recreating our CVs, working on crystalizing our goals, and getting ready for some serious recruiting coming up in January '07. The % of students employed at graduation is one figure the career services guys think about morning, day, and night. Now would you want to go to a school where students are left off in the woods to figure out their employment situation? Probably not. So thats major difference number 2.

more later ..   

London calling

I can see that a lot of fellow bloggers have written about our first week at school and orientation and all that good stuff. Since it is the beginning of application season, I would like to demistify a few things about London that may possibly help potential applications.

1) People: Coming from the US, I heard all sorts of crazy things about people in the UK. I specially heard that poeple here are more rude than the general public in the US. NOT TRUE! London (can't speak about other places) has some of the nicest people. Agreed they wont go smiling at each other on the street (there are too many people out on the street to be smiling at) but they are kind and helpful and courteous etc etc. London is very friendly to immigrants and is amazingly multicultural.

2) Place (from the perspective of someone new): London is KEWL! I live next to Abbey Road studios (google it for best results if you dont know what Abbey Road Studios is) in a nice area called St. Johns Wood. Lords cricket ground is 5 minutes away from school (for all the cricket fans out there) and in general every street is a quaint street with a rich history. The food is good, the public transport is phenomenal. I think this is going to be a great city to enjoy two years of student life. More on this subject as this blog develops.

3) Cost: Ahem! Lets just say it is quite a bit, but lets not forget what this city has to offer. Also, you could cut fixed costs such as rent by living away from school etc. I'm sure as I get used to this city, I will normalize my expenses through cost cutting and efficiencies. Moreover, if you come from other expensive cities, it won't feel that expensive here. I must add that many day to day requirements are pretty reasonably priced here. So its not all bad.

4) Weather: Ok, It's gray for quite a large part. But again, it's not that bad. It doesn't rain all the time. But maybe im jumping ahead of myself. August is one of the nicer months here and maybe we are seieng the nicer days. More on this later.

5) Industry: you'll read a lot about this on the school's webpages but here goes. It is important to remember that as an MBA, jobs are an aweful lot important. The city in which your school resides is a huge factor in determining the job market available to you. London business school clearly has a tremendous advantage here.

So i am standing at the door step of a truly outstanding 2 year experience. The signs make it look very promising. I hope to expand some more on these topics as we get along.