The Naked MBA

Business schools have been struggling for years to attract more women MBA candidates. No matter what strategies or marketing angles they try, female enrollment at business schools seems stuck at around 30%.  This week Harvard Business School finally got the message and rolled out the 2+2 Program. This is first targeted recruiting program with real potential to increase the number of women in business schools.

According to Associate Director for MBA Admissions Andrea Mitchell Kimmel, the 2+2 program is to reach out to students who are not on the typical “business path”—a group that includes scientists, humanities concentrators, and those interested in nonprofits.  Students admitted to the 2+2 program receive assistance from Harvard in finding a job for the two years between their college graduation and the start of the full-time MBA program at Harvard. The catch is that Harvard actually has to approve their choice of job, but they have partnered with as many as 100 organizations, including companies like Google, and non-profit organizations like Teach for America.

So where does it say anything about targeting women? You’ll need to read between the lines, but once you do it’s obvious who the program is directed at. First of all, HBS doesn’t need more applicants--in 2007 6,552 people applied. What they do need is more women applicants. So where are the women? Well, female liberal arts majors far outnumber male ones. However, liberal arts majors (read: women) are less likely to apply for business school. Also, women are more likely than men to seek a job with a non-profit organization. But going to business school after working at a non-profit is not a natural progression—most people don’t think their nonprofit or public sector experience will be valued in the application process. The fact that the 2+2 program includes non-profit organizations on its list of “approved” employers dispels this myth and captures a wider range of potential (female) applicants.

The fact is, then, that Harvard’s 2+2 program seeks to recruit candidates from two areas where women make up the majority: the humanities and non-profits. I also can’t resist pointing out that the 2+2 program also addresses another issue that keeps women from applying to business school: the biological clock. Top business schools have typically “highly recommended” that applicants have 3-5 years of work experience, pushing the average age of applicants to 27-30. As I’ve mentioned before, this conflicts with another important stage on women’s timelines: getting married and having a family. By only requiring two years of work experience, HBS is getting women in the door before they hit that stage in their life, instead of losing them along the way.

It’s high time business schools began to recruit women in ways that actually address their needs and fears—that they’re not qualified for business school, that they need more work experience to get in, and that they have to choose between spending two years in business school to start a career and having a family. Harvard, as in most things, is ahead of the curve here, but other business schools won’t be far behind.

In business school you may spend most of your days dressed in a suit like your favorite CEO, but that doesn’t mean you’re getting paid like one. And no matter what your future earning potential is, towards the end of the semester as the student loan funds in your checking account dwindle you’ll be feeling the pinch. Not to fear, there are plenty of ways to save money in business school.

-         Go to student conferences. You’ll have all the free notebooks, planners, pens and highlighters you can handle and will never have to buy school supplies again.

-         Attend corporate presentations, even if you’re not job hunting. Sure you have to wear a suit, but it’s open bar and free hors d’oeurves (put some in your backpack for later). And depending on which marketing company is on campus you’ll walk away with shampoo, peanut butter or painkillers (sorry, only the legal kind).

-         Get together with 10 of your friends and buy one textbook, then make nine copies of the relevant chapters in the school computer lab. It may not be eco-friendly (or legal, for that matter) but at least it’s thrifty.

-        Go the undergrad cafeteria. All you can eat for $8.95. Plus the girls will be impressed that you don’t live in the dorms.

-         Hang out with your friends who are going into banking along about the time they get their offer letters. After a couple of drinks they’ll start buying rounds like they’ve already made Managing Director.

And, my personal favorite:

-        Move out of your apartment and start living in the library. Just don’t document it on your personal websiteand get busted.

I was hopelessly unprepared for my first bschool admissions interview. I didn’t know I was supposed to be able to name the professors I wanted to take classes from, and the clubs I wanted to participate in. I didn’t know I was supposed to list the companies I wanted to target for my summer internship. And I sure as hell didn’t know that I would have to listen to my interviewers pick apart my application and belittle every accomplishment I had ever been proud of. My 3.7 GPA was “fair”. My French major was “an unusual choice” and “not easily transferable to an MBA”. My work experience at a non-profit was “not the kind of thing that prepares you for an MBA here at _____” and “not what we’re used to seeing”.

