The Naked MBA

If you’re just finishing your first year of business school, you’re probably breathing a sigh of relief. Everyone says that compared to first year, second year is a cakewalk. You’ll have to judge that for yourself, but harder or easier, it’s definitely different.

Whereas first year is a major earthquake, second year is a series of tremors. They still need to be taken seriously, and sometimes call for taking shelter in a doorway or under a desk, but they don’t strike fear into you heart the way the Big Quake does. Second year is just as busy (sometimes more) as first year, but it’s a different kind of busy. Your to-do list is just as long, but you have more power over what’s on it. For starters, you have mainly electives, so you can focus on classes that are aligned with your career interests. Most people focus on what they’re good at, so the classes seem easier. And if you still don’t know what you want to focus on, I have a strategy for you, too: pick you classes based on the ratings. All schools have some sort of faculty rating system, whether formal or informal. A fantastic professor can make you fall in love with a subject, while a bad one can make you despise something you previously found interesting. And taking a class on a subject that’s unfamiliar to you but taught by a phenomenal professor is a good way to stretch yourself.

Second year also offers more leadership opportunities. The first-years look to you for guidance on navigating the recruiting process, and for feedback on your internship and academic experiences. Once you start sharing your insight with them, I promise you’ll be surprised at how much you actually did learn your first year! You may also get the chance to be a more active student leader. In my experience, first years do a lot of the grunt work in clubs and organizations, while the second years sit back and delegate. I had to get comfortable with this when I became co-president of a large student club my second year. I was used to making sure things got done by doing them myself. Then someone pointed out to me that my job as a leader was to manage other people doing things—even if it was sometimes more time consuming than doing it myself. This is what leadership and management is all about.

I also made most of my friends second year. I met a lot of people my first year (365, to be exact!), but the friendships really happened second year. People stop going out en masse and you have more opportunities deepen relationships and hang out one-on-one and in small groups. For me this was a big relief, because I spent most of my first year feeling like there was more quantity than quality to my friendships.

While second year sometimes feels like one long party as everyone starts going out more and studying less, it also takes on a serious undertone as your mind turns to life after your MBA. You start to reflect on what you’ve learned, and what you still want to get out of the experience. You come to terms with the fact that you’ll soon have to leave the warm coccoon that is business school and re-enter the real world. But this isn’t all bad. When it happens, you’ll be ready.

With such a large range of choices, deciding where to go to business school is a tough decision. On top of that, many people wrestle with the decision of whether to go full or part-time. Some employers will pay your tuition if you keep working for them while in school; though they often then require you to stay with the company for a certain amount of time after you finish business school. If you’re really lucky, like a friend of mine who works for McKinsey, your employer will ship you off to a full-time program for two years, but that doesn’t happen often!

If your company is not paying, then you need hard to look at what your goal is in getting an MBA: do you want to change tracks completely, or are you focused on advancing in the industry you're already in? If you want to stay in your current industry, then you are better off going part-time and chalking up more work experience as well as the MBA. This way you don’t miss out on promotions and will move up the ladder even faster. As a part-time student you also get to apply your classroom learning directly to your job, which helps seal in the benefit of the MBA. Imagine going over a case study in class one night and then applying what you learned at work the very next day--education doesn’t get much more practical than that! Part-time programs also tend to be more focused on the actual learning you’re doing, instead of the grades. Because let’s face it—if you’re going to school and also have a full-time job, you’re more focused on finishing the program then on getting A’s in all your classes.

There are also clear disadvantages to part-time MBA programs. The biggest drawback is that if you’re looking to switch jobs then you don’t have the same recruiting resources available to you as full-time students do. For example, Chicago GSB allows all MBA students (full and part-time) to use the career center's resources in looking for a job, but they don’t let part-time students participate in on-campus interviews. They see it as a conflict of interest; they don’t want to take tuition money from a company and then turn around and help that company’s employees find another job. Fordham, on the other hand, allows part-time student to go through on-campus recruitment as long as they sign a waiver stating that they have notified their employers that they are interviewing for jobs.

Another disadvantage is that the demands of interviewing and intense competition for the best jobs often require a full time investment, and the reputation of a full-time program at a top school. Part-time programs are often not as well-regarded.

Getting an MBA is an investment in yourself, so you should calculate about what the return on that investment will be. Will an MBA increase your salary and career prospects so much so that it merits a full-time investment, or will you be better off doing it part-time? Can you afford to take two years out of the job market? Can you afford financially to go full-time? Thinking about these questions will not only help you decide whether to go full or part-time, but it will help you define what your ultimate goal is in getting an MBA and how it fits into your long-term plan.

In yesterday’s post I wrote about the advantages of going abroad to get your MBA. A lot of people, though, want an international experience but aren’t ready to give up the experience of an American MBA. So they do the next best thing—study abroad for a semester. A semester abroad is kind of like moving in with your boyfriend but still keeping your own place in case it doesn’t work out. It’s commitment-lite. It gives you the chance to experience another culture, spice up your résumé, learn about international markets and customs, and—from what I hear—learn to order a beer and ask for someone’s phone number in another language.

