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.

In college I spent a year abroad in France, where I met my friend Cory. Cory was also doing a year abroad and had spent three years in the military before college. We got to know each other in a history class where the only grade we would receive was based on one oral exam at the end of the year where we could be asked about anything the course had covered--more or less everything that had ever happened in France in the last 250 years. Cory and I spent a week together before the exam, cramming 250 years worth of dates and battlefields in our heads. It was excruciating, but every time started I ranting about the French education system or got teary from our lack of sleep, Cory would put me in my place. “Knock if off,” he would say. “This is nothing compared to boot camp.”

A week later, after (barely) passing our exams, Cory and I and a group of friends hitchhiked 20 km outside of town to hike up Mount Ventoux. It turned into the April hottest day on record for the last ten years, and there was no real path to the top—just sharp rocks and heavy thickets of thorn brush. I ran out of water immediately since I’d only brought a teeny tiny bottle of water in order to make room in my backpack for the big bottle of wine I was planning to open at the top. “Stop whining,” Cory told me as I threatened to turn back. “This is nothing compared to boot camp.”

Cory and I kept in touch and years later when I got into to business school I remembered that he had started his MBA just a few months earlier on the West coast. I called him to see how it was going. There was a long pause. Then he said, “It’s worse than boot camp.”

Depending on your perspective, business school may not be worse than boot camp, but there is no denying the similarities. Both focus on developing your leadership skills. Both leave you with an incredible network of people you will know the rest of your life. Both involve a lot of testosterone (yes, I said it!). And most important, both are devoted to breaking you down and building you back up as a stronger, better person.

If you’re applying to business school, joining the military probably isn’t your backup plan. But maybe it should be. While MBAs are having tough time with the job hunt right now, veterans were scoring jobs right and left at a recent career fair in San Diego that I read about. Nextel, Amazon.com, Morgan Stanley, Johnson & Johnson and Clorox (among others) were all there hiring veterans. According to the head of leadership development at one company, "The No. 1 thing is their leadership ability. They learn fast. They're disciplined. They are a lot more serious than their civilian peers." A senior exec from another firm said, "We find that military people really understand managing multiple priorities, and overall customer satisfaction. They have a real go-get-it attitude. They are self-starters who won't leave until the job is done right."

Wait a minute—isn’t that what you’re paying $100,000 to learn during your MBA? The same things that military officers are being PAID to learn? Of course after you factor in the risks (death and dismemberment are a lot less common in business school than in combat) an MBA probably still seems more attractive. But does it make you more attractive? The military prides itself on turning out serious, disciplined, goal-oriented professionals with hands on leadership experience and a “failure is not an option” mentality. To me that sounds a lot like the qualities an investment bank or any of the companies I mentioned above are looking for.

Top companies complain that there is a gap between the training that business schools provide and what companies expect of their new hires. MBAs are often great with case studies but lack the real world experience that companies expect them to have. Even in Season 3 of the Apprentice, which pitted MBAs against entrepreneurs with less education, the MBAs stumbled through most of the simpler tasks.

I’m not advocating joining the military over going to business school, but I think it’s important to remember that there are other places to get leadership training than at a top-tier MBA program.