After a series of interviews that were more like lectures on why I was not MBA material, I was ready to cancel my final interview and end the application process with what little dignity I had left. Business school, it seemed, was an exclusive club you could only get into if you walked and talked like you already had an MBA. My last interview was on the East Coast, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that it was scheduled on a day when I would already be in New York on a business trip, I would have withdrawn.

I went to the interview and sat across from the Admissions Director, fretting about my average GPA, my French major and my barely average GMAT score. I waited for the grilling to begin.

“I see here that you work for a non-profit organization,” he said.

“Uh, yes,” I said, and closed my eyes, anticipating what was coming next.

"Fantastic!” He sounded like he'd found the winning lottery ticket right there in my application folder. “We're trying to bring in people with a wide range of experiences...we don't see people with non-profit backgrounds applying very often...you would bring a lot to the class…we're starting a lot of new programs...let me show you some things on our website. Have you thought of which organization we could help you target for your summer internship?"

I was too stunned to reply so I let him keep talking. He showed me video clips and newspaper articles, and told me what a great place the school was for someone like me. He listened respectfully while I walked him through my résumé and didn’t laugh when I said I wanted to go to business school because I believed a lot of business ideas could be used to help further good causes. When it was over, he told me he hoped I would consider his school as my top choice. It felt like I was as good as in. But why? What was different about this interview? What did he see in me that no other school had? And then it dawned on me. Business schools need to attract diversity. And even though I was a white, middle-class girl from the Midwest, to him I looked like diversity. My liberal arts degree, my language skills, my gender, my non-profit experience—someone had finally seen these differences as assets. Being different was finally a good thing. Being different was going to get me into business school.

Do you need an MBA? It depends on what you want to do. Most people go to business school to switch careers, but a lot of them end up back in the same job they had before. Consultants go back to consulting. Bankers go back to banking. It’s familiar, easy, and once recruiters see previous industry experience on your résumé they will come looking for you. You will make more money, but you ask yourself if you’ll make enough to outweigh the opportunity cost of getting an MBA (two years of lost salary plus the tuition costs).

If you want to stay in the same field and think that an MBA will get you more money faster, you’re wrong. You’re giving up two years of your salary and industry experience and paying out tens of thousands of dollars in tuition. It doesn’t add up. Ask yourself if you could move up the ladder to the position an MBA would land you in, anyway, if you worked your butt off for two years at your company. If so, it’s better for you and for your bank account to stay put. Check to see if there is a training program at your company that will give you some of the skills you needs to advance. An MBA used to be the golden ticket to the next echelon, but now more companies are seeking to retain employees and provide in-house the training the need to move up the ladder.

An MBA will bump up your salary, but it won’t make you rich enough to retire buy age 40. Most of the world’s richest people barely even finished high school. You’re better off coming up with a great business plan and starting that business as early in life as possible (think Michael Dell in his college dorm room). And if you’re a young person working finance, get in on the explosive growth of private equity and hedge funds while you can. You’ll make more money in two years of working at a hedge fund than anyone could throw at you after business school.

If your goal is not to get rich, but to change the world by working in social responsibility or the non-profit sector, think carefully about what kind of job you want and the people you want to work for. An MBA could price you out of the market. A friend of mine finished her MBA and looked for a social enterprise job. She is one of the smartest and most ambitious people I know, so a lot of great opportunities came her way. The trouble was that none of them paid her enough to live on and make her student loan payments. The same thing happened to me when I switched from working at an investment bank to a non-profit.

So when do you need an MBA? If you absolutely want to switch careers and know you won’t just take a job doing the same thing you did before, it can be invaluable. For example, if you have already acquired expertise in a field--say teaching or biochemistry—and want to move into a management position in education or a pharmaceutical company, an MBA is the best way to do this.