The decision to study abroad should depend on the reputation of the business school you go to and that of the international business school you would attend. If you go to Stanford, it may not be as attractive to spend part of your MBA at another school. If you go to Ole Miss and can spend a semester abroad at INSEAD or LBS then you just struck résumé paydirt.

How much research did you do when choosing where to go for your MBA? My guess is that you wracked up the hours, especially if you count the web-surfing to MBA sites you did at the office while you were supposed to be putting together Powerpoints. If you do a semester abroad you’ll spend 25% of your MBA at that school, so put at least 25% of the effort you spent researching your primary business school into researching your study abroad options. Put it through all the same tests—ranking, reputation, what it’s known for, caliber of faculty, etc. A word of caution: often only a limited selection of classes are available to exchange students, so make sure the classes you want to take are open to you.

Going abroad can also throw off the recruiting process. If you go abroad in your third semester, as most people do, it means a lot more is riding on your summer internship. If you don’t like it or don’t get an offer you will miss the fall recruiting cycle and be left on your own to job hunt when you get back. One of my classmates hated her internship and but was scheduled to head to a European school for fall semester. She got an offer at the end of the summer and ended up accepting because she was scared of going abroad with no job. Guess what? She ended up hating the job.

Finally, think about what it means to spend a semester away from family, friends, and from the MBA experience of your school. Two years fly by, and it’s not a lot of time to forge friendships and professional connections. A friend of mine spent first semester of our second year in Europe. She told me that “when I came back it felt like I didn’t have any friends anymore. During first year everyone hung out together, but in second year groups formed and I missed out on that.” You also have to choose your commitments—I thought about going abroad but when I was tapped to become co-president http://caitlinweaver.blog.com/2835117/ of one of the largest student organizations, I had to choose. I stayed.

The assignment is familiar (or will be very soon if you’re about to start business school): Company X is facing a challenge—be it losing market share to a competitor, trying to decide whether to introduce a new technology, or facing a financial crisis--and it’s up to you to find a solution. You’re provided with a thick, heavy binder of information (that the bookstore makes a killing off of), including a complete background on the company and its competitors, an overview of the industry, market share and segmentation numbers, financial analysis going back 5 years, and bios of all the major players. There is also nice little storybook that walks you through the dilemma you have to address. In this storybook there is a hero, a villain, a plot and usually even some dialogue.

You’ve been hit with a case study. The case study is standard fare in business school, and is supposed to simulate real-world issues in order to teach you how to make the kinds of decisions that you’ll face once you’re working. But the truth is, case studies don’t prepare you for much.

You probably won’t have time to start reading your case study assignment until the night before it’s due, which is similar to the timeline in the real world, where sometimes you only have a few hours to analyze the situation and make a decision. But that is where the similarities between a case study and the real world end. In the real world you will never have all the information at your fingertips that you need to make a decision--complete with indexed page numbers. The majority of decisions have to be made with incomplete information—information that has to be dug up quickly and analyzed on the fly. Case studies do encourage analytical thinking and the application of theories to real problems. But what companies increasingly say they look for in their MBA hires is the ability to frame the problem, to quickly assess what information they need to solve it, and to know how to get that information.

In an attempt to address this gap between the training that business schools provide and what companies expect of their new hires, Columbia Business School created the Decision Brief. A Decision Brief provides less information than a case study, with the goal of training students to be comfortable making decisions out of uncertainty. They’ve put out six of these briefs so far on current business challenges, such as outsourcing.

While I don’t think case studies are going to disappear from business schools any time soon, I hope that other top schools will take note of Columbia’s new curriculum. If schools really do want to prepare students for the workplace—as they say they do--then case studies with pre-cooked information aren’t the answer. They best thing business schools can do is prepare students for the only thing that’s certain in the real word: uncertainty.

Business schools have long been thought of as training grounds for the next generation of corporate leaders. But do MBAs still want to be the corporate leaders of traditional companies? The Forbes Top 100 Employers that MBAs want to work suggests that this is changing. The top company on Forbes 100 list is, of course, Google. Google is a far cry from the blue-chip companies that ruled this list ten years ago. Google is the anti-company. Google is cool and cutting edge. Google provides all the comforts (salary, benefits, stock options) of working in corporate America without the “sell out” factor. Google is authentic and hip, and always at the forefront of the next great thing. Its rival, Apple, has a similar aura, and also makes the top 10 list.

Also in the top ten are three consulting companies: McKinsey, BCG and Bain. Many MBAs no longer want to be the one in the C-suite, shaping the company agenda while being pressured from all sides by shareholders, executives, regulators, the Board, and employees. Instead, MBAs want to be the consultants who face a fresh and challenging case every three months, taking on the role of advisor without the need to implement and lead a company.