People focus on the financial benefit of an MBA, but if you do the math, most of them won’t come out ahead. More money, however, is not the only reason to get an MBA. You mature a lot in those two year (beer pong aside). There is a lot of skill-building and professional development that happens, and the network you develop is unbeatable. Take some time to do an honest self-assessment to see how much you could benefit from the experience in non-financial ways and factor that in to your decision. Everyone’s calculation is different and only you will know if it’s worth it.

The first time I saw my parents after starting business school my mom almost cried. I’d lost about 10 pounds (some people eat more under stress, I just forget to eat, period) and my skin had the death-like pallor that results from consuming nothing but caffeine and Power Bars for weeks on end.  In a previous life went to the grocery store and ate balanced, home cooked meals. In business school, eating anything that took more than 10 minutes to locate, chew and swallow seemed like a waste of time. Before business school I ran and practiced yoga four times a week. During my MBA the only exercise I got was lugging ten pounds of books around on my back. Before business school I got the recommended 7 hours of sleep. My roommate in business school asked me if I actually lived there because my bed never looked slept in.

Between the stress of classes and the breakneck pace of social life, business school is not a healthy lifestyle. People gain weight, lose weight, get sick, and even have the occasional nervous breakdown. You push yourself to the limit, trying to squeeze out one more hour of homework, or one more drink before last call. Although bschool feels like the 50-yard dash, it’s more like a slow climb to the top of Mount Everest. You have to take care of yourself.

First off, don’t skimp on the sleep. There will be nights when you’re up until 4 am finishing a project or living it up at a great party, but don’t make it the norm. Nothing productive happens after 2 am, anyway, so either your work will suffer or your reputation will as you end up dancing on the bar with the busboy.

Recognize that my first piece of advice is totally unrealistic. Then since you’re not getting enough sleep, as least fuel your body in other ways. Pizza, for example is not a food group. Most MBAs understand that green is the color of money, but it should also be the color of your food from time to time.

Get some exercise. At my bschool there was a flag football tournament each fall with other area schools. And each year at least three people would show up in casts or on crutches the next day. Are MBAs really that aggressive or clumsy? Maybe. My hunch is just that they’re hopelessly out of shape. If you don’t exercise for your health, then do it for your career. Attractive people earn more than their coworkers.  And if you’re shooting for the top, you’re wise to hit the treadmill along the way--most CEOs exercise.

Manage your stress. It’s a myth that anyone works better under pressure. In fact, studies show that people are least creative when they’re fighting the clock. Stress impairs your decision-making abilities, and the quality of you work. And no one wants to hang out with a nut case. Most business school students are Type A personalities, so stressing out is what we do best. What helped me the most when I got worked up about something was the “Will this matter in…” question. I found that most things I was stressed out about weren’t going to matter in 6 months, or 1 month, or even 1 week. When I realized this I calmed down about them. Perspective is important. People are important, too. You have lots of them around you, all going through the same stressful experiences. Vent to each other. Reassure each other. Then regain focus together. Above all, if you feel like you have so much stress you can’t handle it on your own, talk to a professional. Most universities have student health centers with people who can help you learn to manage.

Business school flies by. You could tell yourself that you’ll return to your healthy, balanced lifestyle when it’s over, or you could start building healthy habits now, as practice for the real, post-bschool world. Just think how ahead of the game you’ll be.

Most top business schools claim to be breeding grounds for the next generation of highly ambitious, innovative, entrepreneurial leaders of tomorrow. What if this were true? What would these business schools look like? Chances are they wouldn’t resemble any of the schools on the current top ten ranking list. But they might look a lot like KaosPilots in Denmark.

KaosPilots goes beyond the revered Harvard case-study method to train students in a real life setting. They work only with assignments and projects defined by real clients, reflecting real challenges and needs outside the school. KaosPilots students find themselves doing creative brainstorming and product development for the childrens toy-giant LEGO or for soft drink market-leader, Red Bull. But the KaosPilots difference doesn’t end here.

KaosPilots is a 3-year program where students learn to be entrepreneurs in the fields of social innovation, cultural diversity and sustainability. Instead of focusing on core subjects like marketing and finance, these disciplines are incorporated into a broad-based curriculum structured around six core values: real world, balance, being streetwise, being playful, risk taking and compassion.

And here is where KaosPilots is really changing the game: projects focus on making a positive difference in the world.

Recent projects have been in Sarajevo, where a team of students established a sustainable youth club amidst the chaos of dealing with mafia, vigilante militant groups and the local government. Also in Cuba, where students brought together extreme Cuban skaters, surfers and hip hop artists in an alliance with the Cuban Ministry of Sports and the EU to form the first Cuban extreme sports festival.

KaosPilots receives financing from the Danish government and support from companies like the Tuborg and Carlsberg breweries, LEGO toys and Scandinavian Airlines. These companies also lend support by engaging KaosPilots students in active roles in marketing a new product or in leading an internal change process. Scandinavian companies have long recognized KaosPilots’ strong reputation for value-based education with a strong emphasis on personal development, innovation, social responsibility and entrepreneurship; and this reputation is now spreading across the globe. This year the official language switched to English and students from Germany, England, Colombia and Mexico were admitted. There are now outposts in San Francisco and Durban, South Africa.

The real question, of course, is whether these students are actually making an impact on the world post-graduation. The numbers indicate that they are--the rate of KaosPilots students that become entrepreneurs and start their own businesses is 30%. Approximately 60% hold managerial and entrepreneurial positions in private, public and non-governmental organizations. You can read more about what KaosPilots students think of the opportunities their school provides in a recent article in Ode Magazine.

Where most top business schools claim to be innovative and in touch with the rapidly-evolving ways of doing business, KaosPilots actually is. As companies move towards a more employee-centered way of making decisions, and as more of these decisions take into account social contributions, traditional business school curriculums will no longer prepare students for this new way of doing business. Instead, top-ranked business schools will need to take a page from the KaosPilots book.

People say it’s called “b” school because it’s impossible to get lower than a B in any of your classes. When I heard this at orientation, I expected to sail through all of my classes with minimal effort and the official moniker of Girl Genius. This might have happened if I was a former-investment bank analyst, engineer, or CPA like many of my classmates. But I wasn’t, and classes were hard. I was overwhelmed by new material. I remember in my Statistics class the professor kept saying that the first two weeks would just be a review before we got to anything challenging. It was already taking me four hours to do an assignment. The only way I was getting by in Accounting was to find a group of people to do the homework with, pretend to understand what they were talking about and then copy down the answers. Everyone else complained about wasting their time in the “soft” classes like Management Communications, but that was the only class in which I felt comfortable. Things were not looking good. I felt light years behind everyone and I didn’t know how to catch up.

Doing homework with friends is helpful, but at the beginning you don’t really have friends—at least not ones that you’re comfortable enough around to admit you don’t have a clue what a dummy variable is. Or if you can admit this, no one really has enough time to explain everything to you. Go to office hours. Your professors and teaching assistants get paid to help you. And turning up regularly with questions shows them that you’re really trying to understand the material, so even if you don’t totally get it you might get a few extra points for all your effort.

Sometimes, though, office hours are not enough. When this happens, get a tutor. And get over it—it’s nothing to feel bad about. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses and the smart thing to do is to get extra help with your weaknesses.  My accounting tutor was a French PhD student and he was fantastic. Twice a week for two months I met with him for an hour at a time to go over homework assignments and class notes. He saved my grade and my self-esteem.

Finally, although some classes will be challenging, don’t worry too much about the grades. I got the lowest grades of my life in business school but they were still above average. And I got them because I took classes that challenged me, especially during my second year when I had more time to concentrate on classes. After all, if you spend two years only playing to your strengths then you’re not learning.

Maybe you will sail through bschool with little to no academic effort. But if you have a liberal arts background like I did, with no finance or accounting experience, don’t expect your classes to be a breeze. But they don’t have to be overwhelming, either. Ask for the help you need, remind yourself of the things you are good at, and don’t sweat any of it too much in the meantime.