Many MBAs are choosing to forgo the corporate ladder altogether and instead shooting right to the top. By starting their own businesses or joining start-ups, MBAs can employ immediately all the learning they’ve done in business school. This trend peaked during the internet boom of the 90s when launching a dot.com seemed to be the surefire path to instant-millionaire status—and it’s on the rise again. According to the Association of MBAs, 22% of graduates will start their own company. Students go into business for themselves because they don’t to hang out in a cubicle for years, waiting to be promoted up the corporate ladder. They want real responsibility right now. By starting a business they don’t have to sit through conference calls where higher-ups drone on about next quarter’s bottom line. Instead they live and die by their own bottom lines, depending on their own business-savvy and acting as real leaders. This is what the MBAs of today find exciting.

The question, then, is whether business schools are equipped to prepare today’s MBAs for the paths they choose. Students are taking on more real responsibility and having more impact earlier on in their post-business school careers. As a result, business schools can no longer get by with providing a one-dimensional education that serves as a check-box for recruiters from traditional companies. They now need to provide students with tools to innovate and think critically, and a deep understanding of how their role as a business leader fits into the larger economic context.

Business schools take pride in redefining their missions and curricula to meet the changing needs of students. To this end, the number of U.S. business-school faculty teaching entrepreneurship classes increased to 349 in 2006 from 12 in 1997, according to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. They are slowly offering more joint courses with law and engineering schools. So business schools are changing; the question is whether they are adapting fast enough to successfully prepare the next generation of MBAs for the careers they want.

Graduating from a top business school gives you an edge over the competition when job hunting, but it also serves to ratchet up the competition. You compete against the best and the brightest from your own school and other top schools, so standing out from the crowd is crucial. This intense sense of competition drives students to spend hours preparing for interviews, perfecting résumés, and keeping their grades up by any means necessary.

Some business schools adopt grade nondisclosure policies, but even at these schools the tacit understanding is that when asked by a recruiter, you disclose, regardless of your school’s policy. My school did not have any such policy, it was fair game. I was clearly going to be asked about my grades. I’ll be the first to tell you (since you’re not a recruiter) that they weren’t stellar. And thus it all boiled down to one question: to lie or not to lie?

We were all strongly cautioned against lying and threatened with the fact that companies can request your transcript to verify for themselves. But no one knows anyone this has ever happened to (urban legends don’t count) so a lot of people do lie. And the ironic thing about this is that all the players in this shell game know that business school grades are irrelevant, anyway.

There several reasons that grades on their own are irrelevant. First, never has there been such rampant grade inflation as exists in MBA programs. I am living proof of this: I failed my Statistics midterm my first semester and still got an A- in the class. Getting a B in Accounting is no longer something to be proud of. This leads me to the second reason grades are irrelevant: getting a B in Accounting shouldn’t be something to be proud of--if you’re a CPA. But if you’re like me and had never seen a balance sheet before business school, then I think it’s something you should shout from the rooftops. So if recruiters are going to ask about grades, they shouldn’t use the same scale to measure everyone—this information needs to be put into the context of the person’s background.

Grades on their own are also irrelevant because they don’t distinguish between the former investment banking analyst who only takes electives like “Sports Marketing”, and the former sitcom writer who takes all finance electives.

By focusing on grades, schools and recruiters encourage students to focus on being evaluated instead of on learning. If they want to push students to challenge themselves and get the most out of business school then they should put the issue of grades to rest and allow student focus on the learning that they are doing, not the grades they will get.

Last May business schools were rocked by the cheating scandal at Duke. Nearly 10% of the 2008 class was found to have shared answers on an open-book take-home exam. Nine students were expelled, 15 were suspended, and 10 failed the course.

"I hope this saddening situation serves as a strong reminder of how much honor means to each and every one of us," wrote Mr. Fitzsimons, professor of marketing and psychology at Duke, and Chairman of the Judicial Committee.

A recent survey showed that fifty-six percent of graduate business students admitted to cheating, while only 47 percent of their non-business counterparts confessed to it. Do MBA students believe that cheating is an acceptable business practice? Do we have second round of Enron and WorldCom debacles to look forward to as a new generation moves up the corporate ladder? The survey results could just mean that business school students are more naturally enterprising than engineers or chemists. One thing is certain, though: business is changing. And business schools, which have always prided themselves on redefining their strategies and adjusting to changes the market, need to change too. It’s time to rewrite the definition of cheating.

So Duke students share answers on take home tests--that’s probably not all they share. I would bet they also share photos via Facebook and MySpace, video journals via YouTube, résumés via Jobster and LinkedIn, advice on taking the GMAT and writing bschool applications via blogs and chatrooms, what they’re looking for in a relationship via Match.com, and their most personal moments via reality TV shows.

We are the open source generation. And while sharing photos and GMAT tips doesn’t cross any ethical lines, being part of the sharing generation means we often find ourselves constantly redrawing those lines. We spend all day with a constant flow of shared information from Wikipedia, RSS feeds and emails. We even use instant messenger at work to constantly solicit the feedback and knowledge of our coworkers. Sure, your performance review is on your performance, but when was the last time you completed a project at work without the help of a team? So why haven’t business schools picked up on this?

Some say the Duke students cheated. I say they were enterprising and worked more efficiently together as a team then alone. To me that sounds smart, not scandalous. To me it sounds like the kind of behavior I’d want in someone I was hiring; the kind of behavior business schools school be encouraging.

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.