An MBA is a two-year course in how to get a job. So what happens if you graduate and you don’t have one yet? This is a classic “it could never happen to me” situation, but it could and it might. And it’s not the end of the world. Take a deep breath and come up with a plan of action. If you don’t have a plan, use this one.

1. Figure out why you don’t have a job.

Is the market awful right now? If so, then lots of people are in the same situation and you may need to take the first job that comes your way and ride out the dip in the economy. Are you looking for the right kind of job? If you’re blanketing an industry with your résumé and not getting a single phone call then you’re either not qualified to work in this field or your résumé doesn’t portray your skills accurately. Talk to someone in the field to find out. Where in your job-hunt is the hang-up? Are you getting zero responses to your applications? The problem could be your résumé. Are you getting invited to a first interview and then not getting a call back? You may need some help with your interviewing skills. Identify where the problem lies and create a solution that directly addresses it.

2. Hire a professional résumé writer.

Yes I know they’re expensive. But so is not having a job. Your résumé might be good, but it can always be better. It’s a key marketing document and provides potential employers with a first impression of you. You would hire a professional to represent you in court to make sure you don’t make any false steps, so the same should go for the job hunt.

3. Job hunt in unusual places

You could spend hours weeding through job postings on Monster or Jobster and sending your résumé off to bottomless HR email inboxes. Or you could get out in the real world. If you’re in a waiting room next to someone reading an industry magazine, strike up a conversation with them. I have a friend who got a job because she overhead a conversation on the subway between two people who worked together and joined in. One of them became her jogging partner and a month later helped her get a job with the company.

4. Ask everyone you know for a job or a contact.

You just graduated from business school. You know a hundred people who each know a hundred more people. Start going to happy hour with your business school friends and be upfront that you’re still looking for a job. They will either help you or they will know someone who can.

5. Start hanging out with your parents.

Drop in on their dinner parties. Crash their golf dates. Even if you think your parents don’t know anything, they know a lot of people who know stuff. And anyone they know is probably further along in their career than your friends, which means they have more power and influence to use in helping you get a job.

6. Work for free.

If the months since graduation are piling up and still no one will pay you to work, volunteer your services. Target places you would want to work anyway. Ask for a 3 month unpaid internship, no strings attached. At the end of it they might decide they want to keep you around on the payroll. This way you also avoid having a big hole in your résumé.

7. Stay positive.

Research shows that optimists are more successful. If you’re a pessimist, don’t despair—you can learn to be an optimist. Martin Seligman tells you how.

As a liberal arts major who liked numbers only in my paycheck and in my cell phone, my biggest hurdle in applying for business school was the GMAT. The GMAT is the standardized test required by business schools. It’s supposed to measure basic analytical, quantitative and reasoning abilities and your aptitude for success in business school. I should also mention that it destroys your social life for three months, induces panic attacks and dissolves every last shred of confidence you had in your intellect.

My boyfriend (at the time) was applying to business school with me, so we pooled our resources to purchase every GMAT prep book on the shelves at Barnes and Noble. The first night we settled down with our stack of books, I started out with some math “refresher” questions. I scored 4 out of 10. I just need to warm up my brain, I thought, and flipped to some exercises in the grammar section. 10 out of 10. Then back to the math section. 2 out of 10. Panic began to set in. “Wow this is easy,” said the boyfriend. “It’s just a review of college algebra. How is it going for you?” I knew it was time to come clean.

“There’s something I should tell you…” I said. “This isn’t easy to say to you…but I never took college algebra. I took…Math for Poets.”

After that, the boyfriend, who had an engineering degree, taught me GMAT math from scratch. It took weeks and then months. I am nothing if not goal oriented, so my social life dwindled. I spent my lunch breaks hunched over test questions at my desk instead of out with my coworkers. I became a crabby homebody, focused only on the Pythagorean theory and filling in little circles with a number two pencil. At this point any rational person would have questioned their decision to go to business school in the first place, but I slogged on.

On test day I spent six hours typing answers into a computer that was going to tell me how smart I was. The results were not surprising: after 2 months of studying I was a still word whiz and a math moron. Overall score: not good enough.

I was devastated and convinced myself that I wouldn’t get into business school. Things got worse; the boyfriend emerged from the same testing room with 700+ score. So I did what any logical person would do—stomped home in a fit a jealousy and then had to apologize and buy him dinner four hours later.

I soon discovered that I wasn’t alone--women score on average 38 points lower on the GMAT than men do, even though they graduate from college with higher undergraduate GPAs. And it turns out that women who graduate from business school have, on average, GPA's equivalent to those of men. So basically the GMAT over-predicts the performance of men and under-predicts that of women. What a racket!

Never one to be beaten down by the machine, I sacrificed my social life to study for one more month and gave the test another try. Overall score: better, but still not great. I sulked. Then, as if in a dream, wise words from the GMAT website came flooding back to me:

“The GMAT examination does not measure every discipline-related skill necessary for academic work, nor does it measure subjective factors important to academic and career success, such as motivation, creativity, and interpersonal skills.”

Motivation, I had. Creativity to spare. So...I could go home and start studying for the test again…or I could reclaim my social life, head to happy hour and brush up my interpersonal skills…

About 30% of MBA students are women. Despite all their efforts, business schools can’t seem to increase this number. Part of this is due to the fact that most business schools want candidates to have 3-5 years of real-world work experience. This pushes the average age of applicants to 27-30 years old--right about the time women begin to think about getting married and starting a family. And there is no better way to destroy the value of your newly-minted MBA than to immediately take maternity leave at the fabulous job you just worked your butt off to get. Maybe, then, we should be surprised that any women choose to go to business school, at all. Who are these women who make up the 30%? Are they born without biological clocks? With no interest in family or children? Focused only on crashing their way through the glass ceiling to arrive at the corner office? A few, yes. The majority, though, are victims of the biggest lie of all: that they can have it all.

As a woman in business school, there are women-only conferences where you can hear successful females tell you how they made Managing Director and still have a great family life. There are recruiting events where you can listen to top female executives tell you how you can be successful and still have time to cook dinner and have meaningful time with your significant other, no sacrifices required. These women are lying.

I realized they were lying the day I heard someone tell the truth. I was at a day-long conference for women in finance, lunching with hundreds of other bright, ambitious young women MBAs in the banquet room of a posh, Midtown hotel. The keynote speaker was the former CFO of a Wall Street investment bank. She took the podium and began to tell us about her career and share the secrets of her success. She talked first about all the long nights she put in at the office, then about how she put off having children, and eventually about how she hid her first pregnancy, revealing it only after she was promoted. My epiphany happened as she told us about going into labor with her first child, and how the first thing she did after she heard the baby cry was grab her Blackberry and start responding to emails—from the hospital delivery room. At this point the banquet room grew silent as one hundred horrified young women looked on. I was stunned, then relieved. What we had suspected all along was finally out in the open—that you can’t have it all.

I felt the same way a year later as I started my job at an investment bank and Sallie Krawcheck, CFO of Citigroup at the time, spoke to our training class. She told us about all the times she missed parent-teacher conferences and dinner dates with her husband. She said that she was forced to choose between being a great CFO and being a great wife and mother. She chose her job and she doesn’t apologize for it.

Maybe you’re smarter than I was when I started business school; maybe you already know that you can’t have it all. And maybe that’s fine with you. Not having it all in one area of life, like your career, means you can have a lot more of other parts of life, like family, vacation, friends and hobbies. For some people, that’s what makes them happy. Spend some time figuring out if you’re one of those people, or if you are like Sallie Krawcheck.

In choosing a job after business school you are really choosing a lifestyle. That lifestyle can change, of course, but by thinking through what you want ahead of time you avoid waking up five years from now and regretting the 100 hour weeks that have left you friendless and alone. Or the flip side, realizing that what you really wanted was to be a CEO by the time you were 35 but now you have three kids and a mortgage. Think about it.